A piece of good advice: Always invest in what comes between you and the ground. Helmets and shoes are on the short list.
If you’ve browsed our portfolio you know we’ve helped brand helmets, but did you know we’ve also branded shoes?
Here’s The Story
A few years ago a little shoe company from El Segundo, California was just getting started. Matisse had shoes that were comfortable, looked good and were reasonably priced. Three of the top must-haves for any footwear zealot.
The only thing Matisse needed was a brand revamp. Their branding had some loose ends, small inconsistencies, and like many start-ups, they needed a tiny bit of outside perspective.
The Background
We were glad to help. We wanted to make sure that as the company grew they could build on our work with ease. We knew that when a company begins, it’s got to have a strong foundation.
We also knew that branding fashion was tricky; the brand has to be strong enough to mean something, but moldable enough to keep up with ever-evolving trends without losing recognizability.
With that in mind, we began to strategize. The company needed product photography, a tight logo, a tagline, a new website and some other odds and ends. Matisse had tried to embody Henri Matisse’s visual style in their product, but it was simply too narrow of a scope for a product with such huge potential.
The Concepting
For weeks, long after the Echo-Factory team had closed down their computers, shoes stayed on our brains. One late night, as Dea stayed awake with adorable sandals marching through her brain, she got an idea.
Shoes, a French Fauve artist, color, paintings, sculpture, sandals, boots… There was so much to work with, but it needed to stay simple, inspire and create a type of branding that would be timeless.
She thought about Henri Matisse, and how his artwork still amazed people with its bright colors and dynamic lines of movement. That’s exactly what Matisse shoes did, they were little pieces of art that moved and lived with the wearer. Finally, she landed on the tagline “Bringing Art to Life.”
The Photography
We were pretty pleased with the concept, and so was Matisse. Dea began to design the logo. We kept the thread going and began to incorporate it into their look book, line cards, product photography and website.
Our photo shoots kept the theme going. We made the shoes central pieces of art by shooting shoes in masterpiece frames, sandals became works of art on blank canvases, and artist tools brought the shoes to life.
As the company grew, we realized it would b
e beneficial for Matisse to set up their own product photography situation. So, Mike put together a system that made it easy for Matisse to incorporate new product photos as they came out. This helped things move forward easily, and it gave us a chance to help a client develop an important skill.
The photography was done, we had a great aesthetic, and the tagline fit like a glass slipper, all we needed was to put all the elements together online.
The Website
At the time, Matisse didn’t sell their shoes online, but only offered an online look book for merchandisers to view their products, or for customers to find sellers. For us, that meant the branding had to be as visual as possible.
It also meant that our approach to their website had to be simple, we wanted it to be easily updated as shoes changed with seasonality, user-friendly so that customers could look with ease, and like all fashion, it needed to look great.
After months of brainstorming, designing, writing, photographing and programing Matisse had a new look, a new approach and they were ready to move forward.
