Strava Brand Evolution
Strava is the #1 app for runners and cyclists worldwide. With over 100 million active users Strava connects athletes through the sports they love. With a growing design team in San Francisco managing marketing teams and design partners worldwide, Strava needed to strengthen its design system and toolkit.
We worked collaboratively with the Strava team over a 6-month period to create new visual expression principles and design systems to serve Strava teams, partners, and athletes, worldwide.
DESIGNED AT MANUAL (2021)
CREATIVE STRATEGY
Having worked with Strava on previous projects like Year in Sport, our team was very familiar with the current design system. But to gain a more holistic perspective on the state of the brand, we began the project with a series of creative strategy work sessions and system audits to closely analyze and define the key qualities of the Strava brand.
CREATIVE STRATEGY / FAULTS
Inconsistent and largely improvised.
Lacking design principles and rationale.
Time consuming for Strava to create communications.
Limiting color palette and graphic elements.
Gap between product and marketing experiences.
CREATIVE STRATEGY / GOALS
Provide clarity & consistency.
Broaden Strava’s toolkit with visual assets that provide flexibility.
Look for ways to capture the feeling of sport and community.
Reflect our diverse global community.
Find new ways to bring people into the Strava community.
DESIGN SYSTEM
Building off existing layout principles the Strava team had explored, we developed a graphic language built around blocking and layering.
DESIGN SYSTEM
The color palette was extended with supporting accent colors, tones and pairings. We also simplified the typographic language by streamlining the primary weights and styling of the brand’s core typeface Maison Neue.
DESIGN SYSTEM
We expanded the design toolkit with a series of expressive patterns designed to evoke themes like speed, momentum, progression.
ICONOGRAPHY
In the initial stages of the project, it became evident that Strava's iconography system required an upgrade. Our aim was to establish a distinct and identifiable system that could be seamlessly used in both product and marketing contexts. We collaborated with iconography specialists Studio TK in Oakland, CA. We developed a comprehensive and adaptable icon set comprising more than 150 distinct icons, across four different size breakpoints.
ICONOGRAPHY
We took inspiration directly from the angles found in the Strava logotype. We used these angles to form both the foundational grid and graphic nature of the icon system.
BRAND GUIDELINES
We capped off the project with a robust digital guidelines website for internal teams to easily access brand assets, detailed documentation, and templates.
DESIGN CREDITS
Agency: Manual
Creative Director: Tom Crabtree
Design Director: Raul Aguila
Senior Art Director: Tanner Irwin
Art Director: Pam Hsu
Senior Designer: Eugene Lee
Designer: Phoebe Hsu
Designer: Tong Li
COLLABORATORS & CREDITS
Strava Brand, Product, Marketing, teams
Iconography: Story TK
PROJECT ROLE