Selina is a Lifestyle, Travel and Hospitality platform where global and local communities meet, interact and forge new experiences. Scattered across several countries in North, Central, South America and more recently Europe, Selina is much more than striking, well designed accommodation. We were challenged to approach Selina’s brand communication, its extensive universe of sub-brands and products and to rethink them into a new, cohesive, bold visual identity.
Creating a graphic universe for a multifaceted lifestyle brand
One of the main goals was to reassess Selina’s visual identity within the mother brand and all of its parts. This included Selina’s internal and external communication (involving stationery, advertising, merchandising, signage and brand book), Selina’s Coworking, Food & Beverage, Impact, Music & Arts and Wellness. The logo was the only pre-existing element that had to be kept in the whole rebranding.
The intention was to create various assets to compose an articulated visual grammar with guidelines and formulas clear enough to build a strong mother brand, with distinct, recognisable sub-brands. This system was to facilitate a good rapport and brand continuity overall, to be achieved with the support of multiple local Selina’s design teams.
Selina is multicultural, so Selina is colourful. We established a palette of 20 colours, of which five were chosen for each country. Black and white are considered non-colours and secondary additions common to all the countries. The colour combinations allow for 349 different colour codes.
Selina is approachable and so is its speech, so we created a custom typeface, Selina Brocha. It is expressive and diverse enough to look like a lettering, adding a human character and perfectly embodying Selina’s DIY spirit. It is a display font, and accordingly meant to be used in headlines and large sizes.
We were also tasked to create the branding and communication for seven other brands, visually detached from Selina’s main brand:
Café Selina, a café that is separate from Selina’s spaces; Vida by Selina, a Selina facility that promotes wellness retreats; Helios, a skin, hair and body care brand that supplies Selina’s accommodations; Selina Music Studios, a network of music studios around the world; and Selina Surf Club, consisting of surf clubs around the world that provide lessons and rent out equipment.
Overall, we put together a graphic system that resonates with Selina’s spirit: it is fresh, fun, spontaneous and flexible. We managed to create a vast universe that allows for multiple applications and leads direction for this cosmos to grow according to needs. We developed both a brand book and a vast series of templates that are currently being used at Selina’s local design departments, successfully contributing to a cohesive, unison voice.
