Suite 4E Hotels & Residences Brand Design
Raising the standard of hospitality for people of color.
2021 · SUITE 4E HOTELS & RESIDENCES · BRAND STRATEGY & DESIGN
Suite 4E Hotels & Residences is an upcoming hotel brand that aims to create an exceptional hospitable experience, a home away from home, for people of color as a challenge to a hospitality industry that too often is unwelcoming and unsafe for people of color.
The Scope of Work
I was hired by Suite 4E amid the Black Lives Matter national protests of 2020/2021 when conversations about how anti-Black racism affects every industry were front and center. In a hospitality industry that tends to not be so hospitable to guests of color — overlooking, neglecting, pathologizing, and criminalizing them — Suite 4E aims to stand apart from the rest of hospitality industry by explicitly center anti-racist approaches into the design of every aspect of its hospitality experience.
I was hired to facilitate brand strategy workshops and design a visual identity for a disruptive hospitality brand that centers social justice, inspired by African values of hospitality, that redefines hospitality, and raises the standards of hospitality, for Black guests. Rooted in a commitment that high-quality, design-forward experiences should be accessible to and affordable for guests of color, Suite 4E’s brand communicates a a belief that not only does design needn’t be sacrificed in the name of affordability, but also that Black guests are deserving of the dignity of a welcoming, safe, comfortable, well-designed, high-quality stay whenever and wherever they travel. The challenge was to visualize and encapsulate these values in a visual identity. The result is a brand, inspired by African values and styles of hospitality, that is explicitly designed around the Black experience.
My Role
Brand Strategy
Brand Design
Copy Strategy
NATURAL. DESIGN-FORWARD. COMFORT.
THE AFRICAN SUN
AFRICA
RISING.
Branding a Black-owned hospitality experience with Nigerian Roots.
The African Sun motif, inspired by the geometric patterns of Ankara styles in traditional African clothing and fabric, represents not only the feeling of comfort of being home for Black guests — also home in a broader sense of being at home with their roots — but also redefining hospitality (often symbolized in corporate hotel logos with a generic, clean-cut sun mark) by infusing an African-inspired hospitality into this brand. In the African Sun mark, no two shapes and no two strokes are the same — reflecting a visual identity and mission statement that accordingly communicates that each individual experience at each location is unique to each person. This unique experience is grounded in the notion of the humanity, individuality, and dignity of each Black guest — sometimes denied to them at corporate hotels.
This sense of welcome and home communicated in the African Sun logomark is also reflected in how patterned Ankara clothing styles are often worn for African family or community celebrations and events, what is called Aso Ebi in Nigeria, meaning “clothes of the family” in the Yoruba language. As such, the African Sun communicates a familial, home-away-from-home experience for Black guests, intentionally designed around fostering familiarity and solidarity, and uplifting and celebrating Black community.
The motif aesthetically employs the sun motif that has come to be typically associated with hospitality brands, but rejects the unaffordable and inaccessible corporate culture and cookie cutter, replicable, perfectionist, standardized experiences of these corporate brands that cater to white guests while making
guests of color feel unwelcome. Such inaccessible and unaffordable high-quality stays are typically out of reach for guests of color who are often forced to stay in more affordable, yet lesser-quality hotels or motels where the experience is drab and uninspiring. Suite 4E believes that not only does design needn’t be sacrificed in the name of affordability, but also that Black guests are deserving of a comfortable, well-designed, high-quality experience.
As such, the brand, speaking to people of color, intentionally adopts an Ankara sun pattern, putting an African, handmade-style twist on the sun motif, with its hand-made imperfections and with each stroke embracing a unique, individualized shape and design that evokes a sense of embracing and welcoming difference. But with the African Sun at the center of the brand, Suite 4E communicates that it does not merely welcome and embrace the Black experience, it places it front and center. And, believing that Black people, too often neglected and treated inhospitably, the brand seeks to redefine what hospitality means through a social justice lens that demands that Black communities deserve a high-quality, design-centric, caring, affordable experience. It puts this into practice by designing every aspect of the brand, from the visual identity to the interior design, to cater to the Black experience.
ABOUT THE WORDMARK
The wordmark, speaking to Black women travelers specifically, employs a whimsical font choice with a modern touch — evoking the modern whimsicality of African Ankara patterns. Perhaps the biggest challenge of this branding project was finding a creative way to visualize the unique name of the hotel, “Suite 4E,” in particular the characters “4E,” in a way that felt visually natural and balanced, rather than awkward. This design was the clear choice to such a point that the client has no revisions. The capital “T” in “Suite” plays on the whimsicality of the font and provides visual balance and interest in the middle between the “S” and “E” at the ends.
Seeking to incorporate the “African Sun” motif in the wordmark, I creatively employed the “T” here to convey a double meaning. Not only does the placement of the sun mark above the “T” convey the image of a sun rising on the horizon, but the arrangement of the sun above just above the top arm of the capital “T” evokes a person’s head, with the “T” as its body, and the top arm of the “T” as a person’s arms stretching out as they wake up in the morning with the rise of the “African Sun.”