The Empark View Hotel Logo and Visual Identity: A Moon Gate Where Strangers Meet

Two round gates, one character

In 2018, Xinming Design created a new logo and visual identity for The Empark View Hotel (世纪域景), a new business hotel brand of Empark Hotels & Resorts. The logo is two circles, one above the other and overlapping, holding the character 景 (jing, view) from the brand name: the upper circle holds 日 and a horizontal stroke, the lower circle holds 小, and the area where the two circles overlap supplies the 口 in the middle. The circles come from the moon gate of the Chinese garden, and their overlap stands for travellers from everywhere meeting here. The brand colours are silver-stone grey and champagne gold, and the applications cover business stationery, guest-room items, metal signage, staff pins and a hotel film. The logo is still in use, including at the Empark View hotel in Fuzhou. In the same engagement, Xinming Design also delivered Empark Grand Hotel, 世纪域美 (Shiji Yumei) and Empark Prime.

A business hotel that wants guests to relax

The Empark View Hotel is a new business hotel brand launched by Empark Hotels & Resorts; the name was chosen by the client. The client defined its positioning as "quality enjoyed, space shared" and "The Stay of Inspiration": a hotel that is not just a place to sleep, but a place to meet, work and socialise.

The proposal names its audience as young business travellers: a distinctive city business hotel offering young professionals a new kind of stay; like a magnet, a distinctive hotel draws distinctive guests.

The look of a traditional business hotel tends to be dark, formal and standardised; it stresses efficiency and rarely lets anyone relax. The Empark View Hotel faces a different guest, for whom the line between business travel and life keeps blurring, and the lobby can be a living room, a temporary office or a coffee corner. So the logo had two questions to answer: how to express meeting and ease beyond business steadiness, and how to have a face of its own among the group's several hotel brands.

The moon gate: first, a door

The first page of the rationale is the Asian moon gate: the moon gate takes its form from the full moon, giving a sense of completeness, fullness and balance, calm yet full of tension.

The moon gate is a round doorway common in Chinese gardens. It carries two meanings that suit a hotel: it is a full moon, complete and quiet; and it is a door, the first thing a guest passes through on entering a space. For a hotel named after a view, starting from the garden door that frames a scene can be read as treating the hotel as a place to stop and look.

Two rings: where strangers meet

The second element is two overlapping rings. The proposal calls it meeting and leaning on each other: wherever people come from, they end up meeting; travellers from all over become friends instead of strangers, and feel warmth and happiness.

This matches the client's "space shared". In a business hotel, people come from different cities, stay a night or two and leave; the overlap of the two rings is the time and space they briefly share. That is where the H1 comes from: a moon gate where strangers meet.

One character, split into two circles

The third element is 景 from the brand name. The proposal combines the three into one figure: moon gate, plus meeting, plus the brand name, equals the logo.

The combination is precise:

· Upper circle: a rounded 日 with a horizontal stroke beneath it, the stroke running out to both sides of the ring.

· Lower circle: a central vertical with two arcs opening downward on either side, which is 小.

· The overlap: the area where the two circles cross supplies the 口 in the middle of 景.

So the logo does not put a character inside a circle; the rings themselves become strokes. The place where two people meet is part of the character. The whole figure is drawn in a single line of even weight, and the proposal provides construction drawings for it, the Chinese wordmark 世纪域景 and the English wordmark THE EMPARK VIEW HOTEL.

A single line can be made in metal

A single-line logo has a practical advantage: it can be cut, pierced and embossed directly. In the proposal's applications, the same figure is made in three ways:

· Pierced metal sign: two rose-gold rings standing in front of a dark ground, with open space between the strokes;

· Embossed paper: on white and grey paper, shown only in relief, without colour;

· Gold pin: reduced to a staff lapel, still recognisable as two circles and a character.

For a hotel, the logo appears most often not on a screen but on the entrance, the front desk, key cards and staff uniforms. A logo that can be made in metal and shrunk to a pin is one that holds up in those places.

Silver-stone grey and champagne gold

There are only two brand colours, and the proposal gives each a keyword: silver-stone grey (C79 M74 Y71 K45), keyword "attitude", standing for wisdom, youth, steadiness and business, shown with a close-up of a road bike; and champagne gold (C20 M40 Y61 K0), keyword "luxury", standing for warmth, elegance, experience and poise, shown with a glass of wine. The dark grey keeps business settings steady, and the champagne gold brings warmth and refinement; together they keep The Empark View Hotel from feeling as cold as a traditional business hotel, without tipping into showiness. The proposal gives CMYK values only.

