Early Majority— Designing hackable branding
Challenge:
How do you brand a woman-led, seed-stage startup with a huge vision — to disrupt the fashion industry by turning consumers into users through ways that had never been done before. For example, organizing the company around a DAO-based membership model, Web3 tech, an innovative layering system, hackable branding and a commitment to sustainability through everything they do, not just the clothes they make.
How do you brand a woman-led, seed-stage startup with a huge vision — to disrupt the fashion industry by turning consumers into users through ways that had never been done before. For example, organizing the company around a DAO-based membership model, Web3 tech, an innovative layering system, hackable branding and a commitment to sustainability through everything they do, not just the clothes they make.
Solution:
Let’s back up. Early-stage startups need the flexibility to change, adapt and evolve as they find product / market fit, expand their team and develop a sustainable business model.
And that was the case with Early Majority. They needed a branding system that could build equity over time yet be extremely flexible to adapt to change.
Our SoWhat Approach was used to create a familiar yet surprising brand identity system.
The first step was to develop core creative assets – the fixed assets that would remain constant while building brand equity.
Let’s back up. Early-stage startups need the flexibility to change, adapt and evolve as they find product / market fit, expand their team and develop a sustainable business model.
And that was the case with Early Majority. They needed a branding system that could build equity over time yet be extremely flexible to adapt to change.
Our SoWhat Approach was used to create a familiar yet surprising brand identity system.
The first step was to develop core creative assets – the fixed assets that would remain constant while building brand equity.
Custom typography.
Logo lockup.
The Early Majority badge
But to create the flexibility the brand also needed flexible assets to create the relevance needed to help differentiate the brand in a very crowded market. The next step was to design sets of flexible assets that gives the brand flexibility to adapt to what’s happening now without risking its brand equity. It’s important to point out that these flexible assets were designed to be used only while they are relevant allowing the brand’s identity to change and evolve over time.
Every brand is different but for Early Majority, these included a system of interchangeable patches, based on collabs with various artists, limited edition products, digital tokens, and social posts.
Every brand is different but for Early Majority, these included a system of interchangeable patches, based on collabs with various artists, limited edition products, digital tokens, and social posts.
The flexible assets, interchangeable badge collabs to keep the brand on point
The digital member badge tokens bind Early Majority’s customers together in community
Today, Early Majority has raised its first round of funding and scaling globally.
The Early Majority apparel places a strong emphasis on high performance, versatility, and gender equality“I’m honored to be a part of SoWhat’s journey, not just because Stefán is brilliant but also because I secretly wanted to be like David Butler when I grew up.”
Joy Howard
Founder & CEO, Early Majority. (ex CMO Patagonia, Sonos, Nike & Fast Company Most Creative & Forbes Most Influential)
Visit earlymajority.com
Team:
Art Direction & Design: Stefán Kjartansson
Design: Elise Mattingly
Client team:
Founder & CEO: Joy Howard
CCO: Dmitri Siegel
Head of Product: Hanna ter Meulen
See more of the work ︎︎︎
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