Greetings from Helsinki is an online city guide platform made for people from all around the world that have temporarily or permanently moved to the city of Helsinki in Finland. Aside from sharing the same characteristics with a typical touristic guide, the user can find valuable information that can help them on their day to day life and general living in the city by visiting the website or downloading the application. They can make lists of their favourite places, find useful blogs and discover events that relate to their personal interests. Moreover, it doubles as a social network platform for them to connect, communicate and socialise with others.
You can check out the prototypes for both the website and the application on the links:
The project began as a university assignment back in 2017, while I was attending the Metropolia University of Applied Sciences in Helsinki for a semester as part of my bachelor degree studies. Coming back to Greece, I realised that it was a project that didn’t really live up to its full potential and I found myself wanting to evolve it and make it better. Having back then yet to decide the subject of my final project for my degree, I decided to seize this opportunity.
The name of the logo for the platform came after my long lasting love for postcard sending. Since my teenage years, whenever I travel abroad, I always send a postcard back home, starting the message with “Greetings from…”. That element, the feeling of sharing good memories from my travels, was something I really wanted to implement into my project. Aside from my logo, a second verbal element I decided on was my slogan “Discover the Feeling”, inspired by the name of the platform and thus my memories.
As for my colour palette, I decided to use 4 colours, inspired by the nature of Finland: a blue, representing the water of the lakes, an orange and purple, representing the deep sunsets, and a green, representing the greenery of the forests and the northern lights. I decided that the blue would be my main colour, as it also represents the Finnish national flag. The three other colours were used to indicate elements of the platform, like places, blogs and events, that belong to one of the three main categories: Eat & Drink, See & Do and Stay & Travel.
Aside from designing the platform, I also applied my brand to an abundance of advertising and non- advertising material, such as posters, stickers, and digital advertisement through ads and the social media, as well as the app's icon.
