PRANA — BRAND STRATEGY, IDENTITY + CAMPAIGN, AUTHORED END TO END. 

(Strategy+Creative)

CONTEXT/ PROBLEM

Prana was still making credible clothes. But the brand born from yoga, climbing and surf had become predictable, imitative and finally invisible. Before proposing a new identity, I made that condition impossible to ignore.

THE WAKE-UP CALL

The diagnosis was brutal because the problem is existential: Prana had lost meaning.

THE MOVE

I rebuilt Prana from its name outward.

Prana means breath, life force, transformation. That moved the brand from the category-default Explorer archetype to the Alchemist: a position recovered from its own history rather than randomly spun from an archetype wheel.

The system began with one discipline: you can only be plain in one place. The product could remain honest, functional and unforced. Position, casting, photography, layout and language had to create the lift around it.

Transformation became two enduring brand signatures:

THE LIGHT in photography.
THE PEAK in layout.

BECOME was the first campaign built inside that identity. It used both signatures, then added a verbal platform for its own moment.

The elevated A remained as a peak — a reference to climbing, aspiration and upward movement. A clockwise Samana Vayu spiral, derived from the balancing breath, became the icon.

One supplied structure, while the other supplied motion.

Together they moved the Alchemist position from strategic undercurrent into visual expression.

SIMPLIFY. ADAPT. THRIVE.

A tagline that completed the identity in language: restraint, transformation and vitality expressed as a three-part progression. The line belongs to Prana itself — not to BECOME or any future campaign — so it can remain as campaign platforms change.

PRANA CAN OWN THE LIGHT

A photographic signature must survive changes in subject, season, format and photographer.

Every Prana image contains a source of energy — natural, artificial or impossible. Sun, flare, reflection, beam, fire or neon: light becomes another character in the composition.

It is not a filter laid over the finished image. It is a working rule for making the image.

Casting moved with it: from the category’s approachable neutrality toward greater sophistication, sensuality and edge. The product remained credible, but the world around it became desirable.

The ambition was simple: encounter the light before the logo and still recognize Prana.

THE PEAK LEAVES THE LOGO

The elevated A escapes the wordmark.

Its geometry becomes crop, aperture, alignment and direction — a repeatable layout language capable of organizing photography, editorial pages, digital formats and campaign work.

The logo does not need to occupy every surface. The identity teaches the surface how to behave.

LIGHT and PEAK belong to Prana. They persist when the campaign changes.

BECOME

The first campaign built inside the new identity was BECOME.

It carried LIGHT and PEAK into market-facing work, then added a verbal structure of its own: one fixed imperative, completed by an activity, aspiration or state.

BECOME THE WALL.
BECOME THE ASANA.
BECOME THE CHARGE.
BECOME FOCUS.
BECOME WILL.
BECOME HOPE.

The construct could move across Prana’s core pursuits while remaining immediately legible. It could also expand from performance into lifestyle and from outdoor media into digital without requiring a new idea for every channel.

BECOME could eventually give way to another campaign.
LIGHT and PEAK would continue to make the brand recognizable.

THE RECORD

The work established a complete brand architecture: diagnosis, archetype repositioning, identity, casting, photographic direction, layout system and its first campaign expression.

It separated enduring brand infrastructure from replaceable campaign creative — allowing Prana to change what it says without losing how it is recognized.

Campaign imagery was produced hands-on through Stability AI and Midjourney, with Claude used in development. Generative AI operating inside live brand work in summer of 2024.