Relm

Relm is West Elm’s hypothetical hospitality brand to transform home design visions into reality. It strives to ensure that each home is the representation of each distinctive identity and is a safe space of relaxation and comfort.

Relm lives as a pop-up hotel partnering with existing apartments and contractors across the US, creating a physical showroom experience for West Elm as well as encouraging new leases for the apartments. In this project, I partnered Relm with Gardenhouse located in Beverly Hills for a Los Angeles-style urban living experience. There are three choices of rooms, penthouses, flats, and townhomes, where each room is entirely shoppable with all West Elm’s furniture.

My design concept focuses on keywords like sustainable, holistic, and tactile, emphasizing the feeling of home.

The logotype and the secondary mark are inspired by West Elm’s sustainable actions, with a sense of flow and circulation

The graphic elements are made from forms extracted from the logos and freeform line strokes, representing movement and connection. They are applied in postcards for the visitors to take home

Welcoming kit

The welcoming kit in each room contains 3 lookbooks, a fabric swatchbook, a notepad with the floorplan, a restaurant menu, cup coasters, and door hangers and keycards

The 3 lookbooks are introductions to Relm. The first lookbook is a shopping guide with all the sustainable furniture in each room. The second one talks about the partnership with Gardenhouse containing the 3 different floorplans. The main lookbook is a small zine with articles about West Elm. The lookbooks are each binded with hand sewn saddle stitch

I designed the main lookbook by pairing the freeform graphic language with rules and grids. I want to represent the sense of structure in architecture with the rules, and the movement of people living inside the space with the flowy lines

The swatchbook features West Elm’s sustainable fabrics, giving the visitors a selection of fabrics to choose from when they buy their own furniture. The swatchbook is binded with hand sewn saddle stitch

The restaurant menu contains 4 categories, enhancing the room service experience

The notepad is pre-printed with the room’s floorplan, encouraging the visitors to draw down their own interior design ideas as they live inside the space. They can also brings these ideas home for future reference

The door hangers are made from the letter “e” in the logo with the brand’s messaging

In-room amenities

Branded amenities for the holistic experience

Spatial designs

The graphic language is applied large in the interiors and the exteriors of the building, and I designed the wayfinding system based on the “+” pattern

Website

The website is where the live showroom experience connects with online shopping. The visitors can shop West Elm’s featured sustainable furniture, browse and shop the furniture in their booked rooms, and plan their own interior setup based on the 3 floor plans provided by the partnered apartment