Travel’s about a lot more than just a destination.
Travel’s all about emotion. It spins you round, turns you upside down and — if it’s good travel — turns everything you’ve taken for granted on its head. We travel to lose ourselves, we travel to find ourselves. It’s where we feel most alive, where we stay up late, follow our impulses and surrender to the unknown. We travel to slow time down, we travel for the pulse-quickening rush of adventure and — possibly most of all — we travel to fall in love.
With such a strong emotional pull to our wanderlust, it’s only natural that when it comes to selling a travel destination, we head for the emotional. That’s why it wasn’t a problem when we had to backwards engineer the creation of a premium look book for a luxury Tenerife resort and residence from just a lifestyle photography shoot. The stunning imagery captured the emotional proposition — all we had to add was stripped back lyrical copy and beautiful design and we had a destination story ready to capture the imagination of a luxury audience.
Even if you don’t have a lot to go on, you can still awaken the spirit of exploration. Pam Grossman, Director of Visual Trends at Getty Images discussed the growing trend of ‘Wonderlust’ — a trend that ‘speaks to the ways in which we’re living as human beings, the ways in which we’re exploring the world, and our rising sentiments about the planet that we live on’ (see full quote here from the article by Anastasia Dykovskaya). To her, it’s about connecting with the journeyman inside us all, tapping into ‘the experience of travelling and exploring the world to transform, metamorphasize and really learn something about oneself, whether that’s becoming a better person or having some kind of spiritual experience.’ Nowadays everyone’s selling adventure, and the more we travel, see and discover, the more we crave the new and the different.
Our copy, design and structure was designed to play with colour, texture and scale, exploring concepts of imagination, exploration and possibility and introducing an element of surprise. We let our imagination run wild. Not difficult at all.
It’s not all fluffy emotion though. Travellers — especially luxury travellers — are looking for brands that believe in the same things they do — a shared ethos of sustainability, life-enhancing experiences and opportunities to truly connect with a place and its natural landscapes. It works both ways — people want to travel well and search out the real personality of a place, and travel destinations want to create a deeper connection between a person and a place. The key? Experience. The more authentic and memorable the experience, the deeper the connection.
More and more travel brands are bringing varying degrees of conscious design to the travel experience, with the aim of creating those unforgettable moments for their visitors. So as designers and writers, our role is to reflect those experiences in our visual language. Imagery that captures a moment of bliss, ideas that call to our minds to stop spinning, and find ourselves in the present moment.
Because it’s not where you travel, it’s the emotions that are left in your minds, long after you’ve left. Tell these stories visually through beautiful design and experiential copy, and you’ll inspire your audiences not just to feel the beauty of a place, but to fall in love.
