Old symbols don't have to die to become new.
We were tapped by newly appointed L'eggs Executive Creative Director, Cami Téllez, to reimagine what the world of L'eggs could look like. It's a brand that's now 55 years old, with a rich history that we recognized immediately — not only for its presence on tens of thousands of shelves nationwide, but for its history as a piece of design.
In 1969, Roger Ferriter scrunched up a pair of tights and came up with the concept for the brand: package the tights in small eggs, and use the convenient rhyme as the brand name. The logo he created is now a part of design canon: the big, bold type and a clever illustration of two chicklets in the lowercase Gs has been referenced and studied by designers, including us, for decades.
And over the next three decades, L'eggs became an American mainstay. The company innovated in product — graduated compression, new yarns, shaping technology — and courted the customer with consistently clever advertising with women from Joyce DeWitt (1980) to Jamie Lee Curtis (1996).
The trouble, of course, is that no matter your age, the story of L'eggs reads like a history. Customer research conducted as part of the brand transformation demonstrated a massive generational gap in brand recognition.
As we've said many times before in speaking about the project, “If you don't know about L'eggs, ask your mom.”
Luckily, if you ask her, you'll likely hear the brand spoken about with fondness. Our rebrand sets out to amplify the original DNA that made the brand great, and set in stone L'eggs' status as an iconic American brand of more than half a century.
The transformation of L'eggs was spearheaded by their newly appointed Executive Creative Director, Cami Téllez. This work would not have been possible without her and other client-side allies Charlie Nichols, Jill King, Kevin LeCompte, Cathleen Moxham, and Maria Parra.
The brand identity was developed by our firm, Family Office, led by Diego Segura and Eliz Akgün. Our summer intern during a large portion of this project, Liv Beruti, is owed many thanks for tackling so many herculean tasks on the project, as well as Laia Torrent Frugis, who assisted on the case study.
The original L'eggs wordmark was designed by Roger Ferriter at Lubalin, Smith, Carnase. In attempting to update a mark of such historical significance — it's been featured in countless design and typography books, exhibitions, classrooms, and reference boards — the immense work of Britt Cobb, Jonny Sikov, and Commercial Type founder, Christian Schwartz was enlisted. Many variations, thoughts, experiments, and anchor points were moved and resulted in the logo that has, as of launch, already been printed on thousands of packages of L'eggs tights.
The art direction was done by Eliz Akgün, Diego Segura, and Cami Téllez. Shay Johnson Studio is responsible for handling the creative production challenge with perfect poise and power. Styling was done by Becky Akinyode with Cyrenae Tademy and Carma Flores, hair by Joey George with Harley Berman and Lucas Wilson with Yeye, makeup by Kuma with Shoko Kodama and Grace Ahn with Miki Ishikura, and manicurist Leanne Woodley. Alice Jacobs and Rochelle Bennett with Erick Benavides designed and assisted on the set.
The brilliant and persistent Cruz Valdez photographed each of two shoots featured above with first assistant Patrick Lyn, second assistants Rahul Rekapalli and Nick Grennon, and digital technician, Zoran Jelenic. DP Timmy Summers along with Maya Bormann produced the beautiful reels highlighted in the case study and for the brand's launch. Videos and content produced for social were done by Isabella Di Stefano and Veronica Zhang. Some of our absolute favorite shots were Devin Bowman's film photographs during those two shoots, which are featured as complements to the studio shots.
And, of course, the talent: between our first shoot with Bridget Als, Noa Samasaa, and Jalaiya Bartley, and our second shoot with Bodhi Rose, Klara Dogan, Nyajouk Kueth, Maxiel Villar, and Nelly Pakh, the models listed were all gracious and patient subjects and joys to work with. In many cases where our art direction did not quite capture what we were going for, their creativity and instinct saved the day.