June 16, 2014
How to Start A Helmet Revolution

Great designs usually start with a simple question: “Why doesn’t X exist?”

This week at the Sports Illustrated blog, writer Tim Newcomb gets the scoop on what happened when Nutcase founder Michael Morrow asked the question, “Why aren’t there fun and funky helmets with great graphics?”

The original impetus for Michael’s question was a college football game in Oregon known as the Civil War (the Ducks of the University of Oregon vs. the Beavers of Oregon State University). Michael wanted to create a fan-friendly helmet showing his allegiance to the Beavers, and couldn’t find much on the market.

As he relates to Newcomb, at that time (2000) the choices for bicycle helmets were pretty basic, and fairly dull. Michael’s background in product design for Nike helped him come up with a line of helmets much more fun than the status quo. And the rest, as they say, is history, or at least historic.

For Nutcase, putting nutty graphics on brain-bucket style helmets has been nothing short of a helmet revolution. Widely copied but never duplicated, Nutcase helmets can be spotted around the globe. Since our first Watermelon helmet in 2006 the company has released over 100 different designs over the years, and we’re not slowing down. Our latest artist-designed helmet series brings a whole new level of fresh to bike, skate, water, snow, kids, and now, moto helmets.

To read more of the Sports Illustrated story, click here.