Whoever did the Nike swoosh is probably pretty good. I actually got curious after tying the last sentence, and hit up wikipedia. According to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swoosh the woman that did this was a student at the time! Learn something new every day.
I was reading somewhere a while back that Nike paid $75. to design the Nike Swoosh and it took someone less then ½ a day. lol, it is probably worth billions now.
About the Nike logo... the woman was only paid $35 dollars at the time but 12 years later she was given a still secret number of stocks in the company as a much overdue thank you. As far as graphic designers that are inspiring... there are almost too many to name... You can't go wrong with some of the big names form the past and worldwide firms like: http://www.paul-rand.com/ (logos: IBM, abc television, UPS) http://www.miltonglaser.com/ (I♥NY) http://www.pentagram.com/en/ http://www.vsapartners.com/ currently I'm really into the work by these guys: http://cargocollective.com/electricheat http://www.arsthanea.com/ http://iso50.com/iso50.html
i am lol ;D i wish... im getting there tho, i need to look into 3d and illustrations more often from now on...