Hotel X is a luxury hotel that recently opened on the grounds of Toronto’s Exhibition Place, to serve visitors attending conventions, meetings and trade shows at the nearby Enercare Centre, Beanfield Centres and surrounding spaces. The thirty-storey main tower was designed by NORR Architects, with architectural and interior design by Stephen B. Jacobs Group and Andi Pepper Interior Design. Entro was brought on to develop architectural graphics, wayfinding and identification signage to guide guests to and throughout the hotel and its amenities.
The look and feel of the program is minimalistic with features that speak to the elegance of the hotel and the overall collection brand. We tied into the materiality of the hotel’s existing interior design palette, using charcoal aluminum and glass. These darker, more neutral textures contrasted with glass applications fit nicely with the overall theme of the building. For the typeface we used Bliss – a slender sans serif font that helps to suggest a modern and luxurious experience.
Our program for the interior included hotel room identification and all public facing and back of house signage, extending to the parking garage.
This new hotel is part of the Library Hotel Collection, which has the highest guest satisfaction ratings of any luxury hotel collection in the world.
Our program for the building’s exterior specifically included large-scale identification signage, pedestrian and vehicular wayfinding and street level retail signage. The location required that we coordinate closely with the client and stakeholders including the City of Toronto and Exhibition Place to ensure that our wayfinding program complemented the existing Exhibition Place signage and met the stringent bylaws for the area.
All exterior signage was designed to take advantage of sightlines from the main arteries, roads, transit and air routes coming in and out of the city. Visibility studies revealed the ideal placement and sizing of signs, resulting in an identification sign eight metres in height and an additional upper building sign that will be installed in the upcoming months.