Alpaca Bothy Company
The Alpaca Bothy Company began with a decision that most people only talk about: leaving England, relocating to rural Scotland and building something genuinely different from scratch. Stuart and his partner settled on a 33-acre smallholding in Speyside — forest, fields, alpacas — and set about creating a series of private accommodations that would give guests something the local area was conspicuously missing.
The vision was specific from the outset. Each accommodation secluded and distinct. Sustainable and recycled materials throughout — on-site milled timber, upcycled and vintage furnishings. Guests-only alpaca interactions. All-inclusive pricing with no surprises. Dog friendly. And over time, a microbrewery, a farm stall and additional properties expanding from the forest to the coast.
It's the kind of hospitality concept that only works if the brand behind it is as considered as the physical experience. Generic accommodation branding would have undermined it entirely.
The brief
The founders had a clear sense of what they wanted the brand to feel like before they had the words for it. Warm but modern. Rooted in the land without being rustic in a clichéd sense. The palette they referenced — black, dark grey, rust, forest green, teal — pointed towards something that felt grounded and confident. Art deco influence, heritage farm aesthetics, nothing cartoon or contemporary.
The tone was equally clear: a warm embrace of getting back to basics, calming and reassured. Guests should feel that all their needs are met and then be left alone to enjoy the surroundings. That hospitality philosophy — attentive without being intrusive — needed to be embedded in the brand from the start.
The identity
The logo system was built around forms that carry immediate meaning in the context of rural escape: bothies, tents, map markers. The kind of simple, elemental shapes that suggest shelter, seclusion and the satisfaction of being somewhere specific and intentional. They're references that feel right without announcing themselves too loudly.
Typography draws on heritage farm aesthetics — considered and characterful, with enough modernity to feel appropriate for a design-led hospitality brand rather than a working farm. The palette brings the founders' instincts to life: deep, earthy tones with the warmth and restraint that the accommodation experience itself promises.
The system was built to be adaptable from the beginning. A brand that needs to live on a website, social media, clothing, postcards, mugs and eventually property signage has to work across a genuinely wide range of applications — and the identity was designed with that range in mind rather than retrofitted to it later.
The coastal expansion
As the business has grown, so has the creative brief. Two sub-brands — The Boat Bothy and The Fisherman's Bothy — extend The Alpaca Bothy Company into coastal properties, reflecting the founders' positioning of the wider offering as running from pine trees to coastal paths.
The sub-brand brief was clear: an extension of the existing identity, not a departure from it. The core fonts and structural logic of the main brand carry through, with the palette expanding to incorporate coastal references — teals deepened, blues introduced, a warm sou'wester yellow that signals the shift in setting without breaking the family connection.
The result is a brand family that reads as coherent across very different physical environments. A guest who stays at a farm bothy in Speyside and later books a coastal property recognises the same brand — the same values, the same quality, the same considered approach to what they're offering — while the identity still reflects where they actually are.
An evolving partnership
The relationship with The Alpaca Bothy Company continues as the business builds out its vision phase by phase. Future properties, a craft workshop, alpaca walks, the microbrewery — each new element will need to sit within the brand framework established from the start.
That kind of long-term creative partnership requires something different from project-based work. Understanding the founders' vision well enough to develop new creative directions that feel entirely consistent with what's already been built — without the brand becoming repetitive or static — is a sustained creative challenge that we find genuinely interesting.
The Alpaca Bothy Company is a business with a clear sense of who it is and where it's going. The brand has been built to travel with it.
Are you creating a retreat, staycation hotspot or unique accommodation? We’d love to help brand it!
