The Reebok font I created for the #BeMoreHuman campaign was never meant to sit quietly in a brand-guideline PDF. It was designed to be used, changed and pushed around by other designers. A hand-drawn typeface with enough alternative letters to create individual pieces of lettering without losing the campaign’s recognisable voice.
A brand font usually brings consistency.
This one also needed to misbehave.
The campaign
Reebok’s #BeMoreHuman campaign celebrated women creating positive change in their lives and the world around them.
Created with Venables Bell + Partners, the campaign featured artists, athletes and activists including Ariana Grande, Gal Gadot, Gigi Hadid, Danai Gurira, Nathalie Emmanuel and Katrín Davíðsdóttir.
Each woman brought a different story, personality and point of view.
The typography needed to do the same.
Not another corporate font
The brief was to create a hand-drawn typeface that other designers could adapt into distinctive campaign lettering.
It needed personality without becoming chaotic. Consistency without looking mechanically repeated. Something flexible enough to sit across photography, layouts and individual messages while still feeling like part of the same campaign.
A perfectly polished corporate sans serif was never going to do it.
There are already enough of those.
One alphabet wasn’t enough
Hand lettering feels natural because people do not draw the same letter in exactly the same way every time.
A conventional font does.
Type the word “human” twice and the letters repeat perfectly. That is useful for a railway timetable. Less useful when the work needs energy and individuality.
To avoid that mechanical repetition, I designed a wide range of alternative letterforms. Designers could swap characters, change the rhythm and build lettering that felt specific to each image or message.
The letters belonged together.
They just weren’t identical twins.
Designed for other designers
A custom typeface is a tool, not a finished piece of artwork.
That distinction matters.
I wasn’t designing every campaign headline myself. I was creating a working system that the team at Venables Bell + Partners could use to produce photography, layouts, lettering and further adaptations.
The font needed enough character to establish the visual language, but enough flexibility to let other designers make it their own.
Too rigid and every execution would look the same.
Too loose and the campaign would lose its identity.
The interesting work usually sits between the two.
Why use a font instead of commissioning separate lettering?
Custom lettering works brilliantly for a single headline, logo or hero image. But a large campaign needs more than one beautiful arrangement of words.
It needs a repeatable system.
Turning the hand-drawn style into a working font meant the campaign team could:
- Create new headlines without redrawing every letter
- Keep the typography recognisable across different layouts
- Choose alternative characters to avoid obvious repetition
- Adapt the lettering for different images and formats
- Work faster without relying on one lettering artist for every execution
The typeface provided the ingredients.
The designers still did the cooking.
A font can be consistent without looking repetitive
Brand consistency is often misunderstood as making everything look exactly the same.
That isn’t consistency. That is photocopying.
A useful brand system establishes recognisable rules while leaving room for variation. Colour, proportion, texture and letterform can all change slightly while the overall voice remains familiar.
The Reebok typeface used alternative characters to create that variation inside the font itself.
It could move without wandering off.
From typeface to campaign lettering
Once completed, the font became the starting point for campaign typography rather than the final result.
Designers could type a message, explore different letter combinations and then adapt the result around the photography.
Some compositions could feel compact and forceful. Others could be more open, personal or spontaneous. The underlying typeface connected them without forcing every execution into the same layout.
That is where a custom font earns its keep.
It doesn’t just decorate one advert. It gives an entire campaign a usable voice.
What makes a good campaign font?
A campaign font has a slightly different job from a permanent corporate typeface.
It may need to be louder, more expressive and closely connected to one creative idea. But it still has to survive real production work.
That means considering:
- How the font behaves across short and long headlines
- Whether important letter combinations work together
- How much variation designers genuinely need
- Whether alternative characters are easy to find and use
- How the lettering sits over photography
- Whether the personality remains recognisable across different executions
A font can look wonderful in a specimen and become completely useless when asked to write an actual sentence.
That is why it needs testing with real words, real layouts and awkward combinations—not just “Hamburgefontsiv” sitting beautifully on a white page.
Custom typeface or modified font?
The Reebok project required an original visual language, so a custom typeface made sense.
Not every project needs to begin with a blank page.
A brand may instead need:
- An existing font modified to feel more distinctive
- A set of custom characters added to a licensed typeface
- A campaign alphabet rather than a complete font family
- Custom lettering for a small number of fixed headlines
The right answer depends on how widely the typography will be used, how many people need access to it and how much flexibility the project requires.
There is no point commissioning an entire orchestra when the job needs a loud guitarist.
What the Reebok project demonstrates
The value of a bespoke typeface is not simply owning unusual letter shapes.
It is giving a creative team a system that can produce new work without losing the original idea.
For #BeMoreHuman, that meant creating a hand-drawn voice with enough variation to feel personal, but enough structure to remain recognisably Reebok.
Human, but useful.
Expressive, but controllable.
A bit like most good designers before the third coffee.
View the original Reebok project
You can see more campaign work and examples of the typeface on my Reebok custom typeface project page.
Need a custom font for your brand?
I design custom fonts and bespoke typefaces for branding, advertising, packaging and entertainment.
That might mean a complete original typeface, a modified version of an existing font or a smaller campaign font designed around one specific idea.
Enough personality to make the brand recognisable.
Enough practicality for other designers to actually use it.
Frequently asked questions
What font does Reebok use?
Reebok has used different typography across its corporate identity, products and advertising. The hand-drawn typeface discussed here was created specifically for the #BeMoreHuman campaign. It is not the standard Reebok logo font.
Who designed the Reebok #BeMoreHuman font?
Simon Stratford designed the hand-drawn campaign typeface while working with Venables Bell + Partners. The agency’s designers then used and adapted the font across campaign photography, layouts and lettering.
Can I download the Reebok font?
No. This was a bespoke campaign typeface rather than a publicly available retail font. Custom fonts are created and licensed for a particular client, brand or campaign.
Why did the font include alternative letters?
Alternative letterforms allowed designers to avoid obvious repetition and create more natural-looking lettering. Different versions of the same character could be selected while retaining a consistent overall style.
What is a campaign font?
A campaign font is a typeface created or adapted for a particular advertising campaign. It gives different headlines and layouts a shared visual voice while allowing a creative team to produce new work efficiently.
Is a custom font the same as custom lettering?
No. Custom lettering is normally created for a fixed word or message. A custom font is a functioning system of characters that can be installed and used to write new text.
Can a custom font be used by an entire design team?
Yes. That is one of its main advantages. Subject to the agreed licence, a custom font gives approved designers a consistent, reusable tool rather than requiring every headline to be drawn separately.