Finding joy
Everyone knows the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. But you may not know that the idea of hosting a holiday spectacular came from employees as a way to celebrate and connect with their customers. When I first heard this, and the stories of people who, even decades later, could name the Macy’s colleague who helped them find a prom dress or first interview suit, I saw the red thread. This spirit of joy was in the brand’s DNA, and I wanted to bring it to commerce through a unified brand identity.
Visual identity
The goal was to create a simple, scalable, human-centered system as a warm welcome to our widely diverse audience. Balancing notes from Macy’s heritage with a clean and contemporary aesthetic, we built a timeless brand ethos that emphasized openness and accessibility. Step one was to strengthen the logo with a bolder font for digital impact, and add an outline star as a brand cue where the logo would be redundant.
We expanded the secondary palette with warm colors from the architecture—both historic and modern, giving us flexibility to dial the red up or down depending on the season, trend palette and promotional context.
Voice and tone
The new brand voice was helpful, inspiring, witty, and welcoming, and led to development of Macys Sans, our friendly and accessible custom font. Photography was also welcoming, authentic and relatable, with natural variation from cool confidence to genuine excitement.
Branded experience
In 1866, Macy’s first store manager Margaret Getchell said to her team, “Never forget to astonish the customer.” That statement and Macy’s legendary firsts in retail—the iconic parade, merchandise sorted by style and size, even the famous escalators at Herald Square—inspired us to launch a new era of branded digital experiences. Blurring the line between entertainment and commerce, our award-winning 95th Parade NFT Balloon Series and the mstylelab web3 marketplace welcomed new audiences to Macy’s, opening a pathway to new revenue streams. We’re pretty sure Margaret would approve.
Contribution
Executive creative direction