This is Off The Wall
For 60 years, Vans’ version of rebellion, Southern California, DIY, black and white, and rooted in a male-dominated skate scene, made the brand a legend. But rebellion looks different in every culture and every era, and a new generation of creators around the world wasn’t hearing it. Vans was losing its place in culture, and sales were following. So we built a new brand foundation and launched the first global campaign to bring it to life.
Rather than explain Vans’ heritage, we demonstrated it for a new era. We added two words and built a platform around them: This is Off the Wall. “This is” points at a person, a moment, a way of being yourself with your feet on the ground, and says: that’s what Off the Wall looks like. A rallying cry for creative optimism in the face of adversity.
From there we turned the iconic heel tab into the brand’s flag, traded monochrome grit for a full spectrum of color pulled from Vans’ core DNA, and built a checkerboard-inspired system that tells individual stories within a collective, flexible enough to speak every language its fans do.
Credits
Press
Agency
Jeremy Wirth
Erwin Federizo
Bruno Lugilo
Mariana Oliveira
Joaquin Salim
Lucy Logan
Erin Kaupp
Derek Vander Griend
Benoit Ollive
Makena Hammond
Studio Nari
Creativity at full speed.
How do you explain style? You show it. We partnered with director Will Dohrn and Love Song to follow three creative voyagers, Little Simz and Vans Skate Team riders Beatrice Domond and Felipe Nunes. Borrowing from classic skate film techniques, the camera chases momentum, capturing creativity as something you do in motion, not something you stand still and admire. In-camera distortion and layered VFX from The Mill turn each creator into their own aura, bending the world around them as they move. Set to Mount Kimbie’s “Blue Train Lines,” it’s a nod to the DIY spirit Vans was born from.
Heritage, in full color
We built the art direction from Vans’ DNA: skate culture, Southern California, and the simplicity of the shoes. California color, the grain of skate photography, and DIY poster cues created a look that’s colorful, analog, and always moving. A checkerboard-inspired grid holds it together, every square a portrait, a story, a moment, adding up to one collective voice.
We couldn’t shoot in every market, so we made it easy to pick up. Two toolkits carried the system to 30+ countries, each market dropping in its own voyagers while staying unmistakably Vans.
Transforming a product detail into a badge of honor.
Every pair of Vans carries a heel tab. It’s stitched onto each shoe, and over time it picks up a patina unique to whoever wears it, scuffed, faded, and full of story.
For a brand built on individual journeys, there was no better symbol. So we pulled the heel tab from its humble home on the back of the shoe and made it the brand’s flag. No longer just a product detail, it became a badge of honor for anyone living Off the Wall.
