Airbnb

Airbnb has new branding by DesignStudio.
It’s fun, fresh and really dig it.
Former NYTimes.com design director, Khoi Vihn disagrees:

I can’t pretend to know what went into designing the Bélo, but the end result is surprisingly tone deaf. This seems like a case of a still young startup that wants to assign meaning to its stratospherically successful brand so badly that it has quickly gotten in over its head. The story that Airbnb tells in order to contextualize its new identity seems similarly hamfisted and overly self-important to the point of satire. Airbnb is successfully disrupting the tremendous and staid lodging industry, but it’s hard to imagine this particular combination of pomposity and message mismanagement from say Holiday Inn.
Khoi wouldn’t have to “pretend to know what went into the design” because DesignStudio documented the process behind their work. I particularly like how the logo forms an “A” from two b’s facing in each other. It also looks like an upside-down heart.
Opinions are like assholes. Everybody has one (I do, Khoi does).
If Airbnb had crowdsourced a shitty logo over the weekend, they’d be getting chastised for putting to little effort into their branding. For Khoi, they’ve done too much. You’re damned if you do, and you’re damned if you don’t.
Personally, I live by the gospel according to Andy Warhol: “Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.”
The same goes for design.

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