NORTHSOUTH
BUILT FOR THE WATER AND THE MAT
PROJECT
NORTHSOUTH
ROLE
FOUNDER
YEAR
2014
ABOUT
Founded northsouth , a performance apparel company inspired by surfing and martial arts with my business partner who was a 4th degree blackbelt in jiujitsu and former UFC fighter. I developed the brand & style of all the creative and formed a team of creative and marketing people. We reached out to our community of like minded individuals from California to Rio de Janeiro through and promoted the company through social media and word of mouth. The idea came to me through years of development and sketching ideas, until finally I decided on a name, finalized the logo and started to grow the company...
STEP 1
IDEATION
THE BRAND
Coming up with a name was no easy task. I played with dozens of different ideas, dug deep into a thesaurus, researched best practices in choosing a name, and tried hundreds of different combinations of plays on words. For everything to move forward I had to settle with a name I was happy with. One day it just hit me, ‘NorthSouth’, which is a position in jiu jitsu but also fit the philosophy of company. Made sure the domain name was available which of course it wasn’t, so I added the lifestyle aspect to the domain settling with livenorthsouth.com.
LOGO
The idea I had for the logo was to incorporate the triangle shape often seen in jiu jitsu, with a wave. I sketched out a bunch of ideas, finally settling on one design I liked and brought that into final production. It had to be perfect of course so I started the design on a grid and created all the shapes based on the golden ratio since I wanted the design to be natural. The final logo is asymetrical but has the same shape flipped and rotated on the top and bottom. It was meant to be the yin and yang which is how surfing is perceived and is also common amonst competitors such as RVCA, whose tagline is “The balance of Opposites.”
THE MARKET
Any type of fashion, sports or clothing company is extremely competitive. Our niche was to appeal to surfers and jiu jitsu practitioners. Of course we wanted to make apparel that was for everyone in the fitness world, but this small section was my main focus.
STEP 1
CREATING THE BRAND
WEBSITE
The website had to be evoke the style of the brand through textures and compelling imagery. It functioned as a retail outlet selling shirts online, as well as a blog and our main source of marketing as we did most of it through social media.
TAGLINE
“BUILT FOR THE
WATER AND THE MAT”
This became our company slogan and also inspired the designs of the apparel. Everything was designed to function and perform in all conditions. Versatile clothing that you would wear at the beach to surf and durable enough to hold up at the gym.
INNOVATION
To stand out we had to be different in a way not only how the clothing was designed and functioned, but also keeping the look fresh and the taglines timeless and able to make an impact on social media. Hashtags are a major part of spreading ideas and building communitys and we had to follow along.
STEP 3
RESULTS
TOTAL GRAPHICS & DESIGNS
300+
SOCIAL MEDIA FOLLOWING
20K
LETS WORK TOGETHER