Airbnb trades its script logo for the Bélo

Until July 2014, Airbnb's logo was a lower-case cursive “a” that had stood for the company for several years.² Creative Review later called it a “friendly but unmemorable blue-and-white scripted logo”.¹⁰ The website around it was full of shadows and gradients, and its text sat on top of photos.²

Airbnb was already a big company with a thin brand.⁷⁴ Entrepreneur put its worth at upwards of $10 billion, and noted it was in some highly controversial legal battles.⁷ DesignStudio, the agency it hired, said Airbnb “didn't have a brand as we know it”, and that the brand it did have spoke for the technology more than the people.⁴

The founders had never sat down to design a whole brand, DesignStudio said.⁴ They had made a series of logos to keep up with a fast-growing business.⁴

Chesky wrote that the community “has outgrown the original Airbnb brand.”¹ Chesky and co-founders Joe and Nate had spent the past year soul-searching.¹⁷ Their answer was one idea. “For so long, people thought Airbnb was about renting houses. But really, we're about home.”¹ Belonging defined Airbnb, Chesky wrote, but the way the company had shown itself to the world “hasn't fully captured this.”¹

Fortune reports that the rethink began sometime in 2013, led by Douglas Atkin, the new global head of community.⁸ His team interviewed 480 people around the world, including employees as well as guests and hosts.⁸ Guests kept saying that “the last thing they wanted to be is tourists.”⁸ DesignStudio did its own fieldwork. A process note quoted by Logo Design Love says four of its staff set out to visit 13 cities on four continents, staying with 18 hosts, each with a $100 video camera.⁶ The agency's current case study speaks of 18 metro cities and villages instead.⁵ It concluded that Airbnb's line “a place to stay” was “selling it short.”⁵

Airbnb launched the new identity on July 16, 2014, at an event for its users, alongside a redesign of its website and apps.²³ The script “a” was replaced by the Bélo, which Chesky introduced as “the universal symbol of belonging.”¹ Entrepreneur described it as four simple symbols combined.⁷ A head stands for people and a location icon for place, while a heart stands for love and the A stands for Airbnb.⁷

DesignStudio, based in London and San Francisco, took a year to finish the identity.⁶ Four of its team worked at Airbnb's headquarters for the whole project.⁴ Part of the aim was a mark anyone could draw.⁴ Around it came a custom version of Lineto's Circular typeface and a bespoke colour called Rausch, named after the street where Airbnb was founded.⁴ DesignStudio described Rausch as passion “without the aggression of pure red.”⁴

The site changed too. Chesky said every page of the web and mobile experience had been redesigned.¹ TechCrunch saw a flatter look with more white space, and text that once sat on photos moved below them.² A tool called Create Airbnb let each user make a personal version of the symbol.¹ Chesky called the result “a shared brand identity.”¹ Fortune says the chief marketing officer, Jonathan Mildenhall, who had recently joined from Coca-Cola, named the Bélo and persuaded the founders to make “Belong anywhere” the official tagline.⁸ DesignStudio says it defined that mission itself, while Fortune credits Atkin with leading the belonging work.⁵⁸

The mockery started at once. Within 24 hours, sexual readings of the logo had been collected on a Tumblr blog, Fortune reports.⁸ On launch day, TechCrunch called belonging “kind of a hippy-dippy concept.”² In 2024, DesignStudio co-founder Paul Stafford told Creative Review that a search for the memes turns up “every part of genitalia you can imagine, through to Peter Griffin's chin.”¹⁰

Some saw other logos in it.⁹ Users pointed to the Habitat and Sushi Shop symbols, and to the software developer Automation Anywhere.⁹ A statement reported by Dezeen and quoted by The Branding Journal called that likeness a coincidence, and said Automation Anywhere was moving to a new logo.⁹ The same statement says both firms began using their new logos in early 2014, while Airbnb's own timeline dates the launch July 16, 2014.⁹³

Airbnb's own users joined in. Over the next few months, more than 80,000 people designed their own versions of the logo, Fortune reports.⁸ In November 2014, Chesky told Atkin he felt “Belong anywhere” would be the company's mission for the next 100 years.⁸ Ten years after launch, Creative Review wrote that the logo now has “a reassuring familiarity”, though it was “greeted very differently” in 2014.¹⁰

The people it was made for took it up.⁸ Fortune argues that whatever the press thought, Airbnb's users “seemed to get it”, and says more than 80,000 people designing their own versions was a rate of engagement larger brands would consider “off the charts”.⁸ Airbnb also embraced the fuss.⁸ Atkin later called it “equal-opportunity genitalia.”⁸

DesignStudio's own view is that “Belong Anywhere” unified the business and set it apart.⁵ The agency says the messaging stopped leading with location and price, and spoke instead about the warmth of no longer feeling like a tourist.⁵ That matches what guests told Atkin's team, which suggests the idea came out of customers' own words.⁸

The business numbers need care. DesignStudio says the rebrand trended on Twitter and helped push Airbnb's valuation to “$29 billion above their closest competitor in less than four years.”⁵ That is the agency's claim about its own work, and the wording is hard to parse. Entrepreneur put Airbnb at upwards of $10 billion at launch, and Fortune's 2016 excerpt mentions a $30 billion valuation.⁷⁸ None of these sources shows how much of that growth came from the brand.