The starting line
Around marathon time in Boston, it feels like every brand does a variation on "Let's go runnahs!" and calls it a day. At best it’s lazy, at worst it signals the kind of inauthentic approach that actual locals spot from a mile (or 26.2) away.
That isn’t Marathon Sports. With over 50 years serving the Greater Boston running community, Marathon Sports has been there every step of the way as running has evolved from something that only crazy people did to a core piece of Boston’s cultural fabric. This is an institution with nearly 30 locations across New England, a deeply loyal customer base, and a signature service philosophy, The Right Fit™, that’s guided runners to the right gear for decades.
But over the years, the brand's visual identity hadn't kept pace with its ambitions, and the running world changed. The new generation of runners are more brand-savvy and culturally engaged, and they’re more connected to the community around running than to any single retailer. That mindset is shaping what it means to be a run brand today, and Marathon Sports started thinking bigger, hoping to be not just a specialty retailer, but to own their roots and blossom into a curator of run culture across road, trail, track, and cross country.
Our collaboration tackled the gap between where the brand was going and how it showed up.
Shining a light on showing up
Marathon Sports has earned a rare level of credibility across every corner of the running world, but it wasn’t fully capitalizing on that reputation. The Right Fit™ remains a meaningful differentiator, but it’s no longer sufficient on its own in an era of hyper-competitive experiential retail. The deeper opportunity we found was to express the full scope of what Marathon Sports actually does on behalf of its community. The brand's two core values, community and discovery, aren’t just marketing language. They describe how Marathon Sports actually operates and how runners experience them. The work was to make those values visible.
Marathon Sports shows up for its runners, sponsoring high school track meets, hosting run clubs, supporting local races, and turning out at events across New England. They champion emerging brands and connect runners of every pace and discipline. These moments build the loyalty that keeps people coming back, even though they could certainly buy shoes and gear elsewhere.
The new brand identity needed to make these community investments count and look great in the spaces where Marathon Sports was present. We imagined a world where performance, style, and community could come together: sponsorship materials that give their partners something worth displaying, event swag that runners want to keep, and race bibs and finish line banners that show up strikingly in photos and social posts.
Making a brand that spans microcultures
Whether someone is lacing up their trainers to get some easy miles in or putting on their race kit to chase a BQ, the reasons people run are as varied as the runners themselves. Marathon Sports serves this breadth enthusiastically. From high school track athletes to beer racers to Olympians, everyone who walks into their stores gets access to the staff’s ego-free expertise. We built the visual system to reflect this same ethos and be modular enough to flex across micro-cultures and applications while maintaining a consistent spirit.
The logo
While the previous logo had charm, we wanted to develop the kind of iconography that runners might spot along the Charles River or further afield and immediately recognize as being from the stewards of local run culture. They should feel they’ve received an insider handshake for anyone who’s ever trained through a New England winter or cheered along the marathon route.
The new mark is built from the most elemental object in running: the digital race clock. It’s an icon that’s burned into every runner’s brain regardless of their individual practice or pace. The M is formed by the hour and minute dots. Embedded within that is a gestural mark evoking a runner breaking the finish line tape, a reference to Marathon Sports' original 1975 logo. It's a mark that carries history without being nostalgic, and it shows up well on anything from a shirt to an avatar to a storefront: as iconic as it functional.
The visual system
The broader identity is grounded in the culture of running rather than the aesthetic conventions of athletic retail. The art direction draws from the creativity and resourcefulness of DIY and grassroots pop culture movements. We were inspired by the attitude of handmade flyers, local race graphics, and community-made energy that characterizes the sport at its most human.
We also spotlighted safety pins for their layers of cultural meaning. In running, they’ve held bibs in place for decades. But they’ve also been a symbol of punk, protest, and DIY fixes, signaling resourcefulness and commitment. Simple, universal, and earned when you show up to a race. The gritty pin renderings can be used as a signature graphic element.
We shifted the photography direction from performance-first imagery toward the broader mosaic of running that Marathon Sports actually serves, capturing the early morning road miles, the trail runners, the high school cross country athletes, and the group runs that turn into friendships. This visual direction reflects the brand's own definition of run culture: not one story, but many.
The system is designed to speak to all types of runners and hold together across all types of use cases: e-commerce, social, in-store signage, apparel, and events.
Typography & color
The wordmark and typography system extend the race clock logic: functional, precise, built for speed. The color palette retains Marathon Sports' signature yellow, anchoring continuity with the existing brand while the new system gives it more room to breathe and more context to mean something.
They were fantastic…their editorial story telling approach pushed us…Honestly it felt like they fell in love with the project somewhere along the way. They kept building and giving us more.
Ben Cooke President, Marathon Sports
A brand built for endurance and inspiration
The rebrand arrived at a moment when new waves of runners were looking for a home in the running world. Running Supply's Cole Townsend, one of the most closely followed voices in run culture, observed what made the work land: "Instead of trying to define some new identity that they aren't, [Marathon Sports is] repackaging what they do well." The new system doesn't ask Marathon Sports to be something else. It gives them the tools to show up as themselves, for their community.
