ABOUT

Brief:

In 2011 ‘The Dragon Trip’ was formed to deliver unforgettable youthful travel experiences in Asia, and the company has since grown into a highly successful and respected global travel provider, catering to budget-conscious backpackers, adventurous families, and those seeking a little more comfort.

In 2017, ‘The Dragon Trip’ spun off into ‘The Learning Adventure’, now a market-leading specialist in providing transformative educational tours across the world.

As the two businesses (and a third offering, ‘The Coyote Trip’ providing immersive ‘Dragon Trip’ style experiences in North America) continue to experience rapid growth and evolve with ambitious plans for the future, 2024 has seen the need for the launch of an extensive rebrand.

Brand-first design and digital agency ‘Creative Clinic’ were appointed to manage the rebranding of both ‘The Dragon Trip’ and ‘The Learning Adventure’ (whilst ‘The Coyote Trip’ remains unchanged for now). The brief for this was to evolve the present brand identities to give them a slicker, fresher, more contemporary and sector-distinctive look and feel. In addition, there was a requirement to overhaul the individual brands’ design language, websites and guidelines, to equip the in-house teams to rollout communications independently.

Sitting above these brands, a new group company was also recently formed called ‘Transforma Travel Group’. Operating as an umbrella brand to ‘The Dragon Trip’, ‘The Learning Adventure’ and ‘The Coyote Trip’, this new company also required creation of a brand identity, guidelines and corporate website.


Medium:

• 3 x brand identity designs
• 3 x brand guidelines
• 3 x website design and development
• Templates and assets across all brands for print, web and social


Concept:

Whilst ‘The Dragon Trip’ brand needs to appeal largely to young travelers and families looking for fun and adventure, ‘The Learning Adventure’ brand is squarely targeted at education providers looking for a specialised and trusted tailor-made historical and cultural experience for their students (and the students’ parents and teachers). In addition, ‘Transforma Travel Group’ is aimed at corporate partners and investors.

Since all three brands have very distinct and disparate audiences, the brands do not operate visually as a connected suite. Each brand identity intentionally has a logo, typeface, colour palette, and design language that is unique, with the only common element being the way that the brand guidelines are presented.

‘The Dragon Trip’ logo includes a circular dragon icon (Is it a dragon tail? A whole dragon? Dragon fire?) so as to be culturally ambiguous (since dragons tend to be represented differently around the world). It is circular to reflect a journey from start to end (when another then begins), it represents global travel and also nods to a capital letter D.

‘The Learning Adventure’ identity is an evolution of the previous logo in its use of a paper airplane and colour application, however the plane icon has been simplified and redrawn and the lettering is now bolder and more confident. The previous logo was an awkward shape with the name stacked over three lines so it now sits more tightly. The introduction of the violet accent colour is new, as is the styling of imagery and headlines.

The ‘Transforma Travel Group’ identity is built around the concept of breaking boundaries, with the text of the business name breaking through a square shape. With a group mission to expand minds through transformative travel experiences, this brand identity reflects breaking away from the everyday – physically, mentally and culturally.


Execution:

Each individual brand has a unique identity consisting of a logo, typeface, colour palette, and design language.

A full suite of brand assets have been created for each brand, incorporating printed and digital stationery and business cards, social media templates produced in Canva, Powerpoint templates and flexible templates for advertising and marketing.

Each has a website that shares some functionality and backend, but with a tailored brand-first front end. The websites have been developed with both user experience and lead generation / search optimisation in mind.

All designs utilise large engaging images and clear space to present an uncluttered, easy to navigate interface that is sales-led and targeted at each of the brands’ core audiences.


Results:

The ‘Transforma Travel Group’ identity has been the first to launch and be rolled out. The brand is now in use and the website is live.

‘The Dragon Trip’ and ‘The Learning Adventure’ rebrands are being rolled out in June 2024.


Project Credit:

Designed by Creative Clinic