Introduction
In response to the 2021 billionaire space race and renewed interest in space travel, Hotel Sojourn is a design project that imagines what life would be like in 2050 when humans can finally travel to space.
Named after the first rover in Mars, Hotel Sojourn is a billionaire-only luxury hotel set in Mars. Behind the glamour of this fictional hotel, Hotel Sojourn poses deeper questions about the ethics of colonising space while revealing the amount of waste involved with space travel. Above all, it highlights problems of privilege and questions how it should be used, especially when problems on Earth are yet to be resolved. Lastly, it asks the question of who gets to go to space and who gets left out in the process.
4 items were created for this design project - an interactive webpage, Hotel Sojourn merch, a room keycard and an accompanying card cover.
The webpage above was created on Adobe XD.
Design Process
BACKGROUND OF THE HOTEL:
Hotel Sojourn is set on Mars since it is the most habitable planet. To keep things relatively realistic, this project is set in the year 2050, which is not too far off from now. This made it slightly easier to predict and imagine what the future would be like.
Hotel Sojourn is set on Mars since it is the most habitable planet. To keep things relatively realistic, this project is set in the year 2050, which is not too far off from now. This made it slightly easier to predict and imagine what the future would be like.
I started off by doing research about the different motivations behind space travel and quickly realised that each billionaire has a different perspective and vision for humanity's future in space. Since Elon Musk is currently running SpaceX with the vision of colonising space, I set Hotel Sojourn as an endeavour started by SpaceX. In this scenario, SpaceX would likely be running these hotels as a preliminary test for short-term stay (befitting of the name Sojourn), before delving into longer modes of stay in the future.
VISUAL IDENTITY OF HOTEL SOJOURN:
The colour palette was inspired by the colours of Mars, Earth and the moon, since these are the 3 planets that would be referenced the most in the hotel website.
Kepler and PPMondwest were used together as the main typeface for the hotel. Kepler was chosen because of its connections to space and astronomy, while PPMondwest was chosen for its digital look so that viewers know that the hotel is set in the future. Roboto Mono was chosen for the body text. All body text are in all caps based on the assumption that using only capital letters would be clearer for a computer to do character recognition.
Typefaces like OCR-A, Eurostile etc. that are commonly associated with sci-fi movies were not chosen since they looked slightly too cliche and futuristic. Keeping in mind that I am designing for a hotel rather than a spaceship, I felt that these fonts looked too digital for a place where people should be relaxing in.
TEXTURE:
Old ink and water were used to create different textures on watercolour paper. These were later scanned and overlayed onto different assets to create the texture of Martian land. Some of the textures were also inverted, resulting in a starry look when placed against a dark background.
LOGO:
2 versions of the logo were made, The logo is a simplification of Hotel Sojourn's dome-like structure (top view and side view), which can be seen from the blueprint on the website.
I envisioned Hotel Sojourn to have a dome-like shape because houses in outer space are often designed without right-angles. Such corners would not be able to withstand the air pressure within the building.
The shapes in the logo were also used to indicate the 4 types of room a guest could stay in. The shape would be printed along with the room number on the hotel keycard and card cover. This creates a clear visual system for hotel staff and guests to quickly identify the type of room being used.
COPYWRITING:
Although set in the future, most of the copywriting for the Hotel Sojourn website are composed of real facts sourced from different news articles about space travel. Even the amenities of each hotel room (which may sound exaggerated) are the actual amenities of the Empathy Suite in Palms Casino Resort, the most expensive hotel in the world.
Hotel Sojourn website done on Adobe XD
A simple 3D animation was created for the website
TL;DR
Hotel Sojourn highlights current contemporary social problems by envisioning the future thirty years from now. It delves into problems of privilege and the rich-poor disparity, while inviting viewers to rethink space travel and space colonisation.
