Slow Europe

A new logo for Slow Europe! We don’t plan to launch Slow Europe until the fall, but I found a graphic artist whose work I really liked, so I thought I would get a logo for the site now. The logo has the spiral for “slow”, surrounded by the elements of water, sun and earth.

The logo designer, Ginés Valera, lives in Spain. I explained to him what the Slow Europe site will be about - finding vacation/villa/holiday rentals in Europe - and showed him the Slow Food and Slow Travel logos with their snail and spiral logos. This is his representation of our idea. I love this logo - I think it will look good on a baseball cap! :)

A new logo for Cotswolder! Cotswolder will be launched in August. Part of the site is available now and the last section, Towns & Villages of the Cotswolds, is almost ready.

The new logo for Cotswolder is a spiral of bluebells. My favorite time of year in the Cotswolds is the spring when the woods are filled with Bluebells and Ransoms Ramsons (also called Garlic Flowers). I sent Ginés some of my spring flower photos and this is what he came up with for our logo. I love the spiral and the colors and being reminded of spring in the Cotswolds.

These logos were designed by Ginés Valera (www.mediacomm.es and www.lumina.es (under construction) - email: info@mediacomm.es). Ginés is Lumina on FeaturePics, a great site for buying graphics and photos to use on your websites.

Both sites will be redesigned over the next few weeks to incorporate the new logos.

What is Slow Europe?

So far, Slow Europe is my blog “Views from the Slow Lane”, but behind the scenes we are putting together our lists of favorite vacation rental resources (agencies, farms/estates, rent from owner directory sites, tourist office sites). If someone asks “how do I find a good vacation rental in Paris?”, I want the answer to be “go to sloweurope.com and have a look at their recommended resources for Paris vacation rentals”.

You may ask - didn’t you do this already with Slow Travel (slowtrav.com), the site you sold last year? Yes, SlowTrav started out as a guide to vacation rentals in Europe, but it grew into an online travel community with reviews, trip reports, photos and articles by travelers who stay in vacation rentals. Once we started to take paid classifieds from vacation rental agencies, we moved away from having an unbiased list of good vacation rental resources. SlowTrav is still the best resource on the web for vacation rentals in Europe and worldwide and is a fantastic resource for travelers. I am still an active member of the Slow Travel forums.

Slow Europe will be an extra resource - our list of recommended vacation rental resources for Europe, updated twice a year. It is the list that many of us Slow Travelers maintain on our own - vacation rental agencies that look good, the directory sites with the most listings for Italy or France, which tourist office sites offer online booking.

How about Cotswolder?

Cotswolder should have been launched in June, but the writing and research is taking longer than I expected. I am working on it now and it will be launched by mid-August. Some of the site is currently available - About the Cotswolds, Plan Your Trip, Accommodations, etc. The last section, Towns & Villages of the Cotswolds, is being worked on now.

I have enjoyed taking the time to start a site from scratch. The last time I did this was in spring 2000, when I started SlowTrav. I am also enjoying writing about a small area (the Cotswolds). We have traveled there regularly for the past several years and had wonderful vacations. I am hoping that Cotswolder will give travelers the information they need to have similar wonderful, countryside vacations.

Tags: logo

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 29th, 2008 at 2:26 pm and is filed under Web Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.