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

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.