The Hotel Signage Program
During my time at YDI, I lead design for the signage program for The Hotel at University of Maryland in College Park, MD. This hotel features: about 300 rooms, a ballroom, several boardrooms, 4 restaurants, an amenity area with a Red Door Spa, and a 9-level garage.
Photos below are primarily from my own documentation and some are from The Hotel website.
Inspiration
The main elements of the design were derived from the logo sphere, the Maryland state flag within the sphere, and the client brief to keep the overall design modern and timeless.
In order to achieve a timeless look, all interior signage was kept within a grayscale color palette, primarily made of sleek black backgrounds, broken up with translucent segments for icons, and topped with crisp white text. The parking garage featured bright and striking colors to extend the bright and upscale feeling found throughout the rest of the hotel.
The sphere in the logo inspired rounded arrows and custom icons as well as the rounded edges of the parking garage signage and graphics. The layout and proportions of the logo also inspired the signage to lean into rectangular and geometric shapes and layouts. The Maryland flag was woven into the design quite literally as the background for portions of directionals and more abstractly within the angles and color shifts utilized in the parking garage signs and graphics.
