Client

Spencer Badu

Services

Creative Direction, Branding, Identity, e-Commerce Design

Industry

Fashion

Year

2018

Spencer Badu’s purpose within the landscape of fashion—his complex, nuanced style, boundary-pushing vision, and progressive attitude—was already well defined when he approached us to recalibrate his brand and visual identity system.
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Instead of an overhaul, Spencer needed to recalibrate how to connected with his core customer, and effectively articulate his brand’s uniqueness to his sophisticated audience.
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He didn’t want to lose any of his brand’s existing cache, instead seeking to deliberately expand the scope of what could be logically contained within his identity.

1.1 Campaign photography of Spring collection

A devoted student of Bauhaus (the architectural school, not the band), Badu’s design and branding philosophy emphasizes a less-is-more elegance and subtly expressed nuance, employing a progressive, avant-garde, and distinctly modern approach to fashion. Badu’s collections are unisex; he operates on a gender-fluid continuum, organically harmonizing masculine and feminine elements into one genderless line.

1.2 Custom logo type face

The crux of the issue was that Spencer felt his eponymous line was being codified as a garden-variety streetwear brand. He planned to recast his eponymous line with a branding identity that suited the product he was actually creating: experimental garments, sold in luxury fashion stores. His streetwear-centric product was to be moved into a diffusion line—SP.
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Through a multifaceted, collaborative, flexible approach to vision building, we worked with Spencer to define what this new branding could become. Through countless phone calls and text message exchanges, we explored different concepts and directions, ultimately consolidating them into final designs that were specifically tailored to meet Spencer’s unique aims.

Spencer wanted his primary logo design to reflect to his modern aesthetic. We responded with a modular, rigid, and geometrically precise logo, created through a similar process as the one used to conceive one the world’s most recognizable logos—NASA’s.

1.3 Logo design in various options

We created a system of logos that would allow the brand to contextualize its multifaceted identity.

The logo designs were engineered to translate equally well across social media, web, physical materials, and garment labels and hardware.

1.4 Hardware and tag applications of various logos

Having several variations that could be consistently and fluidly re-contextualized was essential for Spencer.
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We created a full logo, a partial logo, and a monogram logo, each of which has their own unique uses within Spencer’s brand hierarchy.
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Spencer Badu has since firmly established his brand within the landscape of luxury fashion. His line has been picked up by the world’s leading e-commerce platforms, SSENSE.

1.5 Spencer Badu product sold on SSENSE.com

At the conclusion of this branding project, Spencer informed us that our collaborative process inspired him to rethink what “luxury” meant, which gave him new means to communicate this concept through his products.
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Ultimately, we shaped not only how external audiences experience and perceive Spencer Badu’s brand, but also informed and clarified Spencer’s conceptual vision.

Photography:
Eric Tsui
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Copy:
Aaron Gray
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Published:
02.05.20