Chapter 4: Branding

Typically, branding takes a back seat in the early stages of a new venture like this. Often, it's a last-minute scramble—just a few months out from the grand opening, a branding agency (if one is even in the picture!) is asked to come up with a name, a logo, a website, and a handful of promotional stuff. Essentially, branding is an afterthought.

But we flipped the script! For us, branding wasn't just another box to tick—it was the heartbeat of our hotel. Before we even dreamed of blueprints or breaking ground, we were busy brainstorming the ethos and the essence of the hotel. It was a bit chaotic at first, loads of ideas tumbling around without much order. So, we rolled up our sleeves and dove into the branding headfirst, making it the cornerstone of everything that followed. This wasn’t just about putting a pretty face on our project; it was about crafting our identity from the ground up.

We were lucky to find an agency A.S. Strategy, Branding & Communication led by the fabulous ANTONIA SKARAKI that really understood what we wanted to do. I'd like to take you through the process:

Name

Naming matters, and in branding, everything starts and ends with your name. There are a lot of challenges in coming up with the right name:

1) Trademarkability?. The simpler the name, the more difficult it is to trademark.

2) Easy to write and pronounce. If your customer base is international, you need a name that everyone can understand and pronounce.

3) Available urls and social media handles. Probably the most important aspect. If you can't secure the URL and all appropriate social media handles, you might as well go for a different option.

Case in point, our initial idea was to call the hotel Γη (pronounced Yi in English), which means Earth in Greek. You can do a lot from a design perspective with this name. It represents the brand profoundly and is very international.

However, it's impossible to trademark. Anything that has to do with the Earth (Γη, Γαια, etc.) and its derivatives are not trademarkable. You can build something and call it that, but you won't be able to build a trademark brand around it and scale.

With that in mind, we had the following three options:

We ended up choosing the third option, Tella Thera , which encapsulated our values. It combined elements of earth, happiness, harvest (taking care of the land), and wellness (thera is also the root word of therapy).

It also sounds fun and is a word we can build a whole story around.

Tella Thera it is.

Logo

Now for the logo. We went through a variety of different options and an evolution of the design.

All of them had something unique and took us in a different direction. We wanted to explore the option with the arches a bit more because arches have a deeper and more significant meaning. They could be a door, a window, or a gateway into something new. They also had very strong architectural symbolism and could manifest prominently in the design. But it wasn't quite right yet.

So we explored it a bit more:

We were almost there, so we decided to play with the bottom right option a bit more. We liked the simplicity and the yin & yang energy, but the font needed some changes, and the logo better placement.

This was much better. The font was a single line, the E's were brought down, and the arches were elevated to give them their own space to shine. We kept this logo for about a year and thought this would be it.

But something felt a bit off. The logo and the fonts are both very powerful and compete for your attention. It became clear that one of the two had to become a supporting actor to the other. Because the arches were a strong statement, we had to deprioritize the font to bring more balance.

The arches also felt a tad bit plain, and we wanted to modernize them a little bit more.

I present to you the final version of our logo:

Modern yet rustic, elegant yet understated, simple yet complex. It's a logo I can stand behind.

Colours

When it came to colors, we knew we wanted to follow a more earthy and muted palette that would blend with the environment.

The following colours would act as background colours in a bit lighter shade and with a patina / weathered texture

On top of that, fonts and visuals would follow a more matte and bold finish.

These colors are inspired by our surroundings—clay, earth, sunset, olive trees. They fit right into our environment.

Secondary graphics

For secondary graphics, we went for something completely different. We were inspired by some ancient artifacts that were unearthed in Crete, currently displayed in a museum. We went with a modern interpretation of that clay pot.

The idea was to create a story where, depending on what we wanted to show, we could take parts of this scene and highlight them. You could repeat this pattern to create interesting motifs on physical objects or zoom in and blow up a part of it for a specific use.

For example, our values symbols came from this pattern.

Bringing it all together

Ok, this is where it all comes together in various shapes, forms, and colors. Here is where you can go crazy with it. Many ideas have come from the combination of the above, but the sky is the limit. We want to keep a few ideas as a surprise for our first guests, but here's a sneak peek.

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A large document of 60+ pages was created that captured the essence of our brand. This document was used to onboard all partners to the project. It helped us create a common language and a starting point for every subsequent conversation we had with all involved parties. It created structure, a vision and a common path that everyone aligned with. It was the first foundation that we started building on.

Branding also played a big role on the design of the hotel. And what a design we got..

Next week's chapter drops next Friday and we will share everything about the design of the hotel. It's a another good one so stay tuned!