Feathering the Nest: A Look at Silvernest's Brand Refresh

When faced with uncertainty, it can be helpful to focus our energy on things we can control. It’s why some of us work on organizing our home when we’re faced with a stressful life event or waiting for news of a big decision. The twists and turns of the last two years have given us plenty of reasons to feel overwhelmed, so the Silvernest team has been working on organizing our home. In addition to updating our features and pricing, we refreshed the look and feel of our brand to better reflect what we know about our user base and what they value about Silvernest.  

Even amid a pandemic, we saw more people opening their homes to homesharing than ever before. We saw working mothers with young children, an artist bringing several housemates together and a French writer and teacher eager to share her home country’s tradition of hospitality. We were inspired by the rich array of homesharers with varying backgrounds and circumstances. What is clear is that homesharing is for anyone. Here’s how we hope to celebrate that with our brand refresh.  

Illustrating the joy of homesharing 

We believe that Silvernest can help to enrich lives by better reflecting the energy of our community and making homesharing more approachable. So we worked with illustrator Kari Cialec Modén on a new set of joyful illustrations to express the spirit of how homesharing has grown in our community. 

 
It was important for us to illustrate concepts and convey sentiments that expand the picture of what homesharing looks like and who does it. By weaving in whimsy, we wanted to reinforce the idea that homesharing can be an option that offers new and exciting opportunities vs. an option to pursue only as a last resort.  

Typography and color palette 

Our updated typography system and color palette are the backbone of our brand. Our goal was to increase readability and establish a strong foundation we can continuously improve upon to make Silvernest a more comfortable experience for even more people.  

We introduced Clarendon URW to display our headings. While it’s a highly readable typeface, it’s also a familiar and timeless one. You may recognize it as it was commonly used on wanted posters of the American Old West and in newspaper headlines dating back to the 1850s.  

Perhaps the reason why we gravitated toward Clarendon was that we saw it as a metaphor for what we do at Silvernest. Like Clarendon, we pair tradition (sharing a home) with modern-day sensibilities (scalable technology that allows us to impact more communities).  

We continue to use Trenda to display our body copy. It’s our brand’s workhorse due to the versatility afforded us by its wide character set.  

We had a lot of fun exploring an updated color palette that is unexpected yet inviting. We introduced a deep plum color to pair with varying shades and tints of forest green. You’ll see this on top of more sophisticated neutrals like blush pink and autumn blonde. Our Silvernest orange remains our stamp and pop of color to use when we want to make our mark.  
  

We sincerely hope you feel at home in our updated space. Will you let us know what you think?