Year of the Durian is a travel blog created by journalist Lindsay Gasik, to document her travels exploring the culture around the curious fruit, durian. I was hired by Lindsay to rebrand Year of the Durian in 2019, including a new logo design, brand style guide, and graphics design and consulting for their new app, The Durian Tourist.

Strategy

I had known Lindsay and the Year of the Durian team for some time by the time we began the new logo design, being a fan of their content as well as working for them on side projects, so I had a good feel for the brand’s style going in.

They are a really fun brand to work with from a my perspective as a designer, because I love dynamics and paradox within a brand, and Year of the Durian had this great balanced personality of sincerity and quirkiness. On one side, it approached exploration and articles from a botanical research perspective. On the other, it was self-aware about the strangeness of the durian fruit and the passionate niche culture around it. It was important for me to embody both sides, the scholarly and the playful.

Logo

We definitely wanted the logo to be distinctly durian, however we also wanted it to show travel as well as the passing of time, seeing as the mission was to track the equatorial seasonality of the fruit, and chase where it is ripe around the globe.

The type, again, was to have the feeling of sophistication and oddity at once.

Below are some other Year of the Durian items I have designed, so you can get a feel for the branding.

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Book Cover

In the Fall of 2017, prior to designing their new logo, I was hired to create a book cover for Year of the Durian’s first printed guide book, The Durian Tourist’s Guide to Penang. While this book did not fall under the chronological umbrella of the rebranded look, its design and success actually served to lay the foundation for what would become of the brand aesthetics.

Merch

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