Mac Moss Studio designs the identity for KEEN’s move into trail running — The Brand Identity – Home of the Greatest in Graphic & Brand Design

KEEN was founded in 2003 and is known as ‘the original hybrid shoe’ across sandals, hiking and utility. In 2026, it moved into the trail running category for the first time – launching the Seek, Roam and Wander. “Running is a natural extension of our existing product range,” KEEN’s Associate Creative Director Sean Coggins explains. “As categories like fast-and-light hiking and thru-hiking have evolved, the natural progression is towards moving faster. Running was the next logical step. What connects the range is less a specific activity and more a shared design philosophy,” he adds. “The intended use changes, but the underlying approach remains: understand how people actually move, listen to their needs and design accordingly.”

To mark this move, Coggins brought in Mac Moss Studio to create the identity for KEEN Running. The Idaho-based animation and design studio was briefed to make a graphic system for global application across all channels, one that would give the brand’s running department a distinct look of its own.

“The design language draws inspiration from the earliest runners who traversed landscapes for survival and connection – mirroring topographic lines, ancient pathways and the literal footprint of running,” Coggins details. “The goal was to create something ‘imperfectly human’: organic/neo-organic, gritty, with evidence of the human hand. It draws from nature and old-school design rigour, but balances that discipline with a sense of whimsy.”

Working from the foundational elements of KEEN’s existing identity and the quirky, DIY spirit already in it, the design team redrew the KEEN logo to look like lichen. “That initial manipulation became a kind of domino effect, pushing us to approach the rest of the system with a similarly DIY sensibility,” Moss tells us. The studio also introduced a colour palette for KEEN Running, in which a light pastel green highlights the organic character of the identity. Calvin Keller, Moss’s brother, played a major role in developing the organic illustration style, inspired by lichen, that the studio calls the ‘brand artwork.’ Maps, feet, roots and other objects are drawn in the same style, all referring back to the lichen logo. APR MAG, a Berlin-based publication, put those illustrations onto a series of custom take-home objects it made for KEEN’s European launch event.

The typefaces are Melun and Space Mono, which deliberately contrast in both boldness and scale. The custom headlines are built on letterforms inspired by Melun, reworked in the same organic style as the illustration. “Many brand systems establish strict guidelines around stroke width, scale, spacing and proportion,” Moss notes of the icons. “We intentionally eschewed some of those limitations and approached each icon more like a small illustration. The goal was for each icon to have its own character while still working naturally as part of the larger group.” Four of the icons appear on the ‘Run for the Trails’ key art, set against landscape photography.

The studio partnered with James Kittel on the 3D elements. “For the first seasonal campaign,” Moss explains, “we developed realistic shoe animations that focused on presenting the product in natural environments. For the second season, we wanted to try something different. We started getting grittier and more experimental, using 3D to match our handmade visual language rather than simply showcasing the shoe realistically.”