YEN | 2017

YEN. THINGS THAT MAKE YOU WANT TO TRAVEL

You might not know that ‘yen’ is not just the Japanese monetary unit, but also a passionate, ardent, intense longing or desire. A desire for someone who is not present, a strong wanting to do something what promises enjoyment or pleasure. Inclination, yearning, craving — all this, in other word, is yen.

But you definitely know this sensation. And particularly the feeling when you are being seized by the abrupt and almost irresistible desire to find yourself elsewhere. To pack a bag, jump into a car, buy a plane ticket and even before the night falls to walk barefoot along the shore of a distant sea. Or to caress warm night air of an alien city, reaching the hand out of a car window on the run. To blend in with the motley crowd in a downtown where no one knows you, or inhale the cold air on the top of a hill in total solitude. To see the sceneries you you couldn’t imagine and taste food you have never tried.

Some call it ‘wanderlust’, we call it ‘a yen for travel’. It sleeps in the DNA of every one of us and awakens unexpectedly when we encounter something unforetellably special. It might be something as abstract as a smell, a smack or someone’s stare. Or as tangible as a print on a stranger’s t-shirt, a photograph, a Starbucks coffee cup with your name miswritten on it; a ticket to a party you attended on the other side of the globe stuck between a notebook’s pages. Something that reminds you of how huge and beautiful the world is, how free and wild we are, reminds of that heady sense of the road.

YEN is about such things that evoke the desire to take an immediate journey and are intended for that. YEN is about smart, throughly-thought ‘equipment’ for long and short travels: customized notebooks with dozens of features and hidden compartments to keep your secrets and small items safe; secure, convenient, hi-tech and beautifully designed backpacks and suitcases to hold the necessary minimum and maximum. Bath and beauty sets for weekend rides, lazy-busy travel packs for particular countries and many other things tempting and inspiring you to take a trip and making it comfortable.

Developing a concept for a company being an expert on travels and focused on smart, well-thought goods for travelers, we, naturally, had a task to avoid the industry’s main cliches. It should have been something subtle and rather inspiring and wanderlust-provoking; something minimalistic, with the Asian fleur, but not too direct. ‘Yen’ and a bird became the answer to these requirements.

The graceful long-legged bird that became a trademark image is stilt, a migratory waterbird associated with the most exotic countries and the sea, which is often the aim of our travels. The brand and the stilt are literally ‘birds of a feather’— they share the same features: desire for migration and its easiness, accuracy and high organization.

The slogan is meant to be a bit ambiguous and transmit the idea of immaterial and material things radiating and provoking wanderlust.