Client
Panalau is a high-end, eco-friendly boutique hotel situated by a lake in the mountains. It’s a popular getaway for celebrities and influencers seeking unique experiences, including traditional yurts, exclusive off-road trailers, floating homes, ATVs, and UTVs, all while offering complete privacy.
Reasons for rebranding
The client was dissatisfied with the branding, finding it neither “iconic” nor “memorable” enough to spark word-of-mouth marketing. It didn’t capture the trendy, Instagrammable vibe they wanted, nor did it feel custom-made for Panalau or its related “Pana” subsidiaries.
Current logotype
The current identity block includes a symbol, logotype, and descriptor, which is consistent with the brand architecture shared by other “Pana”-linked subsidiaries.
The curved diagonals of the capital letters ‘A’ and ‘N’ reveal the use of the ‘Ubuntu’ typeface, a free font often seen in tech and software logos, such as Bitcoin. I used it for Maxinum, a then-infant software company back almost ten years ago.
Current symbol
The abstract symbol isn’t referential, meaning it can’t stand on its own. Without immediate associations, it’s not memorable, and creating those connections would require ongoing investment and effort.
Brand identities have to work in all situations, and symbols are crucial when logotypes become illegible at small sizes. Symbols need to be designed with that in mind as they are oftentimes displayed independently of other signature block elements such as logotypes and descriptors and thus they have to be referential to their respective brands.
This connection is often achieved through literal symbols, like Apple, Dominos, Jaguar, Puma, Red Bull, Red Hat, Shell, Target. Other companies use unique initials or monograms: beats’ b, Chanel’s Cs, Fendi Fs, General Electric’s GE, General Motor’s GM, Giorgio and Emporio Armani’s GA and EA, Givenchy’s and Gucci’s Gs, Luis Vuiton’s LV, McDonald’s Golden Arches, New York’s NY, Yves Saint Lauren’s YSL, Volkswagen’s VW, Warner Bros’ WB and so on and so forth.
However, The current symbol is neither appropriate nor relevant to the business or its industry, making Panalau’s market entry unnecessarily costly. Companies like Audi and Nike consistently spend considerable resources on marketing campaigns of such sort to create meaning and establish a connection with their brands.
Best practices
Let’s consider the following examples such as a Product Placement monogram, a couple of creative PR monograms from Paco Rabanne and Paco Ruiz, Park Plaza hotel, a top Fortune 1000 company ‘Paychex’, one of the fastest growing US companies ‘Paycom’, Pierre Cardin, Pinterest with its P in a shape of a pin, PlayStation, Popeyes, Procter & Gamble, Pull & Bear, some pharmaceutical companies and lots of other brands across the USA, UK, Germany, Spain and other countries.
One may ask, why cover international practices at all? There’re five objectives:
- Follow best practices
- Seek inspiration from the best
- Avoid trademark infringement
- Avoid undesired associations
- Avoid overused themes
Scalability
Best practices recommend designing a custom “P” for Panalau’s symbol, but advise against using thin strokes and excessive white space, as these would reduce legibility at smaller sizes:
As you can see in the beginning of the video above, unlike Panalau’s current symbol, it’s pretty easy to see 16x16px favicons for Airbnb, Booking, and VRBO on a desktop computer. The same can be said about a grouped app icon on an iPhone, or social media and messenger app’s profile icons that are oftentimes used on a very small size across their user interfaces such as in the likes and comments sections where people will see it more often than when seeing Panalau’s posts or visiting their profile.
I’ve designed several identities similar to ‘P’ including bb, D, R&D, and RD monograms and marks. All of them had good white-space balance and were appropriate for their respective brands:
Inspiration
Some glyph designs lack symmetry or balance, and even top brand agencies in NYC and London sometimes struggle to create inspiring logos:
Trademark infringement
Publix filed a lawsuit against Pharmapacks alleging trademark infringement and dilution:
Contrary to popular belief, intellectual property has cross-border protection and enforcement especially in the age of globalisation and franchising: Burger King sued a ‘King Burger’ knockoff in India, McDonald’s sued a Shawarma chain called ‘Waypma’ for using its (upside-down) Golden Arches in Ukraine. All businesses in question were forced to replace all signages and other branded attributes, and pay damages to the trademark owner.
Undesired associations
Being accused of an unauthorised third-party trademark infringement isn’t the only reason to avoid similarity with other logos. In branding, symbols “symbolise” companies and you wouldn’t want your company to be symbolised by other brands and symbols.
One of the projects I worked on, Tilemaster, had a symbol that was similar to Tumbler, a website known for its somewhat inappropriate content. Brand names beginning with “P” face a higher risk of unintended associations and meanings, which could harm brand equity and undermine marketing efforts.
Overused themes
The worst thing you can do to a brand is to make it invisible and sterile by exploring unoriginal themes. By far the most overused theme in letter P logo design is negative space:
If you exclude monograms with one or more Ps such as Product Placement, Park Plaza, Penguin Press and others, you’ll notice that a lot of real estate and tourism businesses feature houses, keys, mountains and trees in their lettermark designs:
Brand colours
Brand colours should have a pleasant contrast with and work well on light, dark and complex backgrounds:
Your logo can be used on light, dark and complex backgrounds:
Dark mode
A lot of popular browsers, email service providers, web and client applications such as social media and messenger apps have all recently introduced a ‘dark mode’. It’s happening across the board on desktop and mobile devices and it’s here to stay. The remaining laggers will have no other choice but to join the trend. Even Microsoft introduced dark mode in its Office package. There’s no cross-platform solution at the moment other than choosing the right colours.
Project goal
The goal is to turn the hotel into a social-media sensation, a trendy instagrammable spot that would encourage word-of-mouth recommendations and sell itself.
Panalau identity
Best practices and simple animations made the client reconsider the importance of decreasing the white-space to make it scalable and versatile, and avoiding trademark infringement, unwanted associations, and overused themes.
However, the client was left uninspired by the “P” lettermarks from the very best brand agencies such as NYC’s CGH or London’s Pentagram so I came up with an option that was relevant to his business but completely different from anything else.
The team has selected the following brand mark design as it satisfied the above-mentioned project objective to encourage word-of-mouth recommendations and foster right associations:
Associations
The client thought this was the most memorable option and instantly connected the design with their traditional yurt’s crown, dinner table gathering, suite no. symbol, games, the sun, love sign, historic national flag ornament, as well as the #panalau hashtag symbol, promoting word-of-mouth marketing:
The client was concerned with a way to get their guests to engage in word-of-mouth advertising. And as a result, every time their guests see the #panalau identity, they’ll unconsciously want to take pictures and share it with their friends on social media tagging the client.
To streamline the lettermark’s application, I created an inverse version using a Ritz/seal carrier shape that resembles a lake in the mountains. The client was very happy with the work and trademarked it right away.
