OUGD405: Group Brief (Concept)

Concept: A general notion or idea, an idea of something formed by mentally combining all its characteristics or particulars; a construct, a directly conceived or intuited object of thought.

In small groups we were to discuss the idea of concepts and what they mean on a general scale before working to produce an idea that could work for a hotel, bar or restaurant. 

As an example of this we were informed of the Ampersand hotel which was written about in the creative review. http://www.creativereview.co.uk/feed/april-2012/24/the-ampersand-hotel

The concept for this hotel is that everything has "&" within it. So therefore all the signage and print work states --- & ---. This works incredibly well as a concept as it can be transferred across the hotel in all different formats such as above it shows the drinks being Saints & Sinners therefore having the saints as non alcoholic and the sinners as alcoholic. 

From that as a group we decided to work on a concept for a hotel and came up with a range of possible different solutions which included bringing the outside indoors and creating an eco friendly hotel to other possibilities. But from this we found that the main problem was that there are two different types of hotels, those with money and those who want to spend a little less. So therefore taking this into consideration we wanted to create a concept which would incorporate both of them yet still make an enjoyable experience. 

As Graphic Design students we found that most interesting way from our benefit to differentiate between the two different price ranges would be to use UPPER & lower case lettering and we experimented with layering these as an initial idea for how the type could work. We wanted a sophisticated look which could be clean and elegant and therefore chose black/grey and white. 

In our concept we decided that the idea of upper and lower case would work perfectly across printed material such as menus for example and have the corresponding case for each. This could also work for rooms and to have upper and lower case rooms instead of numbers therefore having 52 rooms in total. 

We also decided as a group that the furniture within the rooms would also follow this concept and that in the UPPER case rooms there would be larger furniture such as a four poster bed and in the lower case rooms to have smaller furniture yet still comfortable. Therefore creating an experience which is enjoyable for both price ranges but with a slight extravagance to the UPPER case rooms. 

This hotel could work in cities as it could take small amounts of space up (tall/vertical building) and having UPPER case rooms on the higher floors and lower case rooms underneath which would also enhance the concept.