Mun Jen Ng

Growing up in Chinatown, New York, my parents gave me career advice very early and very often.

They said, Mun, whatever you do, don't study art.

You'll never find a job, you'll never make any money, you'll probably starve to death.

It sounds much worse when you say it in Chinese.

So in 1996 I decided, art school sounds like fun.

I enrolled in a place called Pratt up in Brooklyn.

I studied something called product design.

That's where I met my friend Evan.

Evan was also from Chinatown, and he's Chinese.

And the first time I met him, he wore a white sweatband bandana on his head, but it was tilted sideways.

It had the Air Jordan logo on it, Nike basketball shorts and Air Jordan sneakers.

When he wasn't drawing in class, he was playing basketball.

We'd work late into the night all the time at the studios.

And then one night he told me, man, I think I know what I want to do with my life.

All I want to do is design basketball shoes and work for Nike.

So for his senior project, he designed a super futuristic basketball shoe.

He took a block of foam, and then he carved out the shape of the sole.

And then he spent weeks cutting out the tread designs.

He took some fabric, and he sewed it all up, and he glued it on top.

The result was it looks like something you would buy at a store.