During the Fall of 2023, we had the pleasure of working with the Four Seasons creative team on their brand book ahead of their stakeholders meeting in the new year. Four Seasons had recently refreshed their brand elements with their internal team and wanted to create this book as a physical guide for all resort owners to reference the new tone of voice and visual direction.
The final book is a 228 page document, smyth-sewn bound with a slip case in black with black foiling. Within the book, the contents cover the full spectrum of brand aspects from the brand&#8217;s core belief to the brand typography and treatment—all while layered with dreamy and aspirational photographs from all of Four Season&#8217;s resort locations.
Our team first met with Four Season&#8217;s creative team to better understand the new brand direction and continued working closely together to bring this book to life. With a tight turnaround time, it was crucial for our team to work efficiently while content management was key to ensuring the best results.
With respect to this brand book being an internal document, we have limited our presentation of the final book to keep confidentiality.

Location

Print

Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts

Based in Chongqing, China, Signyan Design (尚壹扬设计) is an architectural and interior design studio founded by Xie Ke and Zhi Hongxin. Started in 2008, Signyan Design creates inspiring environments from resort hotels to commercial spaces and private residences. The common thread through out all of their projects is a desire to share the vision of simple and natural living. Between richness and restraint, order and complexity, these are the qualities that Signyan Design curates in order to create emotive spaces.
Our relationship with the Signyan team started in the Fall of 2022 when they reached out with the desire to create a bilingual website to better present their work and studio philosophy to a more global audience. Our involvement would later also include an updating of their brand identity which at the time lacked a consistent visual voice. As we learned more about Signyan&#8217;s design philosophy, we were truly inspired by their approach to their work and way of life. Through every project, Signyan strives to understand the history of the land, its community past and present, and their aspirations for the future. As a result of their dedication and empathetic approach, many of Signyan&#8217;s projects have helped to revitalize aging and smaller communities.
&nbsp;
&nbsp;
<h2>Brand Identity</h2>
From our discovery phase, we identified there to be holistic and empathetic nature to Signyan&#8217;s design philosophy and approach to life. These insights led us to select Zapf Humanist 601 as their brand typeface as we felt the humanist qualities of the typeface reflected the same tone of voice for Signyan. For the Chinese font pairing, we selected Songti SC, a well balanced Chinese typeface with thick and thin qualities. Much of the brand identity plays with placement to create visual rhythm—a visual translation of their admiration for music and how rhythm is often an invisible but essential part of design.

<h2>Website</h2>
During our initial discussions, Signyan shared a beautiful Chinese idiom, 润物细无声, that deeply resonated with their philosophy. Originating from a renowned poem by Du Fu, it translates to “the drizzle rain moistens everything silently.” Inspired by this sentiment, we aimed to infuse their website with the same sense of tranquil beauty, reminiscent of the gentle rain in spring.
By employing generous white space and arranging content irregularly yet rhythmically, akin to raindrops, we sought to evoke a serene atmosphere. This approach is particularly evident on the projects overview page, where the index of projects unfolds rhythmically, while the juxtaposition of project images adds a dynamic contrast to this uniform rhythm.

Website

Services

Art Direction

Signyan Architecture

We have been admirers of intern architect and interior designer Andrea McLean&#8217;s work for quite a number of years and had discussed working together on several occasions. This past year, we finally had the opportunity to work together on her studio&#8217;s brand identity.
Having worked in the industry for numerous years, Andrea&#8217;s work and name is well recognized locally and continues to build traction globally. However, despite trying on various occasions to establish her studio&#8217;s brand identity, her past attempts failed to truly reflect her design vision. Andrea tasked us to help create her brand identity and later build out a new online portfolio to showcase her body of work.
From early conversations, we established Andrea&#8217;s work to be observant, intentional, empathetic, essential and adaptive. These are the qualities we strived to visualize through the new identity and brand typography. So much of design is often drawn from one&#8217;s life experience, cultural influences, sensibilities and personality. As Andrea shared with us her background and history, we clearly saw how her life journey and years living in Japan have definitely influenced her design approach today.

As we approached the design of Andrea&#8217;s brand identity, we centred much of our attention to the type choice for her brand. To us, Unica provided the right pragmatic yet approachable tone of voice that reflected Andrea&#8217;s personality and design sensibilities. As a neo-grotesque sans serif designed in the late 70&#8217;s, Unica carries a familiar and nostalgic appearance that is often hard to articulate. We appreciate this quality about Unica, as it makes Andrea&#8217;s brand identity appear as though it was established 20 years ago while still being relevant today.
Taking inspiration from how Andrea approaches each project in first observing and responding to a site, we utilized a grid system that provided structure and modularity, allowing her brand identity to be adaptive to any situation. Andrea&#8217;s final wordmark includes both a horizontal version as well as a stacked version giving her flexibility to use either versions depending on which one would fit the situation best.
A deliberate effort was made to treat much of her brand collateral and application in lowercase. This approach was greatly influenced by books and design examples from the late Austrian designer Helmut Schmid, who similarly spent a significant number of years living and working in Japan (Osaka).

Andrea McLean Studio Inc.

Brand Identity

2023

View More Projects