Jim Riswold, legendary Wieden+Kennedy copywriter, has died at age 66, AdAge first reported. Riswold battled cancer for more than two decades. 

He passed away on Friday, August 9, at his home in Portland, Oregon. He is survived by his children Hallie and Jake, his sisters Sheila and Marilee, their children, his cousin and best friend Derek Ruddy and many friends and colleagues.

As Dan Wieden’s first copywriter hired in 1984, Riswold was behind much of Nike’s — and the agency’s — most famous work, pairing entertainment icons and athletes from Michael Jordan to Tiger Woods to Spike Lee with its products in unexpected ways. 

Some of his most well-known work include the Spike and Mike TV commercials, Hare Jordan, Bo Knows, Hello World and much more. 

After first being diagnosed with leukemia in 2000, Riswold retired from Wieden+Kennedy in 2005 to pursue a career as a full-time contemporary artist. He famously said he wanted to be a “fake artist,” going from “a career of selling people things they don’t need to making things they don’t want.”

His work, which makes fun of historical fascists including Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong and Benito Mussolini, is held at the permanent collections of many Pacific Northwest museums as well as private collections. He recently was commissioned to do a permanent installation for the University of Washington Philosophy Department called Philosophy Is Not Funny. 

Riswold returned to Wieden+Kennedy in 2009 to direct experimental advertising school W+K12. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2011, which returned three times before he eventually died of interstitial lung disease.

Throughout his career, Riswold has been awarded with more than 100 advertising accolades and was once named by Newsweek as one of the 100 most influential people. He was inducted into the One Club’s Creative Hall of Fame in 2013.   

Riswold was born on December 7, 1957, in Seattle. After graduating from the University of Washington in 1983, he took a job as a copywriter at a Seattle agency before meeting the founders of a new ad agency called Wieden+Kennedy at an award show dinner in Seattle. 

He became a partner at the agency in 1992 and remained involved until he passed, despite retiring twice, most recently consulting with the creative team after David Kennedy and Dan Wieden passed away in 2021 and 2022, respectively. 

The Knight Cancer Institute is accepting donations in his name. 

This article originally appeared on Campaign US.