Foot Locker
Foot Locker is a fixture in many major cities around the world, a real global brand. We were asked to create a new font that would bring all their marketing materials together.
Signage
The Foot Locker logotype is iconic globally, instantly recognisable, but until now, always underleveraged. Working alongside the F37® team, we were able to unpack its unique personality, most notably the acute radius's on the ‘f’ and ‘r’, dramatic variation in width, and rotation of the ‘e’. The custom typeface ‘Foot Locker Sans,’ allowed us to build upon heritage, amplifying the brand's equity across a wide range of digital and physical touch-points, without overwhelming our audiences.
James Taylor — Creative Director, JKR
Signage
Background
Foot Locker is a massive American sportswear and footwear retailer, headquartered in New York. With 3,363 stores in 28 countries, it gets significant footfall around the world. This is brisk business, which translates to a massive turnover of over $7bn a year.
Branding agency JKR briefed us to create an alphabet in multiple weights, based on Foot Locker’s logotype. We think it was originally designed in the 1970s, and we soon discovered it had plenty of idiosyncrasies.
Weights
Type specimen
Air Jordan
Delivery
Working alongside JKR, we carefully deconstructed the logo to discover its DNA. For example, there were interesting curves on the f and the r, and the o and c were very geometric. Picking up on these and other clues, we gradually built up a set of characteristics that could be applied across a whole alphabet.
From there, we started to develop the Foot Locker font in multiple weights. We made a body copy version, which is slightly pared back to make it more legible at smaller sizes.
