Gostiny Dom

When we first met the team behind Warsaw’s "Gostiny Dom" hostel network, their digital presence was crying out for a complete transformation. The existing website, while functional, was built on custom hard-coded scripts that made even the simplest content update a developer-dependent chore. Booking a room required picking up the phone or reaching out to a manager directly, with no option for online payment.

Their visual identity was equally problematic — the logo, an ornate gold cursive monogram, felt fussy and dated, while the brand’s color palette existed in theory but had never been systematically applied.

The client’s brief was ambitious yet clear. They wanted a full rebranding, starting with a fresh logo and a cohesive set of brand guidelines.
The website needed to migrate to WordPress so that their own staff could manage content independently, without waiting for technical support. Above all, they required a seamless online booking engine with integrated payment capabilities, and they insisted that mobile responsiveness not only be preserved but elevated.

Over the course of five months, we tackled every layer of this challenge. We explored dozens of logo directions before landing on a refined monogram where the letters "G" and "D" subtly form a house silhouette, drawing inspiration from the Montserrat typeface. We reworked their existing green and dark yellow into cleaner, more intentional primary colors, then introduced orange, light gray, and black as accent tones to add depth and modernity.

On the development side, we migrated all content from the legacy system to a WordPress environment, designed every key page from the ground up in Figma, and built a custom booking interface with real-time availability and online payment, which our development partner then implemented
to match our pixel-perfect mockups.

In the end, the client walked away with far more than a facelift. They gained operational freedom, now able to update prices, swap out photos, or publish news without ever touching a line of code. Their guests can now book and pay instantly, cutting out the manual middleman and accelerating conversion.

The brand itself feels calm, collected, and contemporary — a stark contrast to the gold swirls of the past. And while the old site was already responsive, the new version delivers a visually superior experience across every screen size, proving that a thoughtful redesign can honor legacy while pushing boldly forward.