I originally come from a poorer region of the country with villages full of old and abandoned houses, waiting to be destroyed by the force of time. I love this region, which is why I was excited to be approached by an investor Arkon, a.s. to design a branding and website for their project V Honte (transl. “In Hont Region”).
THE CHALLENGE
Create a simple branding and website for accommodation services in Hont region. Branding should be scalable across different houses and activities.
At the start of the project, one of the houses was already renovated, with other two being under reconstruction. And since the branding should reflect the region and these houses, I first took a look at the location and the plots.
There are many projects in Slovakia that use the folk symbols and illustrations as a base for their designs; however, this is a very general view of folk traditions in our countries, not specifically reflecting a culture of a particular region. It was important for me to portrait this history, too, but my aim was to have the design reflect the simplicity of people’s lives in this region and the simplicity of the architecture, which mostly uses basic geometric lines in their layouts.
For that reason I have chosen an approach of geometric logos for each house – to not just portrait a simple life of the village where the houses are located, but to also create a visual differentiator between these houses.
Once I had a basic layout set for the logo, I have created logos for each house, so that all of them could function as a separate vacation rental house but at the same time, they were all under one umbrella project. These logos would consist of:
- Simple outline symbol, resembling the front face of the house
- Headline – New name of the house (named after a color of the house or its location)
- Subtitle – Name of the project “V Honte”, so that the house can be associated with the group of other houses
The colors were influenced by the region’s main field of work – agriculture. Since the infrastructure is a bit complicated and the location is further from larger cities, people here have always been closely living with the work in fields.
On top of the logo and other basic elements, I had decided to create a supporting symbol for all the branding materials – a grape leaf. There were 2 reasons for this particular symbol:
- This is one of the northernmost locations in Slovakia where you can grow vineyards, which is also another product that the region is known for.
- As part of the “V Honte” experience, the investor has planted several acres of new vineyards and build a wine cellar with production building, where the house visitors can come for a wine tasting session.
With all the core elements ready, firstly I focused on branding materials that would be used in houses – small business cards, welcome brochures, house guides or even posters.
Another beautiful factor of this region is the special dialect the native inhabitants use – I have decided to embrace this and include some phrases and a short vocabulary into the prints, so that the newcomers would experience the region at its fullest.
The final delivery designs also included other print materials, such as a short diary, where people could write the experiences from their stay, envelopes for the postcards to send home to their families, or a map of close-by activities around the house.
The final part of the project was focused on designing a presentation website, where potential new visitors could find:
- more information about all the houses, see their renovation stories and accommodation possibilities
- find out more about the activities in the region
- find a map of the region
- learn more about the project and the future plans.
