Studio Brief 01, Logotype - Audience

American Apparel's simple, clean and vibrant clothing line is aimed at the very models they use for their ad campaigns and on their website. It is a brand that represents and celebrates youth culture. And more specifically, their clothes are not aimed at the heavy set.

Above is a chart from Fitbay, an app that finds clothes for your body type. It shows the percent of men and women wearing size small who have to buy a size up or down when shopping these selected brands (based on 100,000 data points from the apps' users). 

As you can see, the clothes in American Apparel run smaller than most other clothing companies. This means they are targeting the slimmer, skinnier demographic. Clothing sizes available in store can go as small as XXS for both men and women. This practice of vanity sizing is used to feed the consumers ego. 

The re-branding could represent this demographic within the typeface. I could experiment with the effects of different character weights using a light stroked typeface or to play around with just the outline of a swiss sans serif font. Also, I could re-name "American Apparel" into all lowercase to reflect on their small sizing clothes to "american apparel". 

Another way they target their demographic is through promiscuity. These racy adverts have caused some controversy due to their overt sexualization. To an extent where American Apparel ads are banned in the UK.

However could I take the playfulness of these adverts and incorporate them within the re-brand? The current logo is straightforward and plain with its modernist Helvetica bold black on white setting. American Apparel sell and display outfits that play with vibrant colours on clean, basic silhouettes. Why not add one of their recognizable clothing colours to their logo?

Therefore by identifying American Apparels target audience, I have the means to experiment with light-stroked typefaces, outlines and the addition of colour.


The fitbay chart above was taken from: http://lifehacker.com/this-chart-shows-which-clothing-brands-run-too-big-or-s-1668791215

The American Apparel ads were taken from: http://mashkulture.net/2015/10/06/look-back-american-apparels-50-raciest-ads