100 Years of Excellence

Challenge

Meaningfully commemorating Easton's 100-year landmark

In December 2019, we teamed up with Salt Lake City’s Easton to help the world’s leading innovator in sport- and hunting-archery celebrate its 100-year anniversary. To commemorate this milestone, our task was to dig deep, write, design, and coordinate the printing of a unique magazine-style book that chronicled the legacy of this family business turned sporting giant.

The good news? We had a mountain of incredible assets and execution was in the bag. The flipside? As the COVID-19 pandemic picked up speed in early 2020, gathering the assets proved to be a challenge for both our design team and the client, especially with a locked international border between us. Easton’s centenary wasn’t going anywhere, though. We had to have a finished book by September 2022 no matter what.

So we persevered.

Easton required its book to accomplish a number of things. First, it needed to be a visual feast, celebrating and contextualizing a hundred years of innovation and accomplishment in engineering across diverse sporting endeavours — including a contribution to the Apollo moon landing program! Second, it had to ring true to the countless Easton employees, archers, and superfans who know the company history by heart. And third, the book was expected to enshrine a strong road map of the Easton values to educate new employees about the company’s beginnings, wins, and trials as well as to remind stakeholders — including family members, suppliers, and distributors — of the stories that built the brand and continue to protect its still vibrant culture.

Long story short, we took on a complex project with many moving parts — just as Easton tackles every day. So how could we create a book that would preserve Easton’s 100-year history of events clearly and completely while looking its absolute sharpest?

Solution

Designing a cutting-edge road map of brand values

Let’s face it, archery — whether for sport or hunting — is dynamic, skills-based, and downright cool. To match this Easton ethos, we landed on a design that was functional, modern, and visually rich, featuring a wealth of not only current and archival images but documents and stories drawn from various points of view and across the full century of the company’s history. That last part was critical because one of the biggest takeaways we wanted to generate for readers was a visually compelling road map of brand values that seamlessly emerged from a faithful chronicle. One of our favourite features of this book is its enticing headers, eye-catching sidebars and pull quotes. Open the book to any page and be drawn in immediately by the story and the layout. And, we want you to keep reading. The timeline of events 1922 to present is one of our favourite spreads.

Result

A well-rounded, accurate account of events

We did extensive archival research at the university, state, and industry levels to fill the gaps in knowledge and content in order to build a well-rounded account of events. This process was sped up with the help of two fantastic point people on the Easton team who were willing to dig deep to get us what we needed and equip us with a bounty of visual assets. In our book, that’s a surefire strategy for a successful project.

One more cool thing...

Utah is full of great stories

Despite taking flight during the pandemic, which delayed the collection of photos, this project benefited from several early success factors: We had a strong working relationship between the writer and designers as well as resourceful clients and great assets. The flippable coffee-table style book — organized decade by decade across a century of accomplishment — was a fitting format, and one that we’ve really taken to. What’s more, following our project kickoff in 2019, the Easton Salt Lake Archery Center hosted us for a target practice session!

This is the second project we’ve worked on for clients based in Salt Lake City. And if there’s one pattern we’re picking up on, it’s that Utah is a source for some very fun books and collaborations.

To get a snapshot of Easton’s 100-year journey, check out its 100 Years of Excellence page, where the company shares videos, podcasts, and other content in celebration of its history.

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