Starwood Preferred Guest Branding

Client: Starwood Preferred Guest
Role: Creative Direction / Co-designer

The challenge with refreshing the SPG brand was how to create a branding system that could be subtle and strong while binding all of Starwood’s 9 hotel design-led, lifestyle brands together.



The challenge was to create a visual language system that at times could be strong enough to stand on its own creating a unique brand presence but also work with the 9 other Starwood brands. Given the diverse brand landscape of the Starwood brand portfolio, this was a significant challenge as sometimes SPG does its own unique advertising, sometimes it does co-op advertising with one or multi Starwood brands and it always appears in the lobbies and rooms of the hotels. The solution was to a visually simple system that allowed for strong and iconic graphic elements that could be used in varying strengths depending on the context in which it would appear.



Designing a system beyond the star




Re-designed collateral system

The base visual elements were then used for a complete design refresh so all brand touchpoints. The isometric formed the core of the visual language which was simple enough to be very adaptable but unique enough to create a strong visual language.



The real heart of the program – #SPGLife

I lead the creative direction for shooting the new brand photography that was done over three years across 15 cities around the world.  The hotel brands are able to show photographs of the physical hotels and with the new photoshoot I wanted to show the physical representation of the rewards program – its members.  So all the photos were shot with real SPG members who had no modeling experience. The challenge then became to create a style that would work across numerous locations with amateur talent. The result was a fresh look that really connected with SPG members and was even copied by our competition for their rewards program.


The best hotel rewards site



The best hotel apps
