AirBNB Website Design & Branding: The Lyon's Den
2022
Tasked with designing a website for an Airbnb in Louisiana, I developed a color pallet, iconography system, and logo system to create an overall branding system.
I wanted the color pallet to express a warm, upscale, modern, fresh, lively and bright aesthetic to highlight the design features, abundant natural light and warm climate of the location.
To mirror the historic age of the building, I picked classic serif typeface Baskerville for the headings and logo and stuck with Helvetica Neue for the body copy and links to contrast the bold vintage Baskerville with a light modern touch, much like the elements of the building: strong antique foundation with a few modern updates. I did try to avoid making the focus of the branding and website centered around Mardi Gras, but rather include it as a feature for my audience of independent, childless adults. I quite liked the existing name of the AirBnB: "The Lyon's Den," because it seemed to appropriately blend a commonly-recognized antique allusion with a modern twist and it provided a possible "mascot." However, I wanted to again come up with a fresh modern take on a lion illustration so I blended it with a seal-like motif and a banner motif. For the "Superhost Badge," I wanted it to be complementary to the shape of the logo I designed so I chose a circular shape atop the rectangle shape with a "Just Noticeably Different" version of the AirBnB logo converted into a star shape.
Overall, although I am very happy with my end product, but if I were to continue improving my project I would spend more time making sure everything aligns properly from page-to-page, as I struggled greatly with this despite my best efforts.
