Airbnb began in 2008 as a simple way to rent rooms through an easy-to-use website. In the seven years since, Airbnb has rocketed to extreme popularity with a user-friendly application and presences in 194 countries and 34,000 cities. But that success and popularity wasn’t enough for Airbnb’s team. They were convinced that the core meaning of the company wasn’t being communicated. Airbnb chief Brian Chesky said, “Our core idea, what Airbnb is about at its core, is belonging. At Airbnb, we imagine a world where you can belong anywhere.”
In an effort to communicate this core belief and a switch from a technology company to a consumer brand, the creative team at Airbnb worked closely with DesignStudio to completely restructure, redesign and re-launch the company. A major part of the rebrand is their new logo, internally called “Belo” which looks like a cursive upper-case “A” and hopes to tell the story of belonging. They even created a new typeface to encapsulate everything new about the company, called Air. The new website is a major shift aesthetically, though structurally almost nothing has changed. The rebrand, which was announced quietly early last week is giving the PR team at Airbnb a break from the legislative issues that have plagued the company. Instead of focusing on the lawsuits they received for “illegally” renting spaces in Barcelona, the press is finally focused on the site itself and its purpose–making the process of listing and booking a space effortless and efficient.
