LOGO DESIGN – THE GASTOWN HOTEL
By Elijah Craig, first-year Graphic Design Student
ABOUT THE GASTOWN HOTEL
The Gastown Hotel (officially named "Hotel Europe") was built in 1908 and completed in 1909. It has become one of the most iconic parts in Vancouver's Gastown.
I chose to make a logo for the Gastown Hotel because I felt it had lots of potential to have a timeless, unique logo that people can immediately recognize and even love.
ROUGH SKETCHES
In the first photo sketched many objects and things that are found in Gastown (old clock, street lights, old trees, etc.), old objects from the 1900s (top hats, record player, old fashioned key, etc.) and even drew the Gastown Hotel building in different styles and angles.
In the second photo I started to get more detailed with the logos. I took inspiration from logos from the 1900s with the circular emblems and the handwritten fonts. I took the Vancouver lamp posts and implemented them in a couple of the logo sketches because they are very iconic and you see them everywhere in Vancouver, especially in the Gastown area.
DIGITAL DRAFTS
I had lots of fun with these digital drafts. The first one I had the iconic lamp posts in the centre of the logo with "Gastown Hotel" stretched on the top and bottom Starbucks style. After finishing the logo it started to look like a old cartoon character with the top hat on and the other lights as his hands, so I added a old-style Mickey Mouse face on him for fun. But what falls short for this logo is that it only really represents a certain time (being the early 1900s, when the hotel was built). So this logo is not exactly "timeless" but definitely old fashioned.
The second logo is the most true to Gastown as a whole I believe. The graphic is the front top of the hotel and has an old font to it. The colours are the same as the ones on the building to make it look more like the building. I was worried that people would not recognize it but I was surprisingly wrong! It was immediately recognized, much like the lamp posts in the first logo. This logo was the most popular out of the three I made, which was a big reason I chose this one to go further with.
If I had to pick a second logo to go further with it would be the third one. It has an old fashioned look to it but could also work in this modern day of age. The top hat and sparkles/twinkles gives it kind of a magic/whimsical feel to it. I really do like this one and maybe one day I can implement this sort of style to one of my future logos.
