NEVER

2025
Creative Direction & Brand Design

NEVER, launched in A/W 2025, is a Melbourne-based clothing brand offering both performance and lifestyle running apparel. Conceived as more than a fashion label, it needed to act as a lifestyle platform that resonated deeply with a rapidly emerging local audience embracing movement, energy, and identity. Think youthful exuberance, cultural and athletic diversity, creativity and expression at its core – imagine a running community akin to the crowd at a warehouse rave.

The creative vision was to build a visual and strategic system that felt both minimal yet maximal, emotionally charged, culturally relevant yet not trend-bound, and versatile enough to scale across product, campaign and digital touchpoints, all while being proudly Melbournian.

The brand identity system begins with an experimentally brutalist logomark that reflects the urban backdrop of NEVER’s home and evokes running shoe tread. The expression of forward movement interacts with bulky letterforms, and a system of submarks creates the foundations of a flexible identity system.

NEVER is about the energy of running, a beating pulse, continuity, and transformation. The accompanying visual language is inspired by physiology and energy – movement, heat maps, and signals.

The colour palette leans into NEVER’s digital-first presence with a futuristic interpretation of classic junior athletics ribbon colours. A more expansive secondary palette creates continued flexibility as the brand grows. Typographic selection is simple and pared back, allowing the brand voice to stand on its own amongst a multi-layered approach to creating branded visuals. Compositionally, it asks you to check your breathing.

The logomarks transform into shape and pattern, expressing motion even when static. Image treatment is guided by thermal imaging and warehouse acid rave graphics.

A structured approach to composition across print and digital rests on the foundations of the logotypes. Business cards contain the standard 8 lanes of an Olympic running track, and branded cards are intentionally blank, allowing NEVER’s first customers to receive a hand-written note with their order.

Gradient-mapped imagery led the way across social concepts. The colour palette is dialled up, and the brand’s energetic and creative personality is expressed through multilayered visuals.

The brand identity and visual language were translated across NEVER’s debut cut-and-sew collection, with technical development led by Fergus Brown. The logo mark sits as the centrepiece and is transformed into an NVR.CAMO pattern for the lightweight performance singlet. The image-making approach on printed garments is enhanced by the addition of small geometric embellishments, and brand personality is expressed through the spark plug tee as a visual, wearable metaphor.

The sold-out debut collection launched as a single run in A/W 2025, alongside the publication of NOTES 001 – a publication that shares the story behind the brand, designed by Saskia Lloyd. The flexibility of the identity system gives NEVER creative freedom to maintain a distinctive voice, release seasonal drops, and draw a strong community around the brand amongst an ever-growing running apparel market.