PROJECT OBJECTIVE
In this project, I was tasked with creating and branding a boutique hotel. This would include creating the hotel as well as designing its look book, website, and in-room packages.
Hotel Base
Starting out, I needed to create the initial hotel foundation focusing on where it will be located, the hotel's name and logo. After a lot of back and forth decisions, I decided on placing my boutique hotel in Sonoma, California and naming it Silhouette Estate.
For the logo, I began with 100 sketches. These sketches were then narrowed down to three and then the most successful of the three logos was
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Top Three Digitalized
Refining
Final Logo
Brainstorming the concept
To come up with the concept that I would be stylizing my hotel with, I used the random word combination technique above. This deconstructs the ideology of two initial nouns and then uses a forced combination to help create more out of the box concepts and themes.
Concept: Mysterious Paper
Is it supernatural? Is it attempted murder? Who knows maybe it is just the wind. Never the less, something just seems out of place, like a memory that just isn’t quite there or a face that feels so familiar yet has never been seen before.
Concept: The visual aspect teeters between the idea of mystery, the unknown and the spooky. To give off the feeling of a mysterious almost whimsically lucid feeling, I gravitated towards a painterly effect over the images that I used. Taking inspiration from cyanotype prints, I liked the almost eerie effect created by desaturating the images.
Scratched Idea
My initial thought when I came up with this word combination was whodunnit scenarios. As you will see later on, my first variations of the look book was heavily influenced by the game clue.
A Slippery Slope
I did this to myself but I have to acknowledge it somewhere. The words “elegance” and “mysterious/spooky” are complete contradictions in my mind. The elegance expected for a boutique hotel does not fit well with words that I immediately connect to Halloween and cheesy costumes. Through my process, there were several times in which my work either teetered towards elegance with little to no visual concept or just not having enough class.
Mood Board
Work In Process
Walking the narrow balance between elegance and cheesiness when dealing with a concept rooted in mystery, my design process had a big arc before reaching the final design.
Look Book Process
Look Book: Cover Options
Look Book: Spread 1 Options
Look Book: Spread 2 Options
Look Book: Spread 3 Options
Product Process
Final Products
As a final hooray for this project, all of the products (the look book, memo pad, door knocker, key card and holder, two menus, and five additional in-room products of our choice consisting of the creation of at least three boxes) were created in physical form.
Final Look Book Spreads
