LifeStride Brand Identity
The Project Overview
LifeStride refreshed their aesthetic Summer of 2020. The refresh affected packaging, store signage, trade show materials and the website. My role was to bring LifeStride’s personality to the website through typography, iconography, and button design. The two biggest hurdles was keeping things clean and accessible for all shoppers.
Logo & Colors
The logo and color palette were designed by Geena Davis and Laura Coggins. The logo was made more legible and modern.
The color palette is very light and playful. LifeStride is positioned as affordable shoes comfortable enough to wear from work to evening and classic enough to wear season to season. So when the team worked on the color palette, we wanted to make sure it was flexible and classic to last every season. The only challenge with this color scheme is how do you make it web accessible?
Typography
The team chose two typefaces for LifeStride: Argent CF and Sofia Pro. These fonts pair beautifully together because they’re simple and elegant at the same time. LifeStride’s customer is a little older so we wanted things to look beautiful, but legible for all devices. When I was creating the typography, I wanted to make sure that Argent would only be used once in each section. It was a lot of back and forth between when SEO needs a specific heading value and when I want to see Argent. I let the page architecture define which heading value used Argent and then filled the remaining heading values with Sofia Pro.
Iconography
Argent CF has beautiful flourishes that bring some much personality to text. But Sofia Pro is simple typeface with clean strokes. When I was sketching these icons, I tried following using similar strokes and flourishes from Argent, but when we tested the icons in context, we didn’t think the meaning behind the icon was clear.
So I went back to the drawing board and sketched the same icons with Sofia’s stroke weight. The icons were clear, but a little too simple. I added in small details to the icons - hair around the face, strokes to show dimension, and small overhangs to add a little a personality. The outcome of this pairs the cleanliness of Sofia and personality of Argent.
The outcome
We have received great feedback from the customer about the new look. She has navigated through the site faster and engaged with more storytelling continuously weaved across the site.
Explore the new LifeStride and let me know what you think!
