Spring

A Brand for All Seasons

Our Role

Art Direction, Brand Identity, Motion Graphics

Collaborators

West SF, Spring in-house design team

Fashion foundation

The evolution of e-commerce

The right swipe

Season of change

Fashion foundation. Spring was founded in 2013.

The evolution of e-commerce. It has since become a major force in the online fashion and retail space with mobile and desktop platforms that make shopping across many brands and categories effortless and fun.

The right swipe. When Athletics was brought onto the project, Spring had launched with a straightforward but functional interface that, on mobile, utilized a highly-effective “swipe to purchase” functionality.

Season of change. Athletics collaborated with West SF, a firm overseeing design and strategy, to drive all creative work for a new identity.

Substance without style

Spring’s existing systems lacked visual finesse to complement the products featured on their site. In response, Athletics knew the new brand identity had to be playful, vivid, recognizable, and flexible enough to populate social, events, digital, environmental, and beyond. Ultimately, Spring’s brand identity needed to make its presence known without overshadowing the brands on their platform.

“Spring offers an aesthetically pleasing way to keep up with the latest products your favorite labels have to offer in one portable and pretty place.”
Refinery 29

Split personality in a single brand

The entire visual vernacular of Spring’s brand identity stems from diagrams of the biannual equinox. The seasonal reference, by extension a reference to the fashion calendar, evokes a sense of freshness and renewal. This notion is most clearly embodied by the logomark, a circle bisected by a line dividing the two color fields. It is a reflection of Spring’s dual nature; Spring is a brand with a perspective and voice, as well as a collection of partner brands. This motif was extended to product photography, digital content, and animations, while the logomark itself appears as the app icon, throughout digital and print communications, and alongside other brands’ logos to announce partnerships.

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“It’s all about uniqueness. It’s a crowded marketplace, but the way you win is being unique.”
Alan Tisch, CEO, Spring

Bringing high fashion down to earth

Injecting bursts of color through all interactions, Athletics curated four color pairings, one for each season. Athletics also defined the style of photography, including minimal use of props, colored seamless backdrops derived from our color groupings, a mix of wide range and close up imagery, and suspended motion. In addition, we created a timeless but firmly contemporary wordmark derived from the high-contrast serif typefaces associated with luxury fashion houses. Spring’s in-house copywriter extended the playful, cheeky spirit of our designs to the brand’s textual tone, which was conveyed with a clean, refined set of typefaces.

Spring into action

The renewed Spring app and desktop site were met with positive critical and consumer regard. Vogue, Fashionista, Mashable, Real Simple, The Huffington Post, and Refinery29, and others all covered the brand after the re-launch, and Alan Tisch, Founder of Spring, called Athletics’ work for the company “incredible.” Mashable wrote of the relaunch: “[Tisch] says the experience and aesthetic will make it seem premium with its ‘pops of color’ throughout. He’s most excited, he says, about how the colors will change from season to season. ‘It will feel like a refresh and every couple of months with its seasonal designs…’” We anticipate a bright future for Spring as it continues to attract new, cutting-edge brands and investors to bolster its platform, redefining how Americans shop for fashions online.

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