How did This® redesign a brand athletes own but had stopped noticing?

The Brand Identity: Every athlete This® interviewed during the research phase of the Giro rebrand already owned something from the brand. The problem was that nobody thought about it. The products were trusted and ubiquitous, which is a strong position, but it had allowed Giro to fade into the background. During early research sessions, the word ‘dusty’ surfaced more than once. Not in relation to engineering or performance, but in how the brand expressed itself visually and culturally. It had become comfortable – perhaps too comfortable.

That insight reframed the entire creative challenge for This®: not to replace Giro’s credibility, but to reignite it. The rebrand began with something counterintuitive. Where most identity projects simplify, This® expanded – returning to the full name Giro Sport Design and cementing the line ‘We Design for Sport.’ “That introduction was as much a reflection as it was a declaration,” explains Toby Grubb, Co-founder of This®. “The brand had long been defined by its restless, innovative mindset – constantly rethinking how equipment could perform, fit and feel.

The name simply brought that truth to the surface.” The concept moved forward with little internal friction; Chief Creative Officer Chad Hilton and Creative Director Dustin Ortiz recognised the clarity almost immediately. The wordmark, which This® calls the ‘Excelleration logo,’ evolved from typographic studies aimed at creating something distinctly engineered for the space – innovative and technical without feeling expected. The letterforms begin more structural and deliberate around the ‘G,’ then gradually shed visual weight and complexity as they move toward the ‘O,’ becoming more streamlined and aerodynamic.

“Technically, the challenge was balancing that sense of momentum with clarity,” Grubb notes. "The result is a wordmark that suggests motion and performance, while still reading cleanly in the environments where it needs to live – from helmets and equipment to digital applications.” Starting with highly engineered forms and unpacking into something that gains momentum, the mark embodies Giro’s collective innovation process in developing proprietary technologies designed for speed. The visual system needed to work across wildly different contexts like road cycling at the Tour de France, snowboarding at the Natural Selection Tour and action spor

ts at the X Games. That breadth became one of the central challenges. To make it possible, This® designed a flexible typographic structure: alongside the primary wordmark, a series of lockups using the words GIRO, SPORT and DESIGN allow the brand to scale its formality depending on the environment. More restrained and technical in performance cycling contexts, more expressive and cultural in snow and action sports. The system holds together because the core typography and philosophy remain consistent. Photography operates on two distinct registers. Athlete imagery feels dynamic and alive, capturing the energy and immediacy of sport.

Product imagery takes a more restrained tone – helmets and equipment are presented with quiet confidence, almost like gallery objects, allowing the engineering and craft to speak for themselves. The approach emerged from three guiding principles developed through exploratory keyword exercises: Radical Transparency, Vivid Clarity and Pragmatic Design. Those pillars informed how every photograph was captured and treated, replacing any traditional content brief. The colour and material palette draws directly from the environments where Giro products perform.

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The article discusses a significant rebranding effort for Giro, which is relevant to brand strategy professionals, though the concepts of revitalizing brand identity and visual systems are common in the industry.