HOSPITALITY BRAND IDENTITY
The Aurelian
Making it feel like the best part of the building.
ROLE
Brand design lead
CLIENT
Elecor (formerly Paramount Group
VENUE
The Aurelian - 1301 Avenue of the Americas, New York
YEAR
2026
SCOPE
Naming (The Café) · Logo & wordmark · Sub-brand system · Brand guidelines · Signage & wayfinding · Digital displays · Menus · Collateral & merchandise
THE BRIEF
THE MOVE
The Aurelian is a hospitality amenity — work in one of the buildings and you're in. Hospitality, wellness, dining and community, already included. That's a particular kind of brand problem — nobody has to buy in, so the brand has to earn the walk-in. The identity it had didn't. It was thin, cool, and read like commercial real estate rather than somewhere you'd choose to spend an hour of your day.
When Paramount Group was acquired and became Elecor, the Paramount Club lost its name overnight. The easy fix was to swap in the new owner’s. But a club named for whoever owns the building gets renamed every time the building changes hands — so The Aurelian was given a name of its own, one that doesn’t turn over with the deed.
Then weight. A heavy, confident wordmark in place of a thin, wide-tracked mark that had read as the landlord’s signage — elevated but never exclusive, which is the line hospitality always has to walk. Everything downstream follows from it.
The Paramount Club: the identity as inherited
The Aurelian: the new wordmark
The mark: the A, mirrored and locked into itself
THE SYMBOL
The mark is drawn from the A in the wordmark. Mirrored and repeated, the letterform locks into itself — a chain that reads as a monogram at small size and as a pattern at scale. That double life is what makes it work: it is a pin on a lapel, and it is the texture running across menus, cards and signage.
Tiled: the pattern on cards, paddles and signage
One thread, three names: the shared typeface is the system
THE ARCHITECTURE
The spaces themselves didn't change — same rooms, same furniture. What changed was what they were called and how they announced themselves. I recommended the name The Café; it was adopted. Both it and The Wellness Center got their own wordmark, drawn on the same typographic thread, so every venue reads as a destination in its own right and unmistakably as part of the club. I drew three wordmarks, but what I handed over was the rule — so spaces that come later have a system to join rather than a precedent to guess at.
The uniform : the brand worn, not just displayed
FRONT OF HOUSE
Hospitality is the part of a brand people meet in person. The pin the team wears on the apron or collar, the welcome signs at the door, the menus handed across the bar — these are where the club stops being a logo and starts being a greeting. I designed that layer as carefully as the mark, because it’s the one members actually touch.
Uniforms, signage, service, print and merchandise: one system across every touchpoint
THE ROLLOUT
The system had to hold up everywhere members and staff actually meet the brand: menus, indoor and outdoor signage, a full digital sign program, paper goods, swag, and a pin the team wears front of house. I documented it as brand guidelines so it could be executed consistently by internal teams and outside vendors.
30
Sold Out
in under a week
projects for a single event
500+
RSVPs in the first hour