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The Calile is an urban resort in Brisbane, Australia, that reimagines the five-star resort through a distinctly Brisbane lens – one shaped by the city’s relaxed lifestyle and subtropical climate. Architects Richards & Spence designed it in textured travertine, brass detailing and a brutalist architectural language. Ahead of the opening in 2018, owner-developer Calile Malouf Investments turned to Studio Bland, a design studio based in Brisbane and Melbourne, to create a comprehensive brand system that translates the architecture into an operational, enduring guest experience. Calile comes from Khalil, meaning a friend or companion – a word that the Malouf family had carried since 1892, long before it became the name of the hotel.
The brand grew out of the architecture itself. Where the building uses travertine and cast concrete, the collateral features porous boxboard and uncoated paper, and brass travels from fixtures and signage into foiled details on printed pieces. The client and Richards & Spence wanted the collateral to represent the building through the same material thinking. “The connection was not visual imitation, but a shared attitude to materials: use them in their real form and let each one do its job,” explains Lucy Bland, Creative Director at Studio Bland.
Studio Bland had worked with Calile Malouf Investments long before this project, beginning with James St Market, one of the early developments in the area that helped set the character of the street. “By the time the hotel project began, the relationship was already built on trust, understanding and alignment,” Bland tells us, a history that let the studio “anticipate a need before it had been fully verbalised." Instead of starting from a catalogue of standard hotel collateral, the studio began by challenging what a hotel of this kind actually needed: what could be integrated and what could be removed, then designed only what earned its place. The approach registered with Cal Malouf, who found that Studio Bland “constantly and successfully challenged accepted hotel operational systems and expected design outcomes in favour of ideas that would engage guests.”
For the signage, the studio mapped routes through the building from the perspective of a guest, a visitor and a worker, marking the points where somebody had to choose a direction or locate a destination, then asked whether the architecture could answer through a sightline, a shift in material or the placement of an entry. Only where it could not did a sign appear. “We didn’t begin by asking how many signs the hotel required. We asked which decisions needed support,” Bland details. Working with the architects early on meant that wayfinding could be integrated into stone, doors and architectural plinths in place of plaques and freestanding totems. A change in material signals a destination before a guest has consciously begun reading, so the hotel has fewer signs than you might traditionally expect.
From the same instinct, the touchpoints a guest handles were designed around a person rather than hotel conventions. Key cards are colour-coded to room type, blue, green or pink, and the in-room compendium unfolds into a map of the neighbourhood. The collateral pairs imperfect boxboard with precise brass foil, with soft pinks, greens and blues lifted from the interiors. That contrast between raw board and foil took many repeated trials before it had the right balance.
LL Brown by Lineto – a versatile geometric sans serif that performs at very small sizes – is the primary typeface, showing up on room collateral, the website, operational information and large-scale signage without calling attention to itself, feeling both formal in capitals and open in lowercase. Beausite Slick by Fatype appears more sparingly, on titles, introductory text and moments of emphasis, its contrast giving a more decorative voice. “LL Brown carries the information; Beausite enhances the personality,” Bland observes.
Jessica Meyrick’s hand-painted watercolours soften the strength of the architecture and bring humour and movement without tipping into cliché. Painted by hand before scanning, her figures are “languid, with long legs and delicate hands,” Bland recalls, and look as though they were “already on holiday.” They appear across the compendium, room key wallets, the website and, later, the Friends of Calile app, where illustration handles the communication on its own.
As the hotel grew, the brand grew with it, with Studio Bland staying on as a trusted custodian of how the brand behaves in real time, protecting the idea and changing the construction when needed. For example, the original door hangers, worn by use and too light for the naturally ventilated corridors, were remade in a denser, weighted material while keeping their graphic design.
After more than eight years, many of the tools, systems and processes now sit with The Calile’s in-house Brisbane team, and the hotel remains the only one in Oceania to make ‘The World’s 50 Best Hotels’ every year since the list began. “The Calile didn't need constant reinvention,” Bland concludes. “It needed stewardship, and the patience to keep drawing out parts of the brand that had always been there.”