The Fédération Équestre Internationale (FEI) consists of 133 national federations and is responsible for promoting equestrianism, developing its seven disciplines, establishing regulations and approving competitions and events.
The FEI wanted its brand to engage with a wider community and more clearly express the characteristics of the different disciplines. TwelfthMan were appointed to help the FEI reframe equestrian sport through a complete overhaul of its core brand strategy, architecture and visual language.
Brand strategy
To properly understand the FEI and its seven disciplines, we ran workshops and conducted interviews across Europe involving the people most connected with equestrian sport. Strategic positionings were created for all seven sports to define their characteristics as well as enhancing the core values to better reflect the FEI’s core vision and mission.
Typography
The FEI font family uses shapes and fast curves to communicate the graceful movement which defines much of equestrian sport. These forms also create a strong relationship with the new FEI logo, and the overall distinctive look of the font family became one of the most important assets within our new brand world.
Art direction & photography
We carried out a series of photoshoots at events across Europe to capture the personality of each discipline and their audiences. Intriguing angles, unusual compositions and a focus on human connections with the animals all elevate our brand photography above the expected.
Discipline approach
Our design approach expressed the FEI’s culture, behaviour andambition by focusing on the uniqueness of each discipline complemented by ashared passion for horses.
A comprehensive brand architecture exercise involved creating new positioning and brand values for each of the seven equestrian disciplines. From here we created new identities for each all associated events and competitions.
Each identity included distinct attributes and personalities, graphic identities, colour coding and tone of voice principles for application across event branding, digital design, print, merchandising and sponsor activation.
