Best Made Company - Justin Platnar

Best Made Company: Vagabond

Vagabond skirts the boundary between the conscious, gridded, urbanity of the city and the unconscious, anarchic, land of the wild. It manifests as an integrated advertising campaign for the brand Best Made Company—an outfit of axe-makers based out of a little shop in the heart of Manhattan. Vagabond serves to refocus Best Made Co. with an advertising campaign that reestablishes the brand's role as the provider of an escape into much-treasured wilderness. It cuts through the swaths of extraneous goods in the Best Made catalog, that have undercut the brand's philosophy and warped their image from essential to luxury.

Vagabond legitimately reconnects people with their landscape. There’s a certain mental and psychological fufillment that comes from a proper adventure into the unconscious world of the outdoors. It’s the tangibility of the physical in an increasingly hyperreal, digital world.

At its climax, Vagabond brings its audience to life through its short film Honest Abe—an exploration of the duality that the campaign addresses. It is the climactic capstone of all that the Vagabond campaign seeks to accomplish.

The Best Made pop up, introducing consumers to the brand's tactility.

As the campaign continues, the space is transformed into the Vagabond pop up shop.

A limited run of utilitarian garments is featured at the Vagabond pop up.

These wild postings come through as lithographic art prints, for the audience to take home and collect.

The headline comes from On The Road, an inspiration and creative bedrock for the campaign.

These invitations were created through the antique process of cyanotype printing. They're not your typical direct mail.

They're durable, collectible, and can be used as patches.

The Analog Collective: an offshoot Instagram account for Best Made fans to share film photos of their adventures with the hashtag #Vagabond.

The account is multi-purpose, and advertises the campaign's other media directly to the consumer.

The transit side of the campaign manifests itself as a sequential breakdown of a passage from On The Road, with copy speaking to the idea of the Vagabond campaign.

These print ads give the viewer a choice: pass the torch to the next generation or head out on the trail again.

Honest Abe is the climax of the campaign, existing as a pre-screening feature at theatres all around the country. It premieres first at The Royal Cinema in Toronto.