Motto by Hilton is a vibrant global hotel brand built for modern explorers who travel intentionally, live smart, and stay connected. Anchored in buzzy neighborhoods across some of the world’s most iconic cities, Motto appeals to travelers through modular room designs that enable flexible, personalized stays. For those seeking an experience-driven stay, the hotel is designed to be a launchpad for energetic neighborhood exploration and cultural immersion.

Watson led the brand’s strategy, positioning, and identity refresh, clarifying Motto’s voice and expression to deliver a cohesive vision—one defined by intentionality, ingenuity, and local connection.

To express Motto’s locally rooted approach to each hotel location, Watson developed a dynamic typographic system that captures the essence of each place through a corresponding typeface. Each hotel’s location logo lockup pairs the existing Motto wordmark with the city name, typeset in its selected typeface. Comprised of eight typefaces that are distinct in style yet unified in proportion, the system forms a cohesive library that reflects the hotel’s collection of unique destinations.

A clear methodology guides how each typeface is applied, ensuring it reflects the distinct energy and character of its neighborhood. An arts district like Chelsea in New York City features a typeface inspired by calligraphic letterforms, echoing its offbeat, idiosyncratic character. In contrast, a tourist hotspot like Times Square adopts a friendlier geometric sans serif to convey the destination’s broader, more universal appeal.

Business cards for Ikon, printed duplex on GF Smith Plike, featuring gold foil text and gold edging. The logo is set in Tungsten and the body copy in Quarto.

75010 is a city guide about the 10th arrondissement of Paris. The book is divided into six categories: Eat / Dance / Find / Drink / Read / See. Not famous or hype, only places of real life!

The typography uses Mars Extended and Condensed, designed by Alaric Garnier (75018) and released by Production Type (75002). The serif used for headlines and quotes is Quarto.

The Swedish streaming service for audiobooks BookBeat uses Cera Round for the user interface typography. In addition, the headlines are set in high-contrasted Quarto.

Magazine title set in SangBleu Empire, number in SangBleu Courtesan, subtitle in TheW Clan ODB and fine print in Suisse Int’l.

In the third issue of Type Life, Swiss Typefaces take a look beyond their own work and celebrate contemporary type made by others. The Swiss design studio compiled a selection of their favorite typefaces, licensed the fonts and used them to design a magazine. The resulting specimen of “Non-Swiss Typefaces We Like 1569–2018” comes with a text by Florian Hardwig (Fonts In Use) and is visually enriched with works by lettering artist Julien Priez (boogypaper).

Type Life 3 showcases 19 fonts from 19 international foundries: 29Letters, Adobe Type, Commercial Type, CSTM Fonts, Dinamo Typefaces, DSType, Extrabrut.Shop, Future Fonts, Hoefler & Co., Letters From Sweden, Linotype, Milieu Grotesque, Or Type, Production Type, Sharp Type, Sportsfonts.com, The Enschedé Font Foundry, Typotheque, and Velvetyne Typefoundry. The selection is a representative sample for the diversity in type design and gives an illuminating overview of the current scene. While the majority of the fonts was released in the past few years, many draw inspiration from all kinds of sources from previous eras. There is blackletter, script, slab serif, sans serif, and more. This – a stress on newness, historical references, and a vast stylistic plurality – reflects three major trends in today’s typography, as Florian Hardwig points out in his introduction. Other recurring themes that he identifies as being symptomatic for 2018 include highly conceptual projects and a quest for extreme aesthetics. At the same time there are functional fonts designed to solve specific problems. Just like the fonts, the type designers who created them have diverse backgrounds, in terms of geography, or how they entered the field. The represented distribution models range from traditional licensing to subscriptions, free and open-sourced fonts, as well as experimental or even unfinished releases.

