The 1968 catalog that shows what a brand looks like before it knows it's going to become iconic.

Someone walked into the house with this earlier in the week and it's been on the wall ever since. We keep walking past it and stopping. That's usually the sign.

The North Face's first catalog was printed in 1968 from the back half of their Berkeley store with no studio shoot and lifestyle framing in mind or sight. The usual carefully considered brand language you could suggest didn’t even exist. Just gear photographed doing the thing it was built for. By people who actually needed it to work. Sold by a company that hadn't yet learned there was another way to do it. 

What is so refreshing in this is the honesty throughout the images. Not one aesthetic decision visible. It's what happens when a brand is too focused on the work to perform it.

One shot later and there's the copy. "Perhaps God can save the queen, but only man can save the wilderness." That line is in a product catalog selling sleeping bags and climbing boots out of a Berkeley backroom. That kind of language usually gets reviewed and softened until the edge is gone. It exists here because nobody was watching closely enough to water it down yet and that got us thinking…

The admiration we have for this catalog is the same reason we love everything that earns a place on the wall. It has true flavour. Nothing over engineered. Just real purpose. A point of view that existed before anyone thought to project manage it.

The gap between what The North Face believed and what they said hadn't opened yet and you can feel that in every page.

Most brands spend significant time, energy and budget trying to get back to something that looks like this and The North Face in 1968 just hadn't left yet.

Shot of the good stuff.