Cipher Boutique Hotel
Conceptual Brand Identity
Visiting a hotel should be more than just a place to rest your head. A good hotel has flair, a great hotel is an experience. Cipher Boutique Hotel is a conceptual brand identity, designed to transport you back to the time of spies, romance, and mystery. At Cipher you enter with a romanticized nostalgia, much like a James Bond film, to a vacation with each aspect curated to enhance your experience.
Hotel Branded Experience
Your First
Introduction to Espionage
Cracking open the book, you step into the hotel with your first introduction to Cipher. Each page is layered with hidden details to the hotel’s secrets and challenges while providing the information to making the most of your experience. The design is tailored towards promoting a refined upscale experience to try on a new identity, or two, and step into a world where things are always more than they seem. With options tailored towards families, partners, teams and independents, there is an option for everyone. In addition to the experience packages, the hotel includes many hidden features that if you are observant enough that you might notice something more. From hidden rooms to coded cocktails; if you notice the details, you might discover something more.
​
The design of look book reflects the romanticized side of the city, that when peeled away reveals the gritty details one often overlooks. Each page is layered in details from beautiful puzzle pieces of the city and the hotel to give way to the rough details hidden beneath. Looking closely, you will notice the introduction of the codes used for your chosen mission, along with the cipher to code them. It is your job to piece together your story because this book is much more than an introduction, it is your first brief in espionage.
Gaining Access
Your Gadgets
Your room is your safe house, elegantly styled with subtle nods to your “profession.” In your entry file you will find the location of your “safe house" as well as your skeleton key (hotel key car), that will give you access to the hotels amenities and secrets, and within your safe house you will find the necessary tools to let others know whether or not the room has been cleared for entry.
When it comes to the keycard and door hangers they're designed to flow with the language surrounding the hotel. With a subtly antique feel, the cards are unique and personal to the hotels theme, but not so extravagant that they would feel out of place in the real world. The key card embodies and simple design, making obvious its purpose.
The door hangers playfully use classic phrases in order to indicate whether or not the occupant is looking for privacy, or for the room to be tidied up. It continues the theme of roughened layers, without the last up top coat. This show that now that you have entered the world of spies you no longer see the layer of varnish that covers reality.
Inside your safe house you will find you have been provided with the top of the line gear; the hotels exclusive line of bath products, sure to clean you are a person of all “bugs,” As well as your own code breaker for you to take along on your mission.
​
All the bath products follow the same design scheme. The labels were designed to be minimal and straightforward while still keeping in line with the layered, textural theme of the branding. This is achieved with simple black and white details, and the suggestion of redacted information. In this case the redacted information is a pixelated image representational of the product sent.
The memo pad, or code breaker, coupled with the experience package you select, is designed to look and feel like a case file. On the cover you will find the hotel name, your mission number and its use as a code breaker. The inside is designed to give you ample room for notes combined with a cipher wheel to aid you in your investigation. The inside cover design is a pattern made up of the various codes used in the branding: Pigpen and Morse Code, repeating cipher line after line.
THE SILVER MARTINI
What better setting is there for a great spy mission than the beautiful Speakeasy of a charming hotel. The Silver Martini is designed to be just that. The hotel restaurant is designed to provide a beautiful dining experience with wonderful dishes given a personalized twist. The restaurant itself is warm and lively and offers an extensive array of classic cocktails.
The menu is tailored towards luxury, gearing its language towards guests experiencing the most, even from their food. Split up into three categories, plates are labeled as Temptations, Affairs, and Indulgences, growing increasingly provocative. The design of the menu follows the same concept, that this meal is to be something special, not just routine but a seduction into this world.
​
The room service menu offers a much more reductive design. Much like the doorhangers and toiletries, it plays into the suggestion of redacted information. With fewer menu options, the menu details its information in a single column. While the other designs were used to set a tone, the room service menu uses its bars to its advantage in order to draw the eye towards menu items, and separate the categories.