Eko Spin
Set to soft.
A room for the way Lagos lives
Eko Spin is a laundromat and café in Lagos. Its founder, Lola Lawal, brought us in to build the brand for a kind of room the city doesn’t have yet: one you choose to stay in, not one you leave as fast as you can. We wrote the strategy and the words, drew the identity, designed the website, and built the platform that runs it.
Getting into it
We started with the city, not the brand. Lagos barely slows down. It has homes and offices, but not enough third spaces. Soft life is a movement looking for a room, and the laundromat is one of the few service categories nobody has reimagined. Read together, those four observations described the room Eko Spin would need to be.
Reading Lagos
Lagos doesn’t need another place to be busy in. It needs a place to be.
Lagos barely slows down.
The day moves between home, work, traffic and the next thing. Motion is the default, so stopping, even for an hour, takes intention.
Not enough third spaces.
Homes, offices, lounges, restaurants and cafes, but most are for working, spending or being seen. Few are made for staying.
Soft life is a movement looking for a room.
A generation has been defining what slowing down looks like. The vocabulary travelled fast. The space that matches did not.
The laundromat hasn’t been reimagined.
Plastic chairs, harsh light, a counter you queue at. Built to be tolerated, not entered. One of the few untouched service categories.
The strategy
From a room you leave, to a room you choose to stay in.
- Convention
- The service room is a room to leave. The hour is an hour to lose.
- Vision
- A Lagos that keeps its pace, by having the rooms to do it.
The idea
The name was already telling the whole story.
Yoruba · the first name of Lagos
eko.
Before it was Lagos, the city called itself Eko. It is the most civic word in its vocabulary. Taking it into a brand name is a claim: the room either earns it, or it doesn’t.
English · the cycle that does the work
spin.
A spin is what the machine does to turn input into output. It is also what the brand asks of you: step into the cycle, let it run, come out different.
The identity
Warm, soft and unhurried, like the room.
The brand and its family
One name, three rooms.
Eko Spin is the master brand. Wash & Dry and Spin Cafe are the rooms that do the work, and Spin Club is the community that grows around them. They share one wordmark and one rhythm, so the family reads as one.
Master brand
A piece of Eko. Set to soft.
Set to soft.
Service arm
The laundry. Drop off, wash, dry and fold.
Set to wash. Set to dry.
Service arm
Coffee, food and a seat while your cycle runs.
Set to drink. Set to eat. Set to chill.
Community arm
For the regulars who come to gather.
Set to stay. Set to bond.
The living line
One grammar for every cycle in the room.
Some cycles belong to the machines. Some belong to the café. The rest belong to you. Soft is the anchor: the state every other one returns to.
Brand expressions
A system with room to play.
Beyond the logo and the palette, Eko Spin carries a set of devices: type that moves, small easter eggs and a line illustration style. Each works alone. Together they make the room easy to recognise.
Type expression
The wordmark can move.
Four states let the type carry motion without losing the calm core. Spin turns it around a centre, Wash sets it under water, Squeeze presses it and Fold creases it. We keep them for moments that need energy.
Small details
Rewards for the people paying attention.
Not every brand moment needs to explain itself. A Spin Club badge, a wash ring that reads wash, spin, dry, repeat, and a Set to soft sticker. Same type and colours as the rest of the identity, worn a little looser.
Out in the world
From the walls to the things you take home.
Billboards carry the living line at full size, with the wordmark small in the corner. The photography was art directed to feel lived in: warm light, real clothes, people staying a while. The same calm carries onto cups, caps and tees.
The website
One home page. Two rooms behind it.
We designed the site on the brand’s own system and built it to load fast. The home page opens on Set to soft. Scroll, and the rooms come to meet you: Wash & Dry for the cycle, Spin Café for the hour around it, just as they do on ekospin.com.
Full or self-service. Either way, the room does the work.
Explore →
Coffee, small plates, and a room built for staying.
Explore →The platform behind the room
A customer platform built into the site.
Behind the site sits a small CRM at /admin. It keeps every customer in one place, tags them, shows which campaign brought them in, and passes new sign-ups to the tools the team already uses.
Acknowledgement
Lola Lawal
Founder, Eko Spin
A brand like this needs a founder willing to hold a pace, and a room, against the grain of the category. We are grateful to Lola Lawal for trusting us with Eko Spin.
Credits