#thr33kynation

I always consider it a challenge to come up with a new, better and improved design for existing products. Since I was working for the Thr33ky winter 2016 collection I thought it was the perfect moment to have a better look at the existing 3KY logo.

In the past when the 3KY logo was used on apparel, the squirrel was -in my opinion- always used as an add on. It was always somewhere, but it never was part of the logo. That’s what I thought of as an interesting next step; coming up with a solution to make the 3KY logo stand out better, add the squirrel more prominent and make the logo look as an entirety.

To accomplish this re-styling, I changed the kerning in between all three letters. Slightly tweaked the letter K and decided that it’s the perfect place for the squirrel to go.

Obviously the existing logo has to remain recognizable to everybody. So without further touching the architecture, the logo became compact, more playful and straight forward this way.

So far I implemented the updated logo on three products; a scarf, head band and beanie. Since head wear products are relatively smaller in size it is from key importance that the logo stands out and has an excellent visibility. The squirrel pattern on the fresh blue and black background are a tricksy add-on to top off the overall design.

“Don't care what they may say, we got that attitude. Don't care what they may do, we got that attitude. Hey, we got the PMA” - Bad Brains

Earlier this year, after a ride back home from a far away running event, I was chit chatting with a running buddy and told him about this pretty cool idea I had in mind for a shirt design. A design that would fit great to a small label like Thr33ky. A label we both support for quite some time. Since he knew the driving forces, I asked him if they would be open to some complete stranger approaching them out of the blue with a possible design proposal. He told me to absolutely give it a shot and later that week I sent over the first sketches, including a story line explaining the idea of the design. It took only a couple of days before I got feedback from the Thr33ky HQ’s; they totally liked the idea and so I started developing and translating words into a visual expression.

The Thr33ky slogan „Endurance Guerrilla” is a strong one that I fully embrace and therefore it was my starting point for the design. It’s a great urban style summarization of what outdoor activists stand for while being out in the mountains, on the road, trails or in nature for a couple of hours.

With that in mind I thought it was a pretty cool idea to link the slogan to one of my favorite bands; the Bad Brains, who have a song called „Destroy Babylon”.

The same Bad Brains also wrote a hardcore anthem about 30 years ago entitled „Attitude”. With all of this information things started slowly coming together in a fr33ky outcome: the “Endurance Guerilla” type design converted into a colorful logo. The bottom part of the light brown background refers to heart rate during outdoor activities, and the top part to mountains and outdoor life in general.