Illustrations, logo redesign and brand guidelines creation for the Podere L'Agave hospitality network
In winter 2019 I was asked by Barbara Zenoni, the owner of Podere L'Agave, Agave in Città and Santa Cecilia to draw a winter holiday card for their guest and the customers that bought their gift basket. L'Agave is a network of boutique hotels composed of a traditional tuscanian small farm, the Podere, a city boutique hotel in Livorno, an a seaside house, the Santa Cecilia.
The card whould have a festive feeling, give a warm sense of the holidays and winter, mixed with the distinctive feeling on being near the seaside that is typical of that part of the Tuscany.
Then I worked on the greeting card for the olive harvesting and oil making. Podere L'Agave made its own oil (Tuscany is famous for its oil) and plenty of other traditional products such jellies and marmalade, and their sell other traditional products from small gourmet businesses in Tuscany in curated gift baskets. They needed a souvenir for people that are going to stay at the hotels during the autumn, the oil harvesting period, that is a communal event, and a card to accompany the gift basket.
I tried to convey the idea of that part of the Tuscany, that is a hillside landscape full of trees, a beautiful countryside, but with an eye on the sea. The sea is never to far, it's there even in the fall when you don't see it.
After a while they decided to complete the seasons series with Spring and Summer. We focused on the plants and sensations you feel in the different seasons at the farm: spring is the smell of jasmine in the night air, and summer the strong scents of aromatic herbs like lavender, rosmary and helichrysum and the sound of bees buzzing around the flovers.
Then we brainstormed for a set of illustration for the door hangers, to alert to the fact that a dog is residing in the room. We decided to give hommage to Bartolo, a Maremma Sheepdog that resided at L'Agave for many years. I imagined him peacefully sleeping under a table in summer, surrounded by all the elements from the previous illustrations.
We had such a good experience working together that Barbara asked me to help her harmonize the Agave brand image in a cohesive ecosystem, helped by Mafe De Baggis for the brand strategy. I designed a brand guidelines and a light restyle of their logos.
Podere L'Agave and Agave in Città had already beautiful logos designed by Rossana Turi, and we decided to keep her pictograms and just create a set of rules that every future Agave logo should respect: the weight of the pictogram related to the copy, the color palette and so on.
The color palettes are inspired by the environment at the hotel, so it's sage green and olive green for Podere L'agave, Pompei Red for Agave in Città, which is an historic building in the hearth of Livorno. Santa Cecilia needed a logo in style with the new brand guidelines and I designed it. The column of the balcony and the setting sun are two of the defining elements of Santa Cecilia, I kept the line art style from the previous logos and added a color palette reminiscent of the color of the Mediterranean Sea in different moment of the day.
At the moment we are working on a new logo for a new hotel that is going to open sometime in the near future and a picture book on what to do and what to see when you staying at Agave.