Each issue of Type Life features a guest contributor. This time it’s the up-and-coming French lettering artist Julien Priez. A graduate of École Estienne, Paris, he’s a member of the international collective High on Type, best known for organizing the annual festival All Eyes on Type. Priez gives workshops at various schools and is an instructor at the prestigious TypeParis program. His work oscillates between the analog and the digital. Alphabets are first calligraphed, then cut in wood, and eventually digitized. Priez is just as comfortable painting meter-high letters with a triple brush on a wood fence as he is animating ornate pixel letters with kaleidoscopic patterns. Type Life #3 shows a range of his repertoire, starting with a still from his animated Nightmare Alphabet and two of his in-progress fonts Boogyroma and Boogylink on the cover. Mandinor Gothic is used to render the word “KING” on top of a kinetic gesture. The next page answers with “KONG”, in letterforms that pay homage to Jean Midolle’s Alphabet Lapidaire Monstre from 1835. With such historical references and the stunning stylistic versatility, Priez’ work is a perfect fit for the content of this issue.

At a whopping 40 pages, Type Life 3 is the most substantial issue so far. It’s printed in three Pantone spot colors plus silver and black, on two different paper stocks including transparent paper.

“Dream” set in Boogyroma and “Chasers” set in Boogylink, two in-progress typefaces by Julien Priez. Foundry names set in TheW Clan GZA by Swiss Typefaces. The caption that mentions the typefaces is set in Suisse Int’l Condensed.

Essay, set in SangBleu Republic (body text) and Suisse Int’l Mono (streamers, side notes). The green type on the left and at the very top of the right page is KOPYME As Uzual.

Galapagos (Felix Salut, Dinamo) and Xprmntal 01 (CSTM Fonts) visiting each other’s page. Typeface names (top) are in KRSNA. In the margins left and right, the foundry names are set in stacked letters from KOPYME (Swiss Typefaces).

Winner (Sportsfonts.com) × Quarto (Hoefler & Co.)

A pattern of Patron (Milieu Grotesque) with a guest appearance by Vincent (Letraset) is juxtaposed with a collage featuring elements from a Caslon Old Face specimen by H.W. Caslon & Co. from 1924.

On the left, a page from the book Il perfetto Scrittore Di M. Gio. Francesco Cresci, Italy, 16th century. On the right, (raster) pattern tiles are mixed with Frank Adebiaye’s Montchauve (Velvetyne).

Perfil (DSType) and Cardinal (Production Type). Cameo: Magnificat.

Julien Priez’ Mandinor Gothic in combination with his lettering.

Pattern by Julien Priez, printed in fluorescent and metallic ink.

Separat (Gunmad, OR Type) on the left, and Azal (Pascal Zoghbi, 29 Letters) as well as a tag lettering on the right hand.

Times Europa (Linotype) vs. Line (Letters from Sweden), with interventions by Good Vibrations and Block Up (Letraset).

Type that looks like it cannot be moved, and type that looks like it couldn’t sit still for a second: Berton Hasebe’s Styrene (Commercial Type) and Jérémy Landes’ Digestive (Triple Studio).

Thesaurus Display (Typotheque) × Respira Black (Sharp Type)

Feature page with Benoît Brun’s Shakotan (work in progress), printed in neon spot color.

On the left, a selection of A monograms (mostly dating back to the 15th and 16th century) shine through their overlying page with a big silver A set in Bram de Does’ Lexicon No. 2 (The Enschedé Font Foundry).

Pull quote in SangBleu Sunrise, printed in silver metallic ink.

Back cover with a sneak preview of the upcoming KOPYME and SuisseU.

The festive-themed microsite takes the form of an interactive mad-lib, allowing the user to create and send custom holiday e-cards tailored to family members, friends, lovers, bosses, neighbours or even pets. Equipped with a New Year countdown clock, the tool lets you choose from a selection of sophisticated colour schemes and cheeky pre-written messages, streamlining your holiday correspondence while showcasing the agency’s abilities for developing smart, chic and playful digital experiences.

Year & Day is a new direct-to-consumer ceramics and flatware brand. Their website was designed by Dynamo, in Montreal, using FF Mark and Quarto as part of the branding.

Gotham for UI elements, Quarto for display headings, Mercury for small headings and body text, and Sentinel for large attention-grabbing blockquotes round out a full set of typographic elements.

Fantastic use of Hoefler & Co. fonts in this new site for recording duo Palaxy Tracks.