UNESCO world heritage site rebranding
This project was my first introduction to the complex and throrough field of branding and image curation. I chose the Island of Delos in Greece as my heritage site as I had written an essay on the location just a year earlier for art history; in the modern day, Delos can appear unassuming and insignifigant compared to more famous Greek sites like the Parthenon and Olympia, yet it was an important cultural landmark among Ancient Greeks as it was named the birthplace of the gods Artemis and Apollo and a wealthy merchant port in the Aegean Sea.
I spent hours agonizing over the logo, trying to find the perfect balance between simplicity and singularity; I did not want the logo to fall into the cliches of representing Greek culture with temples and pottery, so I looked to the art of Delos for inspiration. There is a statue found only on the island that depicts one of its wealthy residents back when it was a successful port, and this crumbling sculpture became the basis for the logo. From there, I took the angles and form of the statue to create shapes similiar to mosaic pieces
The island is most known for the art scattered among its ruins, whether it be the intricatly detailed tesserae mosaics or highly realistic marble statues of gods and mortal alike. I felt a big reason Delos can often go ignored by travelers is a combination of its distance from the mainland and its lack of good online advertising, aside from its page on the UNESCO site. My hope with this rebrand was to create an identity unique to the island that would appeal to the traveling art lovers of the world.
From there, I embraced jewel tone blues in my design as it is the national color of Greece and represents the beautiful Aegean Sea that surrounds the island. Delos is not a typical tourist beach location as much as it is a learning site visited by art lovers and historians; I decided a modern yet elegant look would best intrigue the intended audience. Avenir, a sans serif, kept the type throughout my designs sleek and sophisticated, all the while elevating the modern rebranding of the island.
