Pentagram's Paula Scher creates new typographically led identity for Expedia Group

Pentagram partner Paula Scher has created a new identity for online travel brand, Expedia Group. In a redesign which sees typography move to the front of the brand’s identity, it “better unites its extensive family of travel brands, businesses and teams, while acknowledging the unique contribution of each individual brand to the success of the Expedia Global group business,” Pentagram explains.

Working closely with Expedia Group in the identity’s development, the design consultancy describes the rebrand as representing the “contemporary attitude” of the brand. “We are the world’s travel platform,” state Expedia Group. “We bring the world within reach.”

Built around the graphic cornerstone of a lowercase ‘e’, “which the designers drew as an aerodynamic letterform with a tapered eye and flat-cut terminal,” Pentagram then developed a full custom font for the brand with type designer Jeremy Mickel. The result is a curving sans serif titled Expedia Group Display, “enables Expedia to own the ‘e’; in applications like promotions and collateral, it is immediately recognisable and accessible,” the design consultancy explains. The secondary type for Expedia is the sans serif Neuzeit Grotesk and both are applied in a selected colour palette of white, blue and black.

By utilising typography as the key graphic of the travel brand the identity is a “cohesive system” and has the capability to extend “the typography to Expedia’s many B2B sub-brands, and to an endorsement line that may appear alongside consumer brands,” says Pentagram.