Converse

Global Campaign

Bringing the 'Skate Mindset' to every facet of Converse through audacity and irreverence.

Overview

For Converse’s Fall 23 Campaign, we worked with the global brand team to define a seasonal strategy and campaign expression that fully embodied the brand’s muse this season: skate culture. Converse has always had one foot in the counter-culture landscape — a passionate contributor to the creative conversation — and this initiative pays homage to that dynamic in a new way. Informed by a robust strategy phase, our key insight was to lean away from the traditional skate tropes: hypermasculinity and grit, for a more engaging, irreverent and playful temperament that was no less audacious. Together, we distilled the boundless freedom and spirited per­se­ver­ance of skate into every visual touchpoint: imagery, design, and even a suite of webtools that allowed the Converse team to create assets on the fly.

Sector

  • Lifestyle

Timeline

  • Q2 2023

Credits

  • Converse Team

    • Alyson Magliozzi
    • Dana Kandic
    • Jennifer Ballou
    • John Osborne
    • Lana Alexio
    • Lee Carol
    • Matthew Willigan
    • Michael Donner
    • Mike Sylvester
    • Stephanie Irving

  • Cotton Design Team

    • Talia Cotton

  • Photography

    • Yavez Anthonio

  • Production

    • Very Rare Inc

Type System

We crafted a type system designed to be flexible, emotive and have the ability to elevate any accompanying elements around it. We began with the all-new 'Create Next' wordmark, which sets a foundational balance between audacity and irreverence with masculinity and femininity, while buzzing with the forward energy of the Converse brand.

Color Systems

Colors are vibrant with a subtle desaturation — almost as if they had been left out in the sun — to tie back to our strategy of audacity and irreverence. Our color system establishes a few key colors, but can be expanded for any application by standardizing saturation and brightness. This enables both cohesion and flexibility.

Layout System

To pull elements together, we devised a focused layout system to carry the spirit of the campaign, leveraging color palettes and connecting naturally to a brand new motion language. The key layout concept was layering and the idea of building on top what has come before by leaving your mark on the world. These layouts were conceived as a toolkit, offering a flexible system for any aspect ratio or type of message, resulting in endless expressivity.

Photography

Grounding ourselves in relatable, everyday life was paramount for this campaign's imagery. One key concept for photography was to ensure the brand’s images felt easily repeatable by our audience and never looked out of reach. After all, Converse is a brand for cultural participation. Within that framework, we created non-traditional images through location, set design, poses, styling and art direction to evoke our take on the skate mindset. Vibrant, personality driven portraiture lived alongside product hero shots, while imagery never felt out of touch to our audience.

Scalability

For a campaign at this scale, a common challenge is visual cohesion at a global level. We worked cross-functionally with Converse’s brand and social teams and devised a focused toolkit of design elements created specifically for their ever-changing landscape of digital brand communication. This toolkit enabled the design systems to live beyond this specific campaign and stretch into the future, across dozens of teams and locations globally.

Generative Tool

nextStudio is a bespoke generative web app that enables the brand team and their global partners to create motion and still assets in minutes. The platform was specifically created to simplify and expedite the creation of on-brand creative without the need for any additional software. In its first version, nextStudio offered eight versatile creative tools, ranging from background image makers to animation presets with generative patterns. Since then, the platform has been scaled up to include more tools for Holiday seasons with an evolved emphasis on 3D motion graphics with video encoding and exporting.