Shanghai, China
North Face opening night event in Shanghai. Video by The North Face.
Client: The North Face
Studio: Alter Ego Creates
North Face’s mantra of “Never Stop Exploring” was a fitting slogan for their new expansion into the Asia-Pacific retail marketspace. North Face wanted to not just open a new store but create a burgeoning event space that would raise brand awareness in Shanghai. Alter Ego partnered with the experiential teams at Escent Labs and local team at Red Gate International to tackle 2 floors for North Face’s newly leased space together. This project was challenging in a multitude of ways. Not only were we working in a time zone difference of 12 hours, converting empirical measurements to the metric system, but also attempting to hurtle the language barrier between Mandarin and English.
The central concept of this space was centered around the 5 phases of life, creation, innovation, exploration, and transformation. Each exhibit tied into these phases in different ways to feature the evolution of North Face’s brand over their storied history. Throughout the space we also sought to feature the incredible APAC athletes of The North Face and their achievements.
I was brought on as a designer for this project to help build several pieces of environmental branding, layout exhibit displays, and also to help coordinate the procurement of assets used in the displays. It’s always a challenge designing in other languages, and I learned quite a bit in this process. Although this was my first time creating environmental branding, I really enjoyed creating concepts for North Face’s products and immersing myself in the mountain climbing world.
Elevation of an apparel display wall for North Face’s Nuptse jacket.
This was an early iteration concept of the apparel display wall that had climbing rope carried through the space and draped here in celebratory fashion across the ceiling.
Elevation of product display space featuring the Base Camp Duffel.
Elevation of environmental branding for the stairwell space.
Athlete window divider displays created for various placement throughout the space. This was a very challenging exercise in typesetting Mandarin as I am not a native speaker. I worked with a translator in creating these.
