We live, breathe and eat creative branding here at pixel8, and when one of our favourite clients was in need of a rebrand due to their recent multi-million pound investment proposition, we were more than happy to apply our expert knowledge and assist.
Silver Bay Holiday Village is a holiday park on the coast of Anglesey, North Wales. They specialise in bespoke lodge sales, providing a safe place for families to escape to within the UK. Only a two-hour drive away from Manchester, it’s one of the most beautiful holiday spots in the country.
To keep up to date with holiday trends, and to ensure customers retain access to a luxurious holiday park, the Silver Bay site has transitioned over the last few years from being a caravan site to one of the best holiday villages in North Wales - and so the refreshed brand needed to exude that.
Below we’ve detailed the timeframe, brief, challenge and outcome of the Silver Bay rebrand.
Client:
Timeframe:
2 months
Services:
Creative, Web Development, Content, Marketing
Brief:
Silver Bay Holiday Village already had a colour palette and a logo that they felt resonated with the brand. However, they identified a need to develop a perception of the brand amongst prospective lodge owners, ie, they needed a contemporary yet luxurious edge that matched the lifestyle and taste of their targets.
Our main aim was to revitalise, not reinvent across all of the brand collateral. This was simply because Silver Bay was already loved by owners, and so the brand refresh couldn’t be counter productive.
Challenge:
Silver Bay approached pixel8 for a rebrand, which included a website redesign, and this meant that all departments at pixel8 were involved in the project.
The multifaceted nature of the rebrand allowed all of the team to work together and develop something company-wide, and we applied our skills to create their new brand collateral including the website, digital, and also traditional print and stationery.
The project also required the team to dive deep into the psyche of the typical Silver Bay customer. Brand personas were already in place thanks to the marketing team, and alongside personal research and team discussions, everyone was able to craft a brand identity that would appeal to the typical Silver Bay prospect.
Outcome:
Logo Refresh:
The first task was to refresh the Silver Bay logo with subtle changes. The main focal point of our design was to ensure the logo was more legible and modern without losing the key features customers had come to know and love - and also to keep the wave that resonates with the beachfront living that homeowners get access to with a Silver Bay property.
With this in mind, we tidied up the main logo font to ensure both the size and spacing were balanced and visually appealing. The secondary font, ‘Holiday Village’, was also swapped to a Sans font that was easier to read and had a cleaner look when compared to the decorative main font. This ensured the logo was both balanced and aesthetically pleasing.
In terms of colour, we opted for a less harsh blue with positive connotations of rest and relaxation - which is exactly what customers can expect from a visit to Silver Bay.
Brand Colours:
Silver Bay already favoured blue and white when it come to their brand colours as it distinctly defined the brand’s proposition of glorious blue waters and relaxation. In fact, the colour blue is synonymous with trust, peace and serenity - something all prospects desire upon purchasing a holiday property.
The Silver Bay landscape features cool colours in both bright and subdued shades. The mellow colour palette inspired by it draws from those contrasts for a combination that brings to mind relaxing island holidays - just one example of how we can associate colour with certain places, moods, or emotions.
With the aim to keep within these themes, we decided to opt for a similar colour palette - but one of with a subtle and modern edge. We chose a tranquil, coastal colour combination to reflect life on the beach, and we combined calmer shades of blue with metallic silver and cool greys in order to promote the luxurious nature of the holiday park.
Brand Fonts:
As well as having the right colour palette and logo, it was important that the new fonts also reflected Silver Bay’s brand essence. In other words, the font needed to be approachable and friendly yet still sophisticated, and the typography needed to convey a sense of relaxed style.
We opted with lowercase lettering on the headlines to create an informal, amiable voice for the brand. We also chose a decorative, brush font to promote the opulence of the holiday village - both aspects of the park that already appeal current Silver Bay lodge owners.
The brush font work so well on this rebrand because they add a personal, almost hand-written element for customers - making it feel as though they are being directly addressed themselves. This type of font is usually seen on the likes of wedding invites and decorative collateral, which highlights the fun/downtime side of Silver Bay yet also retains that opulent, sophisticated touch.
When it came to subtitles, we chose to use a modern, clean Sans Serif font for both them and the copy. We wanted to contrast this with the decorative fonts used on the headlines.
Brand Website:
Just like much of the print collateral is image led, so too is Silver Bay’s brand new website. A slideshow of high-res images is the first focal point on the homepage, welcoming visitors for a taste of the Silver Bay lifestyle.
The flowing homepage feeds down into a gallery of images so visitors can easily browse through the core offerings at Silver Bay. Content choice has also been designed to reflect this, pulling on the desire of the potential customer to escape everyday life via lexis such as ‘relax’, ‘refresh’ and ‘enjoy’.
Each page has been designed to provide users with digestible chunks of information aligned with high-quality photography shot by professional photographers. A gallery also follows at the bottom to showcase the Silver Bay lifestyle.
Mobile-optimised and aesthetically pleasing, the new website design is a world away from the previous look that was slowly beginning to age. Now they have a website that reflects the bespoke feel of the holiday park, promoting the brand message and personality with ease, keeping within the opulent Silver Bay lifestyle.
Silver Bay Brochure:
As well as revamping the website, colours, fonts and logo, the holiday village brochure was also updated to bring it in line with the new brand design.
The new brochure is available to view on the website here and below, and includes imagery, content, and colours that are all aligned to the new brand guidelines. The design of the brochure has been created to mimic the soothing ambiance of a Silver Bay break, and features the elegant, modern blue colour palette with white font, as well as hero imagery and luxury focused content.
Stationery & Business Cards:
The brand’s business cards were also updated to feature the new brand style. The back of the card featured the same cool grey as the brochure with a white card on the bottom. Sandwiched between them acting and as an accent colour is blue sheet of card, giving a sophisticated yet durable feel.
A matt, textured stock has been used throughout all of the brand’s printed stationery, from business cards to envelopes, and also in the brochure. This quality stock has been chosen to reflect the luxury brand, and the matt finish is complementary to the tranquil colour scheme. Everything has been chosen carefully - even the texture is tactile, representing the coastal outdoors. All the print production further enhances the luxury brand using embossing on the brochure and silver foil detail throughout.
Summary
The Silver Bay Holiday Village website was officially launched late February 2017 and has already generated 13.5k views and has seen a huge performance improvement when compared year on year.
March 2016 vs March 2017
49.58% increase of direct traffic
83% increase of referral traffic
28% increase of organic traffic
31% increase of brochure downloads
It has been a pleasure to work on the project, and the client were also more than happy with the end result. Make sure you keep an eye out for new updates as the new website rollout progresses over the coming months.
