Odessia

Odessia is an AI travel agent that plans and books entire trips in a single conversation. Francis Davidson, co-founder of Sonder, built the business around a specific belief: that the trip you imagine and the trip you take shouldn't be two different things. We helped Francis and his team bring this whole world to life, from the name to the product.

We didn’t want to build another search tool with a chat interface bolted on. The founder wanted something that felt genuinely different from online travel agencies (OTAs), aggregators, and the AI wrappers that show you options but don’t really help. The question we kept coming back to wasn't what the product does, it was who should personify what modern travel should feel like?

The name Odessia comes from a fictional Greek goddess of travel, one who covers the desire to go, the clarity when you know what you actually want, the pleasure of the trip itself, and the memories that outlast it. Our hero has been everywhere, which means she has earned knowledge. This character’s ethos became the foundation for each decision that followed.

Odessia’s wordmark balancing geometric precision with a humanist touch that keeps it from feeling cold or purely historical. We wanted it to feel trusted, and modern at the same time.

Inspired by ancient Greek currency, each coin is illustrated and sculptural, designed to spin and catch light when a traveler hits a milestone or completes a trip. The coins live in the product as achievement markers, which means the brand motif and the product interaction are the same thing. We continued this theme through employing warm clay and gold tones throughout the user experience. And lastly, we balanced the warmth against a deep, Aegean blue.

The illustration system draws from travel journals, made in gouache and watercolor with soft washes and organic edges. The style sits between memory and documentation, the way a sketch you made on a terrace in Lisbon feels different from a photograph of the same view. It gives the brand visual range beyond the interface and the mark.

For the product, we designed a conversational interface that leads with destinations, not technology. The experience puts imagery and place first; the AI reasoning stays out of the way until it has something specific to show. One conversation handles flights, hotels, itineraries, loyalty points, and booking from start to finish.

The interface had to feel warm and considered, not utilitarian. We designed a thin, minimalist icon system with a subtle embossed, paper-like depth that integrates into the UI without competing with destination imagery.

The conversational flow is built around the traveler's preferences accumulating over time, so every trip gets easier to plan than the last.

The Odessia Collection adds thousands of luxury properties with VIP treatment built in: upgrades, credits, and early check-in for travelers who don't have a personal assistant but travel like they do.

The achievement system marks the milestones along the way, from first booking to explorer status, each one a coin spinning against the places you've been.

The product at the end of the flow. Trip planned, booked, and beautiful.

We helped Emma (our incredible marketing lead) on the NYC billboard campaign launched alongside the product, which posed travel riddles in the streets and awarding trips to solvers.

It was a clean expression of the brand's confidence: Odessia knows travel well enough to play with it. The identity held across each touchpoint, from the billboard serif to the product interface to the coin spinning on your phone when you land somewhere new.

See the full experience at odessia.com.