Booking.com is an online hotel booking service, which was created in 1996 and today is the world’s most popular hospitality reservation service. Both the website and the application are available in more than 40 languages and has a wide catalog of listings (approximately 28 million).
The Booking Com visual identity is minimalist and balanced. Evoking a pleasant friendly feeling, its logo features two different shades of blue and no extra details.
The Booking wordmark is executed in a smooth modern sans-serif typeface with distinctive elegant lines. The custom font, called Booking Sans, is similar to Conflict and Domestos Sans-Black typefaces.
The custom font was created by Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam agency with an idea of planet Earth in mind. The aim was to create a functional and welcoming nameplate, which was brilliantly achieved.
The earliest Booking logo included the full address of the website. It was set in a clear sans serif type, where all the letters were capitalized. There was nothing unique about the wordmark (even the color was just black), but still, it was perfectly legible.
Only the name of the brand, “Bookings,” was left, while the dot and “nl” disappeared. This meant that the brand was already familiar to the majority of the customers, so there was no need to include the whole address. The type was the same.
The glyphs grew wider, which made them look heavier. The “N” looked especially wide.
The designers decided to drop the “heavy” tendency. Instead, they opted for a lighter type. The top and lower parts of the “B” were slightly rounded. Also, the dot and the lettering “com” were added, to help the customers find the right website. This was necessary as the company changed its name (the final “s” was dropped).
Another important innovation was that the blue palette was introduced.
The dark and light blue colors of the Booking.Com logo are a representation of the professional and reliable company, which values its customers’ comfort and safety and provides the best possible reservation services.
For its mobile app icon, the brand uses only white “Booking” lettering placed on deep blue background. Its minimalism and simplicity do not make the brand’s logo less recognizable, on the contrary, it elevates the logo and makes it timeless.