Evolving an iconic brand without losing what made it iconic.
CLIF Bar had built something rare: a brand people didn't just recognize—they identified with. Adventure, athletics, organic ingredients, sustainability, and a distinct sense of optimism were embedded in everything the company did.
As the business grew into new products, audiences, and global markets, the creative challenge was bigger than maintaining consistency.
How do you evolve an iconic brand without losing the character that made people love it in the first place?
The Challenge
CLIF was growing quickly. The flagship CLIF Bar package had remained largely unchanged for more than a decade, new product lines were expanding the portfolio, and the brand was reaching new audiences and international markets.
At the same time, CLIF lived far beyond the grocery shelf. Thousands of field events, athlete partnerships, retail experiences, vehicles, trade shows, and consumer activations meant every expression of the brand needed to feel connected.
The opportunity was to modernize the system while protecting the equity CLIF had spent years building.
The Approach
Rather than reinventing CLIF, we focused on evolution with purpose.
We identified the elements with the strongest brand equity and created systems that could help them work consistently across an increasingly diverse portfolio.
A key part of that work was developing a comprehensive style and voice guide that gave internal teams and agency partners a shared understanding of how CLIF should look, sound, and behave.
We defined everything from tone of voice to the rendered quality of the iconic CLIF hand, establishing clear standards for an illustration style that needed to feel handcrafted and human rather than overly polished or mechanical.
I also helped establish a dedicated photography art direction guide for professional athlete and adventure imagery—defining composition, environment, movement, authenticity, and the kinds of unscripted moments that best represented the brand.
Together, these systems helped ensure that whether the work was created internally or by an outside agency, it still felt unmistakably CLIF.
Evolving the Shelf
The flagship CLIF Bar hadn't received a significant packaging update in more than 13 years. As the company expanded internationally, we evolved the iconic package beyond its singular rock-climbing story while preserving the visual equity consumers already recognized.
That thinking extended across the portfolio.
CLIF Kid evolved from simple, flat illustration into a more energetic visual language connected to the flagship brand. CLIF MOJO used music-inspired graphics and playful copy to introduce unexpected Sweet & Savory flavors to a younger audience. And the CLIF Athlete Series created a stronger system for bringing performance products and professional athlete partnerships together under a unified expression.
Different products. Different audiences. One recognizable family.
Taking the Brand Into the World
CLIF's brand wasn't built solely on a shelf. It was experienced in the places its customers lived, competed, traveled, and played.
With the company participating in more than 2,000 field events each year, we created experiences that could carry the brand from major industry events like Interbike to races, community activations, athlete experiences, and unexpected consumer moments.
Our global vehicle redesign transformed CLIF's field fleet into moving brand experiences, creating greater visibility both at events and in the communities they traveled through.
For the wonderfully unpredictable Cykel Scramble, we created an identity that embraced the event's costumed, anything-can-happen personality. At Interbike, collectible vintage-inspired athlete posters turned a traditional autograph session into something fans could take home.
Each execution was different because the experience demanded it—but each unmistakably belonged to CLIF.
The Impact
My time at CLIF reinforced that strong brands don't come from making everything look the same.
They come from building a clear enough visual and verbal foundation that internal teams, agencies, photographers, designers, and partners can create new expressions of the brand without losing what makes it recognizable.
From evolving one of the company's most iconic packages to defining how the CLIF hand was rendered, how the brand spoke, how athletes were photographed, and how consumers experienced CLIF in the real world, the work was about creating a brand system built to flex without losing its identity.