Yarki hotel brand

BELARUS

Yarki park hotel brand

The brightest spot in whole Belarus: 3 episodes

The owner of the hotel complex perceived the construction as the flow of creativity right from the beginning. And like any creative flow, its was pretty unpredictable the whole time. This project is all about how branding was flexibly following the creative flow of the owner team and succeded in final, which is rare.

Client: Yarki park hotel

Work: naming, concept, designs, brandbook (multiplied by 3)

2016 … 2021

History of changing concepts is untearable part of the project and we would like to show how the project was growing for past 5 years.

Natalia Rybalchenko

BRAND STRATEGIST

Visiting and social communication

Visiting place for the first time is always about communicating, interviewing people around, visiting social institutions, holding round tables with administration to find out something to hold on to.

The place like it was seen in the beginning, 2016

Episode 1: Kolbovichi

In 2016, when the construction was just begun, nobody got how the whole complex should look like. The main concept was all about staying close to nature in architecture. The main image was getting key to gaining secret health elixiors. The place was named after the settlement it is located next to: Kolbovichi.

Healing and discoveries

The design made by Ivan Vetrov was calm and conservative at first: the key was more of a reference to a cottage building company rather than the retreat luxury hotel. This visual lasted for 3 years, but wasn't seen in real life.

Episode 2: Vynakhodniki

By 2019, almost 3 years later, we had been invited to the construction site just to hear that the former concept of the complex was outdated and had to be more experimental with heavy emphasis on active sports, family retreat, fun and joy.

The very beginning of experiments

What is the best secret ingredient when you need to add some uniqueness? A pinch of locality, ofcourse. That's how we got to looking through born in Belarus inventors. We've got a comprehensive list of ones and we especially liked the belarus word for "inventors":

Vynakhodniki: belarus word for "inventors"

We had a concept of creating a theme-park inside hotel all about belarus inventors, that affected the whole world. Idea was that the park itself would become a nice addition to the hotel, but could become an independent target for the one-day tourists and children groups. What could be more desirable for visitors with child to have a place where children could be left to pass the time carelessly.

We found more than 15 people who was born on territory of today Belarus and were overwhelmed with ideas based on said personalities. Here're four of them and a brief summary of inspiration ideas we got:

Natalia Rybalchenko

BRAND STRATEGIST

Marc Chagall
World wide famous artist inspired us on creating a museum of swings "We flew" and the overall artisy.
Léon Bakst
The inventor of the chizhevsky chandelier, inspired us on architecture based on his modular forms
Jan Czerski
Famous explorer of Siberia, who has mapped out a wonderful map of lake Baikal, inspired us on reshaping of one of the lakes on the territory to the minified shape of Baikal (this concept was highly acclaimed)
Ignacy Domeyko
Mining engineer, who worked at a meteorological station made associations with vanes and inspired us on motion sculptures praising the wind and dynamic constructions

This is the set of references we've created to illustrate the content of the Vynakhodniki park to the rest of the team. Pro tip: it wasn't enough for anybody to inspire enough.

Visually, it became a mix of the previous design, made by Ivan Vetrov, with adding flat and daring new images, fonts and compositions.

Some designs from this concept has been seen lately in the restaurant. Looks like, the color hasn't satisfied the restaurant team and they sticked to the first color pattern. The same with the bird and illustrations that haven't been noticed either.

Episode 3: I'm Yarki

Our next visit two years later in 2021 was more confident due to the much more clear request. We've convinced that the proposed "inventor" idea seemed difficult for the team to implement on their own without close monitoring that we couldn't afford. The same is with niche design and title. So we've abandoned it and started from scratch for the third time with the new name, new design, new everything. CEO inspired us with the following phrase that reflected his current mood that everyone in a team took as a strategy:

Life shouldn't be grey. It should be bright and active!

Yaroslav

YARKI CEO

There were no second thoughts, that the most brightest insight would be calling the whole complex a bright one — Яркi (in belarus). That was bingo: the perfect shot!

Yarki

Sketch that was able to set the mood correctly

Yarki architecture

And the color of the architecture facades proved that we were right with the concept. At the time we came not all the buildings were finished, yet the cottages were already garishly colorful for a family resort. Just look at it yourself:

Yarki identity

Let's be honest, that hoopoe is not a guy you meet on every walk in this hotel. Nevertheless, that means meeting hoopoe would a bright memory, right?

Yarki park hotel logo

The whole flock of logos for all the contexts

I am the bright!

The first idea was to call the complex "I'm the bright" (Я яркий), that could sound personal and communicative enough, as we like. Anyway, it was rejected by CEO, but we didn't want to loose the idea and used it in latter communication between visitors and personnel:

I'm using slightly modified Curbe type by Olya Pankova.

The bright set of badges

Yarki merch

Merch is outstandingly bright even according to Yarki standarts. Suits well to architecture, though.

Mostly all the elements feature logo, yet we felt in love with the cottage pattern. It is important to include unguessable parts into the system in order not to break it, rather than to amaze.

Igor Makovsky

DESIGNER

Interior communication

We've designed every single communication element inside the hotel for creating that bright and positive vibe.

We're especially proud of the communication that we had been lucky to produce with the simple informative design of permits and prohibitations.

Do's and dont's sticket set

Concept of the brightest car

Brightfinding and the yarki park hotel map

Maps and wayfinding elements across the territory are resonating with each other in all the ways graphically and philosophicaly. Map has many eye-cathing details worth exploring, like any good map has.

Yarki hotel map

The wayfinding arrows uses the same images from map for better recognizing. Plates are meant to be printed on a plastic that makes images look vivid.

Yarki hotel today

The complex is fully functional as of 2023, and the brand is used quite, say, partly, taking in account its full potential, that you've seen just above. Suppose that it is just the beginning and would change for the best.

Visit Yarki hotel website