Genius Loci: A Place Branding Agency
Genius Loci is a conceptual place strategy agency built on the belief that cultural storytelling and community wellbeing aren't in tension with market success, but are its foundation. We were inspired by iconic place branding campaigns like I♥NY, which showed how place branding can rebuild a city. But we realized that as overtourism and gentrification become even bigger, interconnected problems, a new model for place branding is needed.
Developed with Prerana Godambe as a capstone project at Parsons School of Design, the project began with research, including expert interviews, and grew into a full agency concept, including a brand system, business model, social content, brand video, and a stakeholder engagement with the Meatpacking District's Business Improvement District (BID).
CONTEXT
Year-Long Capstone · M.S. Strategic Design and Management · Parsons School of Design · Speculative strategy, prototyped
TEAM
2 Designers
YEAR
2025-26
INDUSTRY
Place Branding & Strategy
TECH STACK
Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro)
Figma
Claud (research & ideation)
Miro
Pitch
MY ROLE
VISUAL IDENTITY DESIGN
LOGO DESIGN
BRAND STRATEGY
BUSINESS STRATEGY
VIDEOGRAPHY
VIDEO EDITING
SOCIAL CONTENT
RESEARCH & INSIGHTS
DECK DESIGN & PRESENTATION
The Challenge
Place branding is too often built to deliver market value — foot traffic, tourism revenue, investment — reducing communities, histories, and lived experiences into a single polished narrative to get there. Extractive campaigns feed the broader pressures of overtourism and gentrification, which displace the communities that shape a place to begin with.
The Strategy
Genius Loci works inside-out, starting from the lived experiences of locals rather than what's trending or what captures audiences and investment, so that market value is grown from a place and returned to it, not extracted from it. We built a standardized process for gathering cultural and community insights, bridging between research and execution so every branding decision rests on informed strategy.
The Solution
Our solution begins with a cultural audit: a diagnostic study measuring the gap between how a neighborhood is lived, performed, and communicated, delivered as a Place Gap Score. We use those findings to build a narrative grounded in what the neighborhood is, what it's becoming, and how it wants to be understood. Finally, we offer ongoing advisory, tracking how the neighborhood's story shifts over time — across social channels, press, programming, and community signals — and advise on alignment.
RESEARCH METHODS
Exploration
Mapped the landscape: competitors, market size, stakeholders, traveler behavior
Validation & Iteration
Engaged BIDs, industry experts, travelers, and residents to test and refine concept
110+
travelers surveyed
15
in-depth interviews with industry experts
4
NYC neighborhoods studied through conversations with BIDs, BID annual reports, local forums, and informal field interviews with residents
3
scholarly works grounding the strategy: Edward Bruner, Nelson Graburn, and Manuel Delgado
INSIGHTS
Polished marketing erodes trust. Experts explained romanticized content creates expectation gaps, while unscripted, on-the-ground content tends to build trust and authenticity. Our content leads with original imagery and real moments instead of staged or stock imagery.
Places are remembered through all senses, not just sight. One expert argued digital content often optimizes for the wrong sense. Our content also conveys daily life through sound, texture, taste, and movement, so it translates what a place feels like, not only how it looks.
What travelers say they want doesn't predict what they do. 50% of survey respondents said they seek rest when traveling, yet 90% sought out local, community-based experiences in practice. This shaped our positioning and tone: we speak to the the lived, local experience.
A place's culture can be categorized into three layers: how it's experienced by the people living in it, how it's performed through programming, events, and the built environment, and how it's communicated through media and marketing.
Genius Loci sits where all three align. The less they overlap, the wider the Place Gap. Our mission is to bridge this gap — to brand and market places in a way that achieves market success while growing the wellbeing of the communities that make them.
Brand Strategy & Identity
Genius Loci:
A Latin phrase that literally means the "spirit of a place".
Today, it's used to describe the unique character, mood, vibe or soul of a physical location.
MATT BLUE
#1E63C6
DEEP NAVY
#0B1F3B
WARM STONE
#D7D0C4
SKY BLUE
#A7C6EC
SAGE
#8FA88A
LINEN
#ECEBDE
HEADING 1
HEADING 2
BODY
SOCIAL CONTENT
Content that puts the research into practice, using original photography and video to show places as they're lived instead of as they're packaged. All graphics and videos were shot and edited by me.
