Tracksmith

Tracksmith is an independent running brand founded in 2013 and based in Massachusetts, United States. The brand provides quality clothing for amateurs and positions itself as driven by a specific running culture, comprising dedication, performance, and the pursuit of personal excellence.

For their latest collection, Tracksmith hit hard and designed a multi-format campaign that plays with the running philosophy and the idea of getting off tracks, at fall, when the return to work and workaday life makes new challenges necessary. With a rarely seen extensive insert in the New York Times, Tracksmith had a whole broadsheet to present its concept of running and to praise the amateurs it wants to reach. The advertising comes here in the shape of original content titled “Where will Running take you?”, accompanied by photographs we find in the brands’ online lookbooks and an identity based on Production Type’s Sainte Colombe, designed by Yoann Minet. With the use of this typeface, the brand’s discourse goes beyond the technological aspect of sports clothing: it suits Tracksmith’s idea of offering not only accessories for one’s own sports practice, but a whole lifestyle, with all that running can be relied to as experience: the relationship to nature, to the weather, and to adventure.

The lookbooks we find online are also a development of this position, as the photo series are punctuated by a narrative that addresses the consumer directly. The texts and images, in warm autumn shades, are sometimes poetic, sometimes more oriented as experience reports. In all cases, the reader identifies with the proposition of the brand and can make a step towards the idea they sell. Throughout the campaign, Sainte Colombe is used in roman and italic styles, supported by Akzidenz-Grotesk Extended.