July 26, 2024 Senior Revives Type in Winning Design for The North Face

After the semester ended, Brian Fuson was driving around his hometown of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, when he noticed the typeface of certain street signs appeared different than others.

“They are not in a typical sans serif street sign font. They’re very narrow and rounded. They almost look like Cooper Black, and I’m like this is crazy,” said Fuson, a senior in the University of Tennessee, Knoxville’s School of Design.

With a camera always at the ready, Fuson often captures typography that interests him or may be subject to disappearing. As a self-proclaimed perfectionist, he has found comfort in the systematic process of typeface revival, finding abandoned designs and reworking them to an updated medium—such as digital —so they can be utilized furthermore and live on, while showcasing his creativity.

After seeing the street signs, Fuson began to drive around the city capturing as many characters as possible.

“There’s a rigid process to reviving a typeface, but it’s also not about sticking to what’s already there. I made the typeface a little bit less narrow and more tracked out, which modernized it in a way.”

That font, which Fuson called Oaky, can be seen in his winning design for The North Face’s social media design competition.

“I was scrolling TikTok one night and received an ad for the contest. I began by looking at the brand for visual motifs, their tone of voice, like what line texture they look for,” he said. “My first design was focused on travel because their mantra of ‘never stop exploring,’ but I decided it didn’t work best as a T-shirt design.”

For his second entry, Fuson continued the idea of travel and settled on a badge design which featured the brand’s logo inspiration, Half Dome, a well-known rock formation in Yosemite National Park. Fuson illustrated an illusion of a hiker’s perspective camping in front of the site.

“This design is very outdoorsy, and Oaky felt like the perfect ‘granola’ font to match the scene,” he said. “It’s an amazing feeling to know my typeface is out there.”

In addition to receiving $1,500 in products from The North Face for his winning design, Fuson’s artwork will be available on select The North Face apparel next year.