Meet Pìo

Pìo the penguin started as an idea that Asma and I were bouncing back and forth very early on in the inception of the brand. I wanted to create a mascot, and a penguin felt fitting for FLIGHT for several reasons. The first was a selfish one, they’re my favorite animal. But beyond that, it made sense symbolically. Penguins are flightless birds that live in cold climates, while we started FLIGHT as a brand focused on performance wear for hot conditions here in the region. It created a deliberate contradiction, a juxtaposition between climates.

Original rough sketches of Pìo drawn by Asma.

After deciding on how we wanted Pìo to look like we started working more on his origin story as well as how he would be integrated with the products that we produce. Naturally, the easiest way to include him was to create a graphic that would go well on a t-shirt and so we worked with a Brazilian tattoo artist to create the very first graphic that would go really nicely with the cotton t-shirts that we were working on.

Photo of the t-shirt with the graphic.

The graphic showcases Pìo with his running shades and the skyline of Dubai reflected onto the lens. This was a way for us to symbolize Pìo's arrival.

We've also continued to work on many other ways he could be included into the product such as on size labels, stickers, and many other ways relevant to the brand. 

Size label made using the original rough sketch of Pìo.

Flight sticker pack. Available here.

Finally, we wanted to tell Pìo's origin story in a digestible manner, and so we collaborated with a manga artist to create a single page that delivered the story smoothly.

Manga page.