Epicure
Assignment
A travel discovery and planning app for un-tourists, and a lifestyle brand for people who hate lifestyle brands, Epicure uses fancy technologies to track down the places everybody wants to be, before everybody wants to be there. To help Epicure bring clarity to its original vision, develop a strategy, a visual identity, a voice and tone. To transform a rough idea and a rudimentary app into an elegant and irreverent brand, and a useful and beautiful digital product.
Ditch the Tourist Traps, Discover Culinary Nirvana
Sick of following the herd to overhyped, overcrowded “must-see” restaurants? Us too. What if there was a travel app for the adventurous epicurean, one that leverages cutting-edge tech to track culinary tastemakers? Imagine having your own in-the-know local friend, whisking you off the tourist trail and straight to hidden culinary gems. That’s Epicure – your curated passport to secret foodie havens, constantly updated and guaranteed to impress. We started with a raw, stripped-down version, aptly named after a legendary (and notoriously hard-to-get-into) fictional eatery: Epicure. Now, with a team of passionate investors and a mission to disrupt the travel app scene, we’re ready to take Epicure to the next level. Let’s redefine travel, one delicious bite at a time.
Pinkies up!
The new brand.
Built on the foundation of “non-conformism, democratic hedonism, untourism, and local globalism,” Epicure is a bold, playful, and self-assured brand crafted for those who crave a hint of exclusivity while remaining approachable, accessible, and trustworthy. The Epicurean Tribe. These are cosmopolitan tastemakers with a strong dose of independence. Well-versed in travel, they’re brimming with creativity and curiosity, seeking out hidden gems and secret experiences. They adore travel but despise mass tourism, and they’re the antithesis of snobs. Breaking the Mold with Style. Epicure embodies a certain kind of polite defiance, mirroring its ideal customer: someone who understands the rules well enough to playfully bend them. It’s a brand for the sophisticated rebels and those who don’t quite fit the mold.
Stepping out.
The Epicure app and website.
The first challenge in designing Epicure’s native app and website was to bring the new brand to life with all its attitude and eccentricities intact, balancing style with a thoroughly sleek and efficient user experience. The second challenge was organizing all of Epicure’s different types, layers and combinations of content — places and neighborhoods, itineraries and guides — to create a product that would feel seamless and intuitive, both on the map and in an editorial context.
Outcome.
Clear lines, vibrant colors and a dash of attitude. Epicure doesn’t just tell you where to go, it tells you why. And it does so in a consistent and smart editorial voice and with a look to match. The aim is not to show all the places on the planet and everyone’s comments about them, but to guide users to the spots really worth their time
Technologies
We used the following technologies on this project to ensure reliability and performance at every step, accounting for future platform stability and developer support, uptime and reliability ratings and a host of other factors. Read more about the technologies.
