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30/04/2020

Is Pretty

New Identity for Esprit by Pentagram

Established in 1968, Esprit is a fashion brand that designs, manufactures, and retails clothing, footwear, accessories, jewelry, and even housewares. Most well known for its colorful, happy, and fun 1980s style, Esprit has been adapting to each decade since with its vision of “essential positivity”. Founded in California by husband and wife Doug and Susie Tompkins, Esprit was first sold from their VW bus with headquarters in their San Francisco apartment and it now has 761 directly managed retail stores and over 6,300 wholesale points of sale in 40 countries with headquarters in Germany and Hong Kong. Recently, Esprit introduced a new identity designed by New York, NY-based Pentagram partner Natasha Jen.

The refreshed identity system features a new custom typeface inspired by the iconic “ESPRIT” stencil logo and restores the brand’s signature use of vibrant color. The dynamic identity can be carefully calibrated across the wide-ranging brand, from sleek simplicity to maximum expression.

For the first time, the Esprit logo (originally designed by John Casado in 1979) has been expanded into a full custom typeface, ESPRIT Stencil. The Pentagram team redrew the wordmark for consistency, refined an existing uppercase font, and then developed a lowercase font, as well as numbers and glyphs. Upper and lower cases can now be mixed in typography for messaging that captures the spirit of the brand.

Pentagram project page

New Identity for Esprit by Pentagram
Logo, before and after.
Logo evolution.
New Identity for Esprit by Pentagram
Logo.

No, your eyes do not deceive you, there are no easily discernible differences between the old and new logo and, in this case, that is a good thing since Esprit’s is one of the most iconic fashion logos, so a simple tightening of the nuts and bolts to keep it working for another 40 years seems like the best approach. One fun story about the logo that I didn’t know — explained in this must-see history page that shows the brand evolution — is that John Casado showed the logo to the founders in his first round, who told him that that wasn’t it and to come up with new suggestions, and then he came back a month later for a second round with the same logo, which then got approved because they appreciated Casado’s conviction. Can you imagine doing that to a client today? Anyway, the old logo was great and the new logo stays great but I think everyone can sleep a little better with the minor tweaks done that streamline some of the letters and open up the overall spacing (between letters and pieces of letters) in an enjoyable way. You might ask “why bother?” and go through the expense of replacing the logo but with fashion being so cyclical it’s perfectly feasible to work in the new logo into all the print and digital campaigns as well as new labels and shopping bags. Signage is another story but, well, no one will really notice.



New Identity for Esprit by Pentagram
Custom typeface.
The strong typography is accompanied by a radically simple yet effective approach to color based on a color wheel. The method introduces a wheel of 72 colors (each represented by three levels—shade, pure and tint) that offers a broad palette of possibilities yet is highly systematized. When working with the branding, Esprit’s graphic designers can choose from two to six pairs of complementary colors, and mix and match the oppositional color pairs for a variety that can change seasonally and thematically, but always bring vibrancy to the brand.

Pentagram project page

Color wheel.
Lively typeface introduction.

The new typeface is pretty great. Pulling off the stencil approach convincingly in lowercase letters is hard and this does a stellar job at it while keeping the geometric structure of the logo.

The Pentagram team created a comprehensive brand style guide that covers everything from hang tags and labels, buttons and zippers, packaging and shoe boxes, tissue paper and tape. Color can be selectively applied on packaging with playful stickers. The cohesive identity framework extends to sub-brands for the edc, Esprit Sport, Esprit Jeans and Esprit Kids product lines, as well as a system of custom icons for digital and label iconography.

Pentagram project page

New Identity for Esprit by Pentagram
Brand book.
New Identity for Esprit by Pentagram
Stationery.
New Identity for Esprit by Pentagram
Cover with stickers.
New Identity for Esprit by Pentagram
Notecards.
New Identity for Esprit by Pentagram
Tape.
New Identity for Esprit by Pentagram
Shopping bags and boxes.
New Identity for Esprit by Pentagram
Shopping bag and box with tape.
New Identity for Esprit by Pentagram
Boxes.

The applications have a nice range that can go from the serious stationery materials to the exuberant bags with tape — which look great as a prototype but I wonder how its real-life application will turn out — and a little bit of everything in between. The one thing I’m not sure how literally to take is if the blue/red/yellow color palette is meant to be the new standard combination… I do kind of like it but the Gen X in me would love to see the 1980s colors make a comeback although I do understand that that may not be a universal desire. It should, tho.

New Identity for Esprit by Pentagram
New Identity for Esprit by Pentagram
Hangtags.
New Identity for Esprit by Pentagram
Buttons.
New Identity for Esprit by Pentagram
Store.

Overall, this is a tight evolution for the logo along with a very useful addition of the full upper and lowercase typeface that will serve as a really strong branding asset and keep the Esprit spirit alive for years to come.

See what else happened on Brand New each year since publication began in 2006