Active Endeavors
Brand Identity / Brand Expression / Environments
Inspiring Adventure
The Brief
Can a new logo get more people shopping?
The Opportunity

Active Endeavors is an independent, franchise-driven outdoor gear and clothing retailer. When we began working with them, their new store was under construction in Davenport, Iowa. With its sleek, modern use of metal and glass balanced by more rustic materials like timber and stone, the building felt more like Colorado than the Quad Cities. The old identity was disconnected from the new palace being built.

Brand Identity

The mountains in the existing logo paid homage to the store’s adventurous clientele, many who are climbers. To preserve the spirit of the original throughout the evolution of the logo, FUEL focused on maintaining a presence of mountains in the new mark while bringing a modern sensibility and some edginess to it.
Active Endeavors old logo

Before

Active Endeavors new logo

After

Another point of emphasis was the use of green; we landed on a hue that was a little more energetic and vibrant than the forest green in the original brand identity.

The brand style guidelines created a roadmap for the internal team and other agencies to bring a cohesive presentation to everything from the website, to point-of-sale, to apparel.

Brand Expression

To interject some attention-grabbing playfulness to the brand, we looked for interesting ways to incorporate typography “interacting” with people and the environment.
We selected a font with a sense of hand-rendered grittiness to balance the sleek type used in the logo. This helped give the brand a more casual air.
The secondary palette drew inspiration from the terrain – water, land and sky. These earthen tones served two purposes. First, to show connection to the outdoors. It also provided a neutral canvas to allow the vibrant colors often found in the gear itself to shine through.

Environments

Working with Gere Dismer Architects (now Studio 483), we advised on signage to maximize visibility and impact for retail environment. FUEL worked with materials like timber and steel brackets to echo what was being used for the store’s interior. The monument sign also took cues from the roofline of the structure and was best suited to work with the horizontal logo lockup.