Construct creates new Athenaeum hotel identity

Five-star London hotel The Athenaeum is set to unveil a new identity, branding and services created by Construct.

The Athenaeum appointed the branding group in September last year, after approaching it directly on the strength of previous work by Construct founder Georgia Fendley on The Athenaeum’s sister hotel, The Grove.

The Athenaeum briefed Construct to reposition its offer to better reflect its location on London’s Piccadilly, opposite Green Park. The hotel is at the tail-end of a refurbishment by interior designer Martin Hulbert that has seen its bedroom windows lengthened to allow better views of the Royal Park.

Besides its location, Fendley says another influence on the new branding was that, ‘In our research, we found that guests thought of the hotel as friendly, and a home from home, which is unusual in a five-star hotel, so we started to refer to it as the “homemade hotel”,’ she says.

Construct responded by creating a black, white, gold and red logo, in a Bodoni Classic typeface, with a red, stylised bird icon perching on the ‘h’.

Besides creating the logo and all print collateral – totalling some 120 separate items – Construct has designed a range of new services to boost the hotel’s reputation as friendly and homely. These include a picnic menu, a ‘housekeeper’s cupboard’ menu, offering a range of travel items that guests might have forgotten as well as gifts sourced from local shops, free access to the minibar, and a room-delivery service by nearby department store Fortnum & Mason.

Construct has also initiated a scheme in which the hotel will provide guests with bikes, wellington boots, kites, buggies, cots and iPods for guests to borrow. All these items will be sourced in bright red to match the bird icon, but will bear no other branding.

‘We are really turned off by the thought of over-branded hotel bedrooms, so we are branding less in the bedrooms and using the colour red instead. Red is synonymous with London and it now also fits with the identity, and we hope to gain brand recognition this way,’ says Fendley.

Hulbert is redesigning all 123- rooms in the hotel, as well as the ground-floor areas, including a restaurant, whisky bar and ‘garden room’. As part of its remit, Construct is art directing the photography for all marketing collateral associated with the hotel’s rebrand and refurbishment.

The new branding will start to roll out in the next three weeks.

REBIRTH OF THE ATHENAEUM

  • New logo and branding to emphasise friendly five-star service, by Construct
  • Redesigned bedrooms and ground floor areas by Fox Linton designer Martin Hulbert
  • A ten-storey-high vertical garden, or ‘living wall’, designed by Patrick Blanc

 

Start the discussionStart the discussion
  • Post a comment

Latest articles