Allbirds is a footwear and apparel company of New Zealand origin. For its products, the brand uses natural materials including high-quality Merinos wool. The business strategy of Allbirds is based on a retailing and online selling model.
Meaning and history
Allbirds was founded in 2016 by the former vice-captain of the New Zealand football national team Tim Brown and American biotech engineer and renewable materials expert Joey Zwillinger. They managed to create an innovative wool fabric that would perfectly be suited for the brand’s footwear. From the beginning, the brand proceeded from the principles of simplicity and sustainability, launching its Wool Runner sneakers. As of today, the Allbirds products include a number of models of shoes, apparel, and accessories. The retail stores of the company are open in New Zealand, the United States, Canada, China, Japan, and South Korea.
Brown and Zwillinger named their company Allbirds, playing up the fact that New Zealand has almost no native mammals, hence, this is a country of all birds. In a way, the bird theme is partly supported by the brand’s visual identity which was created by the New York-based design agency Red Antler.
What is Allbirds?
Allbirds is a New Zealand-American company that sells footwear and apparel. Allbirds’ first shoe was the Wool Runner, which is made from New Zealand superfine Merino wool. The company claims to keep its products as eco-friendly as possible and is a certified B Corporation.
Apart from the logo, the branding is made up of cartoon images of arms, hands, legs, and feet as well as the “smallbirds”, inventive characters that help express the values of Allbirds, and make the brand’s packaging attractive and playful.
Interestingly, the Allbirds products themselves don’t have any emblem or label on. This rule is a part of the credo of the company.
2016 – now
The Allbirds logo represents lettering in black. The black wordmark design is common for many fashion brands, however, the special thing about the emblem is a handwritten style distinguished by letterforms. This includes “l”’s of different height, a stylized “r” as well as an “s” with an elongated lower curve. The final “s”, which reminds a side view of a bird, is sometimes used as a single symbol of the brand.
Fonts and colors
In promotional materials, Allbirds uses the Hurme Geometric Sans font. Black Gray (#212A2F) is the primary color of the brand.
