Patagonia 50 - What's Next?

Doing it halfway isn't doing it. For 50 years, Patagonia has locked arms with communities and activists to help save our home planet. In 2023, Patagonia launched it's 50th anniversary campaign. Rather than creating a deeply immersive retrospect, the brand used it as an inflection point: What do we take with us? What do we leave behind? What's Next?

We landed on 3 (heavily contested) answers: simplicity, human powered, and resilience. Those answers became thematic pathways in which we created a year's worth of short films, journal stories, social media and go to market campaigns. Simplicity told the story of how we design and build product. Human powered focused on the celebration of humans finding joy through sport. And resilience was the key to our broader global environmental initiatives and awareness campaigns, including our Marine Protection campaign.

Along with the campaign came an entirely new design system and style guide. The system worked in tandem with our messaging and visual communications across all teams and channels, including the retail experience. It started with the simple addition of an arrow symbol that became a symbol of movement. It was used not as a logo, but as a universal symbol of forward momentum, and helped inform the directionality of our animation system. Bringing forth a new typeface allowed us to speak with a more modern voice, and the way in which we used color brightened the visual experience and helped compliment the wide beautifully wide range of photography.

Creative Directors: Michael Leon, Alex Lowther, Heidi Volpe, Brad Wieners
Writer: Jeff McElroy
Digital / Web Design: Mia Fabbri
Animation System: DIA
Film Editor: Ben Knight
Producer: Emily Perry
Ops: Bob Guerrero