New Logo and Identity for Marathon Sports by Upstatement

Marathon Sports is a New England-based sports retailer founded in 1975. What started as a single store has grown into a regional chain serving customers across New England, with a focus on running and walking footwear, apparel, accessories, nutrition, and in-store shoe fitting. Many stores are involved with their local running communities and offer training groups for races, from 5Ks to half marathons. As the company marked its 50th anniversary, it felt like it had outgrown its visual identity and wanted a rebrand that respected their history, but also looked and felt ready for contemporary run culture. They worked with Boston, MA-based Upstatement on a new logo and identity. Over the years, the brand’s visual identity hadn’t kept pace with its ambitions, and the running world changed. The new generation of runners are more brand-savvy and culturally engaged, and they’re more connected to the community around running than to any single retailer. That mindset is shaping what it means to be a run brand today, and Marathon Sports started thinking bigger, hoping to be not just a specialty retailer, but to own their roots and blossom into a curator of run culture across road, trail, track, and cross country. Our collaboration tackled the gap between where the brand was going and how it showed up. Upstatement Project Page Examples of OLD identity. The new mark is built from the most elemental object in running: the digital race clock. It’s an icon that’s burned into every runner’s brain regardless of their individual practice or pace. The M is formed by the hour and minute dots. Embedded within that is a gestural mark evoking a runner breaking the finish line tape, a reference to Marathon Sports’ original 1975 logo. It’s a mark that carries history without being nostalgic, and it shows up well on anything from a shirt to an avatar to a storefront: as iconic as it functional. Upstatement Project Page Icon explanation. Logo. A