Spanning from January to May of 2023, I took part in a collaborative project working in a group of seven designers from multiple facets of Iowa State's Design Program. Our team, named 2Mass Design Group, featured two interior designers, an industrial designer, an architect, and two other graphic designers along with myself. Together, we ideated, conceptualized, and designed a hotel and accompanying mobile unit for the NASA's Kennedy Space Center down in Florida.
Like most projects, our final deliverable looked vastly different from our initial sketches, however throughout the entire process we stayed focused on our central theme, which was the Artemis Project currently being worked on at NASA. Artemis is a multi-layered project based around NASA's mission to return to the Moon, and ultimately set foot on Mars.
With this in mind, we wanted to focus on the three major bodies involved in the process, the Earth, Moon, and Mars. With this idea of three-in-one, we set out to create a one-of-a-kind experience that visitors would never forget.
As a graphic designer, my role was to create the branding for the hotel, which we decided to split into three separate buildings to symbolize our concept of three-in-one. With this decision in mind, we created a dynamic logo that could stand on its own to encompass the hotel in its entirety while also supporting the three distinct spaces that made up our hotel.
We brainstormed for weeks before and developed numerous concepts, and decided to move forward with Odyssey as our parent branding title. An odyssey is a journey that concludes upon arrival back at the start, which we thought was a perfect encapsulation of our concept as well as the look and feel we were striving to achieve.
Under the umbrella of the Odyssey would be our three buildings, or 'pods' as we called them. The Mission Control Pod, meant to symbolize Earth and NASA's headquarters, along with the Moon and Mars Pods.
Before we could apply our dynamic brand to each of our three individual pods, we had to design an identity for the Odyssey that would A) be applicable throughout our hotel, and B) create a natural connection between the pods. This part of the process took a few weeks to complete, but we knew how imperative it was to come up with a strong parent identity before anything else. The subsects of the design had no chance if the primary mark didn’t work.
With this in mind, we researched both hotel brands and national dynamic identities for inspiration. That research paired with our design eyes led us to our final mark seen below. We designed the figure in conjunction with our architect as he finalized the base shape for our building in an effort to create a stronger connection between our brand and our product.
The next step in our process included fleshing out the identities of our three pods. We wanted to give them each their own unique feel as a way to help visitors distinguish which part of the journey they were experiencing at any given moment. The different shape languages can be seen below.
Once we had established the individual branding for each of our pods, we began to develop some components that showcased the brands and how they would be used within each pod. For the graphics portion of our project, that came in the form of a two themed restaurants and key cards, as well as a handful of animations.
These animations below belong to entrance in Mission Control (left) and the Command Center in the Moon Pod's Learning Experience (right).
These animations below were featured in our mobile learning unit, which took users through some of the different processes of the Artemis projects.