A Timely Brand Refresh

New Balance came to us with complete honesty about who they are. No manufactured urgency, no pivot to chase trends. Just a brand that's been doing things, ready to get even better at it.

They needed a system that could scale across every touchpoint – from e-commerce to global campaigns. The challenge wasn't reinventing New Balance. It was distilling everything they already do brilliantly into a toolkit that scales.

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The Solution

We built their most comprehensive brand system to date. When you're operating across 30+ markets with partnerships spanning from football stars to rap stars, half-measures don't cut it.

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The foundation is typographic – because type is where personality lives when you strip away the noise. With the help of our friends at Studio Drama, we developed a modular layout framework that's rigid enough to maintain consistency but flexible enough that creative teams worldwide can make it their own.

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Every decision serves the brand's core philosophy: craft over flash, substance over spectacle. It's the kind of system that makes good work inevitable.

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The Principles That Actually Matter:

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Editorial, not advertising. Every piece of communication should feel like it belongs.

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Considered, not reactive. Every element earns its place. If it's not adding value, it's not there.

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Confident, not loud. The brand knows what it is. The work reflects that certainty without shouting about it.

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Making It Work in the Real World

The system needed to work for a New Balance employee in Boston and a partner agency in Berlin. So we built digital-first guidelines that actually get used – not the huge PDFs that live in someone's downloads folder.

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Everything from tone of voice to photography direction is documented, accessible, and designed to scale. The toolkit doesn't just tell you what to do; it shows you how to do it well.

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The Result

A single New Balance. A brand that shows up consistently across every touchpoint while leaving room for the personality that makes it worth following.

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The work has rolled out globally across retail, digital, and campaign applications. More importantly, it's given internal teams and partners the confidence to create, knowing that when they follow the system, they're speaking with the brand's authentic voice.

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_{Pure and simple, they are best-in-class, bringing a brand to life and closer to culture like no other agency can – Ian Fitzpatrick - Global Brand Director / New Balance}‍