For Nia Pennington, MS ’22 (sports product design), the path to a product design career wasn’t a conventional one. She blazed her own trail, from marketing and illustration to becoming the first Black woman to graduate with a master’s degree in sports product design from the University of Oregon.
Pennington always had a passion for fashion. After she graduated from the University of Kentucky with a bachelor’s degree in 2020, a friend who worked at Puma suggested she follow that interest and lean into her creativity through a pivot to product design. She discovered the UO’s Sports Product Design master’s program and followed her heart to Oregon.
“There was just something in me that was like ‘I think that this is somewhere that I should be, somewhere that I should go.’ And it was also crazy to even have that feeling during COVID because I had never been to Oregon ever in my life ,’” she shared. “And to this day, I don’t regret my decision at all.”
What gave her an edge in the program was her background in marketing. She studied strategic communications at Kentucky and interned with UK Athletics in creative and marketing, building experience that combined strategy with creativity. When she starts designing a product, she’s already considering the messaging of the item, not just its function and look.
“[The overlap is] ‘What is the storytelling piece?’ so that when it does get passed off to my marketing team, I can help them tell the story.”
When it comes to her own story, Pennington’s past and present inspire how she shapes the future. When she watched cartoons as a child, the style stuck with her. Two of her uncles were comic book illustrators and video game artists, and they encouraged her to engage with her creativity through art.
“I would hope that [my art] puts the viewer into this childlike state of mind and [evokes] how expressive we are as children. The world is our oyster. There's no limits to our creativity. There's no thought about, ‘This market is oversaturated’ or ‘This person's doing that over there.’ As kids, we didn't care. We didn't care who had what, who was doing what. We just explored. And that's something that I love to bring out.”
Her illustrative projects embody that whimsy and childlike wonder, from her design for the Portland Trail Blazers’ Black History Month shirt to bringing WNBA player Rhyne Howard’s story to life.
Pennington captured WNBA star Rhyne Howard's journey in collaboration with JR The Poet and Kizuna Studios' photography, providing illustrations based on Howard and her career.
Performers during the Portland Trail Blazers' Black History Month halftime performance wore this design on their shirts, celebrating hip hop and Black culture.
Today, creative exploration guides Pennington’s design process as an associate designer in bras and bodywear for Athleta. She ventures out to find what inspires her, whether it’s art at museums, fashion shows, retail experiences, or something else.
What she takes to heart most of all, though, is the inspiration she draws from the women in her life—women of all shapes, sizes, and backgrounds. Inclusivity and curiosity drive her work to design functional pieces for all body types.
“I think about my mom, I think about my aunt, someone who's a little bit more endowed than I am. Like, is this something that I'm specifically going to wear? No, but I'm designing it for somebody that does need it,” she said. “Function doesn’t just mean the practical experience of wearing a piece of clothing, it means focusing on the feeling too.”
Designed for Athleta, this tight was designed by Pennigton with a focus on self-care and well-being.
Through Pennington’s experience in the Sports Product Design program, she learned how to research the needs of the customer, and then bring that research to execute her design inspirations. She put that experience to the test when she undertook the initial research for Athleta’s BodyMove collection.
“[That process] taught me a lot about myself as a designer and what I value . . . I [give] a lot [of credit] to my experience at the UO and through the SPD program [for teaching me to be] thorough in research and in adding value, especially to an ever-growing market.”
It’s not only her designs that push fashion forward, but her commitment to being herself. Her identity is at the root of all she creates.
As a Black, LatinX woman, she knows that her presence in the industry isn’t just a dream come true for her, but for others from similar backgrounds who want to pursue a design career, too.
“It means the world to be able to represent [my culture] and show young girls, young boys that look like me that they can do this and that they are able to see themselves in me . . . Any opportunity that I have to be able to speak to them, I try to take it. . . For them to come to me and tell me that [they look up to me] lets me know I'm on the right path.”
When offering advice for aspiring creatives, she says it all comes back to telling a unique story.
“There are tons of artists that exist, but they can't tell the story that I would tell through my eyes because my experience is my experience. Same for you. Your experience is your experience.”
— by Sarah Bathke, BA ’25 (journalism), UO Alumni Association communications generalist