The Epic: A Boutique Hotel
The brief for this project was to design a boutique hotel (< 20 rooms) in downtown Kansas City, for “travelers and history buffs seeking a nostalgic stay with a touch of luxury.” In this group project, three of us collaborated over multiple weeks to bring a full style guide to life. This presented a unique challenge as all of us had differing viewpoints regarding which area of history we most wanted to reflect. To overcome this challenge, we agreed on three attributes as our guiding design principles: Nostalgic, Artisanal, and Indulgent, and we incorporated those principals into all of our preliminary designs.
We started broad, then narrowed our scope to a focus of two eras: the Jazz Age, and the 1960s, and designed brand suites for both eras. Ultimately we chose to explore the 1960s, and this inspired us to shift from our original name of “The Epicurean” to the mod name of “The Epic." I devised the tagline “stay retro” as a nod to the colloquialisms of the era, and also for it being a play on words of the idea of staying at a hotel. You can take a look at our extensive process and all its twists and turns here.
Inspired by Palm Springs and Mid Century Modern design, I found a fun and groovy typeface to display our brand voice.
Instagram carousel showing some of our rooms and utilizing brand colors
More branded items
What would a 1960s hotel be without a VW van as its shuttle?
