Since 2014, Peerspace has been opening doors to rentable spaces in cities across the world, from photo studios to meeting rooms to bars. The network allows users to hold personal and professional events in unique locations and community is at the heart of the business. 

To communicate this better, Peerspace enlisted the skills of Mother Design to create new branding inspired by the company’s customers, who range from photographers, filmmakers, event planners, content creators and more. 

“Peerspace has operated the largest and most successful peer-owned marketplace for booking venues and spaces. At the time they came to Mother Design, the landscape had become more crowded and indistinguishable making it harder to stand out and communicate why people should choose Peerspace,” explains the studio. 

The main challenge for Mother Design was what most digital-led brands face in a busy market: comparison to those who came before them. “The easiest way to describe who Peerspace is was to say: ‘The Airbnb for hourly rentals’. While being compared to Airbnb is not a bad thing, it does immediately take away the uniqueness of what Peerspace is,” says Mother Design.

“So, our brief was to help them redefine and express who they are, what they do and what they stand for in a way that is relevant, memorable and timeless. In short, develop a brand strategy, tone of voice and design system that is recognisable and would inspire hosts and guests to choose Peerspace.”

The studio decided to step away from the previously muted logo and branding towards something more dynamic, by embracing space – Peerspace’s core offering – and motion. For instance, the logotype has been called ‘The Stack’ and takes the eye on a journey up and down, left to right and zigzagging in the square of space it occupies. 

The wordmark adopts a similarly bold approach and is inspired by historic analogue poster printing. The ‘P’ icon is simple and minimal, but slightly angled to mimic the opening of “a door to endless possibility”.   

A punchy purple has been brought into Peerspace’s colour palette along with black, white and neutral tones. “We knew we needed a single colour to aid in brand recognition, so we landed on our primary brand colour, Peerspace Purple,” says the team. “It blends the brand’s two previous colours to create a vivid hue that both references Peerspace’s history and boldly stands out amongst the tech-y aesthetic of its competition.” 

Mother Design also used Social, a typeface by Dinamo, across the branding. “Friendly, robust, and full of personality, it stands out from a crowd of geometric sans serifs – it’s nearly the typographic equivalent of a Peerspace listing,” they note. 

Photography also plays a role in visualising the three key aspects of the Peerspace experience, “the space, the process and the result”, to authentically represent what Peerspace makes possible, and how they do it. 

“All together, our intent with each aspect of the visual identity was to not just represent the Peerspace platform, but even more importantly, what makes it special: its users, and the extraordinary things they achieve,” says Mother Design.

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