Cinco - Aspen - Resort-Wide Brand Refresh

Aspen is simultaneously a place, an idea, and a globally renowned brand. Aspen Snowmass and their parent company, Aspen Skiing Company, encompass 4 mountains, two hospitality brands, rental/ski shops, and a variety of restaurants. We worked alongside their teams to create a vision that could align their businesses: Inspire journeys within to advance possibilities for all. This purpose became the foundation for brand architecture, platform, and visual and messaging systems to help put them on par with the best brands in the world.

Identity
Platform
Visual Language
Voice
Guidelines

Person scraping snow from the roof surrounding a deck

A unifying symbol & approach.

Over time, the unique mountains and businesses had developed individual personas, but sometimes lacked clear ways to point visitors back to the larger brand ecosystem. We developed a single unified mark that would shine as a beacon for the experience Aspen Snowmass communicates across the globe. The new mark leverages all the heritage and equity that the leaf had built over its 75-year history but brings the brand into a more modern space that would work across touchpoints and channels.

Connecting with our audience.

We needed to shift the global perception of Aspen Snowmass to align with their growth and sustainability-focused company culture. We focused our position and crafted a brand promise, Return Transformed, that would speak to an audience in pursuit of meaningful change for themselves and others, The Seekers.

A flexible system.

Bold yet clear. Modern yet vibrant. The design system we created for the Aspen Snowmass brand was built to highlight and support the brand’s overarching promise of Return Transformed– clearly marking the brand’s presence while providing ample room for dynamic and engaging content. The system flexes to allow unique stories for each individual mountain while providing clear wayfinding and connecting opportunities to help visitors navigate across experiences.

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Four mountains, one Aspen.

We helped to restructure and brand the mountain personalities to be more closely aligned with how people actually experience them– all while unifying the wide offering under the new brand ethos. This clarified and focused approach allowed each mountain to develop its own voice and vibe to speak to its specific audience while supporting the promise of the overarching brand.

"We built a cohesive, resort-wide system that could also flex to tell each mountain’s unique story. It was important to us to go deeper than assigning each mountain a different color."