Tripadvisor reveals new logo ahead of year-long identity refresh

Mother Design New York has begun a visual update for the advice-sharing website, starting with a simplified logo and “subtle” name change.

Mother Design’s New York studio has updated Tripadvisor’s logo as part of a wider identify refresh, which will roll out over the year.

Tripadvisor was established in 2000 as a way to provide travel guidance for other users. Anyone can create an account and review restaurants, hotels and other tourist attractions.

It also has a flight-finding service and offers customers options for holidays, from rentals to packages and car hire.

The site has nearly 460 million unique visitors each month and 830 million reviews and opinions. “The company knows the world of travel has evolved,” the studio says, “so it only makes sense that the platform’s branding follows suit.”

An exercise in “reduction”

The most noticeable change is the simplification of the company’s logo, Ollie the Owl. It was an “exercise both in reduction of complexity and amplification of character”, says Mother Design.

The owl, which used to have two differently coloured eyes and a yellow head, is now rendered in black only. “We retained its inherent personality but refined its geometry for better reproduction at all sizes,” the design studio says.

The “much simpler owl” appears on Tripadvisor’s website as well as the app.

A “real, global, human connection”

Mother Design has also created a series of icons, relating to the travel service’s various functions. A parasol represents ‘rest’, a backpack for ‘hike’ and a double bed for ‘stay’. There are also new icons for hotels, eating and the search function.

Although the logo is now monochrome, the colour palette for the identity remains varied. Some of the shades now include ‘TripGreen’, orchid, salmon, rose, sand, moss, pine and mustard.
A custom typeface, Trip Sans, has been provided by Colophon Foundry which “could carry the weight of the real, global, human connection the brand believes in”, Mother Design says.

Name change

Another change is the company’s name, from TripAdvisor to Tripadvisor. The company says that the “subtle change” reflects how “people recognise our name and pronounce it as a single word” after twenty years of existence.

Tripadvisor says that the logo update is only the “first step” in its “new look”, though it has not yet revealed further details about its new identity.