A KAILO case study
KokoLoco
Giving a birthday trip its own universe.
Travel & hospitality · Experience Design & Activations
Occasion
Milestone birthday
Destination
Rio de Janeiro
Guests
Five close friends
When
September 2026
The brief
A name looking for a world.
KokoLoco arrived fully formed: loud, playful, and born in a group chat planning a milestone birthday in Rio. Left alone, it would have stayed a caption and a few T-shirts.
The brief was to take that energy off the phone screen and into every room, meal and morning of the trip, so five friends would spend a week inside something made for them.
The world
First the world. Then the moments.
Before anything was printed, the rules were set: hot pink and jungle green, a bubble display face that felt like Rio in September, and five motifs taken from the city itself.
Sunsets, samba, slight delusion. Dance now, recover later.
Hot pink
Jungle green
Amber gold
Dark espresso
Spiral sun
Palm
Copacabana wave
The Redeemer
Sugarloaf balcony
KokoCabana
Every trip needs somewhere to come home to.
A rented villa has no personality of its own. This one got a name, a mosaic-lettered logo and a job: to be KokoLoco’s home address.
KokoLoco was the trip. KokoCabana was where it came home to.
Arrival
Arrive slowly.
The loudest week of the year opened quietly. A door hanger with your name on it. A note on the bed. A welcome pack with the week mapped out.
Welcome to Rio. Unpack. Relax. Get ready for a caipirinha.
Five sets, one laid out for each guest, a named duffel, a canga, a fan. Merch gets handed out to a crowd. These were made for one person each.
The canga carried every motif and each guest’s name, printed with @jurkonistextil. The adire trousers were hand-dyed by @abeni.africa, a Nigerian resist-dye tradition carrying the celebrant’s roots into a week in Brazil.
One trip, two textile traditions, both wearing the same name.
KAILO’s role: Concept, merchandise design & gifting · Canga printing: @jurkonistextil · Hand-dyed adire: @abeni.africa
Recover later
Yoga in the garden with grip socks waiting on every mat, then massages. Brunch came next, and the table did the gifting: makeup pouches and wrapped adire built into the tablescape, alongside named cocktails. Then a book exchange, every book changing hands with a KokoLoco bookmark inside.
Between the pages of a book is a lovely place to be.
Chef & tablescape: @jhade.yasmin · Barscape: @paravani_bartender
After dark
The palette, after dark.
The birthday weekend closed on one night designed to be loud, and the world changed key: dark green, silver, palms, candlelight and disco balls.
KAILO’s role: Dinner & bar menu design · Styling, decor & execution: @momentsbymo.co · Chef & team: @jhade.yasmin
What it became
The brand left the villa.
The fans came out on the boat. The trousers crossed the city on the back of motorbike taxis. By the end of the week, KokoLoco had travelled further across Rio than any of its printed pieces.
Close
One last thing for the road.
Every guest went home with a sustenance bag: snacks for the journey and a card, a thank-you note on one side, a Rio postcard on the other.
Thank you for being here. Until the next adventure.
What we made: Identity & visual direction · KokoCabana · The guest journey · Personalised gifting · Print & collateral · Creative direction
The experience wasn’t one big branded moment. It was a series of small, intentional ones that made the world feel real.
