BRINK-BERLIN

An unsolicited pitch to a spa whose branding didn't match what they'd actually built.

Case Study

problem

I went there as a customer. The facilities were genuinely excellent and the brand was doing them no favours — the usual wellness language of greenery, candlelight and flowing water, which every spa uses and which has stopped meaning anything. So I wrote myself a brief and built the identity they didn't ask for.

solution

This had to be an identity that stopped depicting calm and started producing it. Deep orange voids — large, warm, almost featureless — that function less like branding and more like an environment you step into. The colour wasn't chosen for trend. In a grey northern city, orange is warmth, fire, serotonin. It doesn't need to be explained. It works on you before you've read anything.

Berlin burns people out. Fast, grey, relentless with your energy. Brink had to feel like a suspension of the city you walked in from.

The typography had to be readable by someone with nothing left. That ruled out most of what the category does — script faces, layered type, anything that needs a second of interpretation before it resolves. A tired person shouldn't have to decode a spa's name. So the type is brutalist and flat, set large, with softness appearing only where it's earned. It says what it is and gets out of the way.

Photography works the opposite way. Where the type recedes, the images do the seducing: facilities shot cinematically, slightly expressionist, lit as though the building exists outside of time. That framing pulls the space away from the city psychologically, and makes it look like somewhere worth being photographed inside — which is how a spa actually spreads. Exclusivity arrives through restraint rather than opulence. Private rooms, serious equipment, and a palette aimed at a nervous system rather than a moodboard.

status

Pitched unsolicited to a Berlin spa. Not taken forward for that venue, but they asked to hold the identity for a high-end space they're considering opening in 2027. Shown here with the name changed at their request.

year

2026

timeframe

14 days

tools

Affinity, Figma, Weavy, Framer