Morgans Hotel Group
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Morgans Hotel Group

A proposed identity system designed to unite a portfolio of creator-focused hotels without erasing each property's individual character.

  • Branding
  • Art Direction
  • Hospitality
  • Advertising
Role

Lead Designer

Tools

Brand Strategy · Art Direction · Identity Design · Editorial Design

Deliverables

Proposed brand identity · Property system · Campaign direction · Guest touchpoints

Project Summary

Morgans Hotel Group needed a clearer common thread across a collection of culturally distinct properties. Developed while Morgans was a retained client, this proposed identity reframed the group as a home for the creative class: expressive enough to feel culturally relevant, but structured enough to connect every hotel under one recognizable system.

My Role

As Lead Designer, I helped translate the positioning into exploratory logo studies and two developed visual systems spanning identity, property architecture, editorial design, digital experiences, signage, and food-and-beverage touchpoints.

Project Timeline

  • Discovery and Positioning
    Review the existing brand, define the creative-class audience, and establish the “Hotels for Creators” opportunity.
  • Visual Research
    Build a visual vocabulary around culture, discovery, artistic expression, and the individual character of each property.
  • Identity Exploration
    Explore a broad range of marks and compositions before developing two systems across the Morgans portfolio.
  • Brand Applications
    Extend the strongest principles into editorial, digital, guest, property, and food-and-beverage experiences.

The Opportunity

The existing portfolio contained highly recognizable hotels, but the parent brand lacked a consistent visual thread. The proposal positioned Morgans as Hotels for Creators—a family of destinations united by curiosity, cultural participation, and a willingness to show rather than tell.

Morgans brand context showing the visual inconsistency and opportunity across existing communications

Designing for the Creative Class

The audience was defined through creator profiles rather than broad demographic categories. These portraits made the strategy tangible, connecting cultural interests, travel behavior, media habits, and preferred experiences to the identity decisions that followed.

Kristina Lin creative-class audience profile combining an illustrated portrait with cultural interests and hospitality preferences James Clark creative-class audience profile combining an illustrated portrait with cultural interests and hospitality preferences Clare Martin creative-class audience profile combining an illustrated portrait with cultural interests and hospitality preferences

Research and Visual Direction

Research moved beyond conventional hotel references into galleries, independent publishing, fashion, music, street culture, and objects that reward discovery. The resulting visual world balanced restraint with unexpected moments of personality.

Morgans visual research wall filled with editorial, cultural, fashion, and hospitality references Morgans visual direction board exploring editorial collage, fashion, travel, and creative expression

Early Identity Exploration

The first logo studies deliberately cast a wide net. Abstract monograms, frame-like symbols, fluid letterforms, and compact property marks were compared in monochrome before selected ideas moved into color, typography, and portfolio naming tests.

Rough Morgans logo ideation sheet with abstract monograms, frame symbols, and hand-drawn letterform studies Selected Morgans logo directions tested with gradient color, typography, and Delano property naming

Create / Enjoy Layout Development

Rough layout studies tested how the emerging system could organize photography, oversized type, translucent color, and property-specific messaging. The repeated Create / Enjoy language gave the work an active editorial voice while remaining flexible across covers, brochures, and guest collateral.

Early Create Enjoy Morgans layouts combining property photography with oversized vertical typography Create Enjoy cover studies using circular image crops, translucent color, and the Delano line mark Create Enjoy editorial layout studies using layered imagery, color fields, and Hudson typography Create Enjoy collateral studies across brochures, stationery, digital screens, and circular applications

Direction One: You’ve Been Framed

The first direction used a simple frame as a flexible organizing device. It could identify the parent company, adapt to individual properties, crop imagery, structure editorial layouts, and create a recognizable family without forcing every hotel into the same visual personality.

Morgans framed identity with black-and-white wordmarks and a compact modular mark Framed identity applied across stationery, printed collateral, a record, and property communications Morgans property architecture showing individual hotel names connected through a shared frame system Hudson editorial spread demonstrating the framed identity in a hospitality publication Framed Morgans identity applied across responsive website, mobile, advertising, and social touchpoints

Direction Two: It Starts With a Line

The second developed direction reduced the system to a single line: an architectural gesture that could become a monogram, divide information, frame imagery, or shift in proportion from one property to another. Its restraint created room for each hotel to express its own character.

Minimal line-based Morgans identity and monogram studies Line identity applied across stationery, digital layouts, and property communications Line-based Morgans system extended into hanging tags, signage, and guest touchpoints Morgans line identity presented in an editorial hospitality spread

Extending the Portfolio

The system was also tested beyond the hotel masterbrand. Snack Stand demonstrates how a food-and-beverage concept could retain its own tone while still feeling connected to Morgans through typography, portraiture, editorial structure, and an intentionally tactile application system.

Snack Stand food-and-beverage identity applied to packaging, menus, and service materials Snack Stand illustrated menu system featuring creator portraits and bold typographic layouts

The Result

The proposal demonstrated that consistency did not require uniformity. Each developed direction created a recognizable Morgans framework while leaving enough flexibility for Delano, Hudson, Mondrian, Royalton, Sanderson, and the wider portfolio to retain their own cultural voice.