Deliverables and extensions

Logo design

· The Empark View Hotel symbol (moon gate, two overlapping rings and the character 景) with construction drawing

· Chinese wordmark 世纪域景, English wordmark THE EMPARK VIEW HOTEL and lockup rules

Core visual identity

· Brand colours: silver-stone grey, champagne gold

· Brand rationale: moon gate, distinctive attraction, meeting and leaning on each other

Applications

· Business stationery: letterhead, envelopes, business cards

· Guest-room items: door hangers, key card sleeves, amenity bottles

· Guest information: hotel brochure

· Pierced metal signage, staff pins

· Hotel film

The metal sign, embossed paper, stationery, guest-room, business card and pin images on this page are application mock-ups; names, addresses, phone numbers and English copy in them are placeholders.

Four brands, one engagement

In the same engagement, Xinming Design delivered visual identities for four brands of Empark Hotels & Resorts. Empark Grand Hotel kept its fan logo and gained colours and fan patterns; The Empark View Hotel, 世纪域美 (Shiji Yumei) and Empark Prime each received a new logo:

· Empark Grand Hotel: keeping the logo, filling the fan with six blessings (www.xinming.sg/en/portfolio/3047.html)

· 世纪域美 (Shiji Yumei): the character 世, clouds and mountains in a single seal (www.xinming.sg/en/portfolio/3049.html)

· Empark Prime: the character 世 as a window (www.xinming.sg/en/portfolio/3061.html)

All three new logos find their forms in traditional Chinese architecture and objects: a door, a seal, a window. The Empark View Hotel chose the door, because what it had to say was "come in" and "meet".

Looking back eight years on

Three points are worth taking from this project:

1. Let the figure become the strokes. The character 景 is not placed inside a circle but split across two; the overlap supplies the 口, so figure and name are one and the same.

2. Turn a positioning into a shape. "Space shared" is a phrase; two overlapping rings make it visible: strangers overlap here, then go their separate ways.

3. Design for craft. A single-line logo can be pierced, embossed and made into a pin, and a hotel uses its logo most on the entrance, the front desk and staff uniforms, not on a screen.

Completed in 2018, the logo is still in use. What a business hotel can offer its guests is not only a room but a door: come in here, and meet someone.

How to verify

· Contracting entity: 北京世纪金源大饭店有限责任公司 (Beijing Empark Grand Hotel Co., Ltd.)

· Group: Empark Hotels & Resorts (世纪金源酒店集团), www.empark.com.cn (the hotel directory lists Empark View hotels in Fuzhou and in Shannan, Tibet)

· Status: the Empark View hotel in Fuzhou uses this logo

· This case page: www.xinming.sg/en/portfolio/3048.html

Further reading

· Empark Grand Hotel Visual Refresh: Keeping the Logo, Filling the Fan with Six Blessings (www.xinming.sg/en/portfolio/3047.html)

· Haiding Village Hotel: Drawing the Mountains of Baihualing in a Few Lines (www.xinming.sg/en/portfolio/3040.html)

· Ocean Sonic Resort Sanya: How a Bayfront Resort Open for More Than a Decade Made Itself Memorable Again (www.xinming.sg/en/portfolio/3036.html)

FAQ

Who designed The Empark View Hotel logo?

The logo of The Empark View Hotel (世纪域景) was designed by Xinming Design in 2018, together with the core visual identity and applications. The brand name was chosen by the client. The logo is still in use, including at the Empark View hotel in Fuzhou.

What does The Empark View Hotel logo mean?

It combines a moon gate, two overlapping rings and the character 景: the moon gate stands for completeness and balance, the overlapping rings for travellers from everywhere meeting here. The character is split across the two circles, with 日 and a horizontal stroke above, 小 below, and the overlap supplying the 口 in the middle.

What are The Empark View Hotel brand colours?

Silver-stone grey (C79 M74 Y71 K45), keyword "attitude", and champagne gold (C20 M40 Y61 K0), keyword "luxury".

Did Xinming Design write "quality enjoyed, space shared"?

No. "Quality enjoyed, space shared" and "The Stay of Inspiration" are the client's brand positioning; Xinming Design translated it into the logo and visual identity.

How is The Empark View Hotel related to Empark Grand Hotel?

Both are brands of Empark Hotels & Resorts, delivered by Xinming Design in the same engagement in 2018. Empark Grand Hotel kept its original fan logo; The Empark View Hotel is a new brand with a new logo.

Which companies can learn from this case?

Hotel groups launching a new brand; city business hotels that want to express ease and social life beyond business; and service brands whose logo must work in metal, embossing and pins.

Xinming Design is a brand systems design firm. Its work centres on systematic judgment, turning brand strategy into structures that can run and be inherited. www.xinming.sg