THE AIM
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Welcome to the Priory Hotel.
A boutique hotel in the small town of Beauly, Scottish Highlands.
The Brief:
The Priory Hotel is located in the Highland town of Beauly in Inverness-shire. The hotel opened in 1972 in Beauly's famous square with 13 bedrooms. Today, the hotel has 38 en-suite rooms, a popular coffee house and restaurant, and has become as much an integral part of Beauly as the building it was named after. Beauly is a small town just North of Inverness with little more than 1,000 residents and yet it holds within it one of the most iconic landmarks of the area, the Priory.
The building was founded in approximately 1230 and was the home of a Valliscaulian monastic community. The French speaking monks gave the town its name, from the term 'beau lieu' meaning 'beautiful place' and the ruins of the building today are one of the top tourist destinations in Inverness-shire.
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The Priory Hotel required a new logo and look for their brand, with the original logo shown to the right, the logo in use at the start of the project. Being very detailed, the hotel requested a simplified and modern replacement.
Purple Haze
R:125 G:112 B:152
Quiet Shade
R:105 G:108 B:113
The Design Process:
When beginning the design process for the Priory's new logo I wanted to start by working on the building from a new and iconic angle, meanwhile capturing the finer details of the ruins whilst in a simplified style. The colour scheme chosen as requested by the hotel themselves was one of soft purple and greys, named Purple Haze and Quiet Shade, as shown to the left..
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For the first draft of the logo I chose to bring the Priory to life by isolating the ruins and using the entire building in the design, with alternating shades of soft purple and beginning at the iconic frontage before working back along the sides of the building. The Priory today has little straight edges to the structure left, with jagged brickwork forming the outline and I attempted to create that first. With individual brushstrokes as the brickwork within the structure, differing shades to create depth and the use of negative space in the windows and entrance, completing the building's design after extensive work on fine details. The font originally chosen was in sans-serif style too, with the intention of mirroring the classical look of the logo.
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Upon communicating with the hotel with the completed first draft, a change in direction was requested for enhancement, simplifying the style further, modernising the font and changing the primary colours from purple tones to grey. The angle of the building was changed first, to the same view as the original logo with the building front-facing. The style of the building was modernised along with the font, with the edges of the building smoothed out and the font changed from a sans-serif style to a modern sans. The new style of the building helped to bring the Priory back to what we know was former glory, with incredibly impressive brickwork in a structure of that era with so little resources for its' builders, the monks of early Beauly.
