Under Armour Global Footwear

Global Strategy, Retail Marketing, Environmental Graphics

Generating $5.2 billion in revenue each year (2018) the brand relies on simple and direct pathways of communication to build out creative assets. Our goal was to create elevated footwear marketing for their global stores. Rethinking global brand touch points, we reached out to strategists, product line managers, and factories to learn about their process for designing footwear. Their feedback enabled us to develop a updatable systems that functioned within current brand operations. We started to ask questions like; What is the potential of footwear to empower human performance? How do our feet move? How are shoes made? How do we test them to ensure quality?

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FOOTWEAR DESIGN DISCOVERY 

Under Armour’s process of designing footwear reflected in sketches, photography, shoe parts, and graphs the display highlights key product technology. One of the challenges in working with the Under Armour brand is dealing with the full range of budgets that regions invest into creative marketing assets. In Footwear Upper, for example, the scope of work includes both a standard print as well as more elevated executions.

We connected with project managers, designers, engineers, developers, consumer insights (wear-testers), and material analyst (lab-testing). In each one-on-one interview and group discussion, we observed the environment, asked questions, and listened. We ended up with a rich collection of visual data that shared how Under Armour approached making shoes that millions of people will wear. We thought about how powerful it would be to share these findings with the consumer. This evergreen visual design display lives between one and three years. Parts of the display would update with current product.

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RETAIL FOOTWEAR ZONE 

Footwear marketing glorifiers (on wall) are seasonal stories for our most premium products. They are an extension of the footwear upper. One of the challenges international regions faced was the story telling within the current marketing. The problem we were trying to solve was: How could we tell more of a story about the technology and it’s intended use? How could the design be scalable across and applicable across categories and product stories? What we designed were consistent quadrants that were flexible with typography and sketch. This enabled consistency across categories and product specific brand marketing. The photography shows intended use of the shoe (ex. running). The tech points at times are accompanied by sketches that illustrate details of the shoe. The shoe sits off the wall on two acrylic pegs and is framed by crosshairs and neon lights.

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SCALABLE DISPLAY

Under Armour Team
Nathan Grundhouser, Katrina Keane,
Todd Hoffman