How AlienNation Creative Agency approached the challenge of creating a brand identity for the historic 100th running of the Comrades Marathon.
How do you design an identity for 100 runnings of one of the world’s most iconic ultramarathons?
You don’t start with a logo.
You start with a story.
Actually, billions of footsteps and countless stories.
When AlienNation Creative Agency was invited to develop the identity for the 100th running of the Comrades Marathon, we immediately understood the significance of the task.
We weren’t simply being asked to create a commemorative logo.
We were being entrusted with a piece of South African history.
And that changed everything.
More Than a Marathon
For generations, the Comrades Marathon has been measured in kilometres.
But distance alone doesn’t explain what makes Comrades extraordinary.
Its real measure can be found in the footsteps that have travelled the road between Pietermaritzburg and Durban—and in the human stories behind them.
The early mornings.
The months of training.
The sacrifices made when nobody was watching.
The hills that almost broke people.
The strangers who became comrades.
The families waiting beside the road.
The volunteers who kept runners moving.
The people being remembered.
The moments of doubt, courage, triumph and sometimes heartbreak.
Multiply those experiences across 100 runnings and Comrades becomes something much greater than a sporting event.
It becomes a living collection of human stories.
That insight became the strategic foundation of the Comrades Marathon Centenary brand identity.
It Started With One Bead
Our creative idea began with something incredibly small:
A single bead.
One bead.
One step.
On its own, a single bead has little significance.
A single footstep changes very little.
But bring thousands of beads together and they can create something remarkable.
Allow billions of footsteps to follow one another over generations and they create an enduring legacy.
That relationship became central to the identity.
Across Africa, beadwork has long been associated with ideas of identity, heritage, community and belonging. Individual beads—different in colour and character—are brought together to form something greater than any one piece.
We saw a powerful parallel with Comrades.
Because there is no single Comrades story.
The race has been built collectively by the runners, volunteers, organisers, supporters, families and communities who have become part of it.
Individual stories. Individual footsteps. One extraordinary legacy.
That idea gave us the visual language from which the Centenary identity could grow.
Before the Runners, There Were Other Footsteps
Creating a centenary brand identity also demanded that we look backwards before we could design forward.
The story of Comrades did not begin with a marketing campaign, a sponsorship or even a race.
It began with remembrance.
Comrades founder Vic Clapham conceived the race as a living memorial to his fallen comrades following the First World War.
That history mattered enormously to the creative process.
Before generations of runners carried the Comrades legacy forward, there were the footsteps of soldiers—and the memory of comrades who never returned.
Over time, an act of remembrance grew into an extraordinary demonstration of endurance, courage and comradeship.
The footsteps continued.
More people joined.
And the story became bigger than anyone could have imagined.
For us, this was an important lesson in heritage branding: when working with an organisation that carries a century of history, the designer’s job is not to overwrite that history.
It is to understand it deeply enough to carry it forward.
Designing the Comrades 100th Identity
The challenge was therefore not simply to make something celebratory.
The identity needed to connect heritage, diversity, unity and legacy while remaining unmistakably Comrades.
At its heart sits the familiar Comrades figure—connecting the Centenary identity directly to the visual heritage of the race.
Around it, the Centenary form and vibrant bead-inspired visual system introduce a new layer of meaning.
Colour becomes more than decoration.
Individual elements come together.
Different stories become one story.
And the identity begins to represent not simply 100 runnings, but the people who made those 100 runnings possible.
That distinction is important.
Great brand identity design isn’t about adding visual elements simply because they look good.
Every element needs a reason to exist.
The strongest identities connect strategy, history, audience and emotion with a visual idea simple enough to be recognised—and rich enough to mean something.
Then Came the Words
Once we understood what the identity needed to represent, the campaign thought became much clearer.
We kept returning to one simple truth:
Comrades is more than a marathon.
Ask someone who has run Comrades about their race and chances are they won’t simply tell you their finishing time.
They’ll tell you a story.
About standing at the start.
About the hill that nearly ended their race.
About the stranger who helped them.
About the person whose memory they carried.
About the moment they thought they couldn’t take another step—and somehow did.
Every runner arrives with a story.
Every running creates thousands more.
And after 100 runnings, those individual experiences have become part of something much larger.
That led us to the line:
THE GREATEST STORY EVER RUN.
Four words that transform the conversation from distance to humanity.
Because Comrades isn’t only something you run.
It is something you experience.
Something you remember.
And ultimately, something you become part of.
What This Project Reminded Us About Great Branding
At AlienNation Creative Agency we often say that effective branding begins long before anyone opens design software.
The Comrades Centenary project reinforced that belief.
When you’re creating a brand identity with genuine meaning, strategy has to come before design.
You need to understand what you’re protecting.
What you’re changing.
What people already feel.
What belongs to the brand.
And what new story the brand is ready to tell.
Only then should the creative work begin.
This is particularly important when working with heritage brands and established South African organisations. Familiarity, emotional ownership and history can be some of a brand’s greatest assets—but they also create responsibility.
Change too little and the work has no reason to exist.
Change too much and you risk losing what made the brand meaningful in the first place.
The opportunity sits somewhere between the two:
Respect what came before. Understand what it means today. Then create something capable of carrying it forward.
From Brand Identity to Brand Experience
A powerful identity also needs to work beyond the logo.
This is where AlienNation’s approach as a 360° marketing and creative agency becomes particularly important.
We don’t view brand identity in isolation.
From the beginning, we consider how a visual language will behave across the real world—from digital and social media to print, environmental branding, merchandise, apparel, events and campaign communications.
Because eventually, the identity has to leave the presentation deck.
It has to live.
At the official Centenary Race Launch, we had the opportunity to see exactly that happen.
The identity moved from concept to physical environment.
The colour system expanded across large-format applications.
The bead-inspired language surrounded the Comrades 100 mark.
The Greatest Story Ever Run moved from a strategic idea into a public statement.
For a creative team, there’s a very particular feeling that comes from seeing something that once existed only as sketches, conversations and pixels suddenly occupying real space.
That is the moment an identity begins becoming a brand.
A Proudly South African Story
For AlienNation Creative Agency, being part of this project carries particular meaning.
We are a South African agency.
Our creative thinking is shaped by the diversity, complexity, energy and stories of this country.
So the opportunity to help create an identity marking such an important moment in the history of one of South Africa’s great sporting institutions was both an enormous creative challenge and a privilege.
Comrades has always been bigger than a finish line.
It is memory.
Community.
Sacrifice.
Courage.
Belonging.
And story.
The Centenary identity needed to hold all of those ideas while still looking forward.
Because 100 runnings may represent an extraordinary legacy.
But the story isn’t finished.
There are still footsteps to come.
The Greatest Story Is Still Being Written
Thousands of beads can create a masterpiece.
Billions of footsteps can create a legacy.
And thousands upon thousands of individual human experiences can create something even greater:
The Greatest Story Ever Run.
As the Comrades Marathon approaches its historic 100th running, a new generation will step onto that road.
Some will run it for the first time.
Some will return to settle unfinished business.
Some will run for someone who can’t.
And every one of them will add another story to the legacy.
It has been a privilege to help give this historic moment its identity and we can’t wait to see where the story runs next.
AlienNation Creative Agency is a 360° Marketing Agency.
We believe in being more than just marketers; we are strategic partners to your business, on a mission to transform your brand’s potential.
Want to create something visionary together?
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