CMYK

Arlo Hotel

Bold and dynamic hospitality experience.

Best Use of Photography / Honoree

CMYK

Best Use of Photography

Honoree

Centralizing all back-end and front-end experiences for both employees and customers. Adam Scher, Co-Founder & Creative Director
Photography: Nina Choi

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Q: Can you briefly describe your project and the concept behind it?

A: CMYK worked with Arlo to reinvent their entire digital ecosystem and to celebrate the youthful and adventurous lifestyles of their clientele. Our strategic recommendation was to design a multi-site back-end system that held Arlo's corporate platform and each of their hotel properties within a single CMS, ensuring visual and brand consistency across all sites while also streamlining workflows.

Q: Once you settled on your idea, what influenced your decision on the chosen technical approach? How did it differ or go beyond approaches you’ve taken in the past?

A: Our global design system centered around large images showcasing the hotel's various amenities, alongside masking techniques to provide interactive rollovers and parallax scrolling to bring a playful tone to the overall aesthetic and user experience. We also designed the website with a keen eye toward the mobile experience, reflective of the large percentage of site users looking to make reservations from their mobile devices.

Q: What were some of your biggest learning and takeaways from this project?

A: For a massive and highly-trafficked ecommerce site, the rule of measure twice and cut once is incredibly important!

Q: What web technologies, approaches, tools, or resources did you use to develop this experience (WordPress, headless, AI, Sublime Text, HTML5, Adobe XD, etc)?

A: We used a multi-site WordPress implementation to create a central hub for all of the brand's sites, allowing the main back-end editors to serve like content from a single location, while also maintaining separation between property pages for clarity. Alongside this, we used a standard suite of development tools and languages, and Figma for design layouts and comps.

Q: How did the final product meet or exceed your expectations? What results did you see?

A: While we were confident that the approach we mapped at the start of the project would be successful, the end product was better even than anticipated. The client's site management has improved their workflow efficiency due to the increased ease the site affords them, which has in turn allowed them to nimbly expand their physical footprint, including opening 3 additional properties since the original site launch.

Q: Why is this an exciting time to create new digital experiences? How does your team fit into this?

A: The way we interact with the world around us is constantly evolving, and digital experiences are playing an increasingly important role in our lives. My team is passionate about creating new digital experiences that are both engaging and informative. We believe that digital experiences can make a positive impact on people's lives, and we are committed to using our skills to create experiences that are both useful and enjoyable.

Q: How did you reach a good balance of your own creative ideas and technical capabilities with a fair representation of the client’s brand?

A: We were fortunate to have a partner in this project that truly believed in our vision for the site, and trusted our design sensibilities to convey their brand in the best way possible. We leveraged their knowledge as SMEs of the intricacies of hospitality, and they leveraged our knowledge of design and development in order to create a highly functional and beautiful site.

Q: What did your initial moodboard, wireframe, or prototype look like? How did those ideas change throughout the design process?

A: Our design process is highly iterative and responsive to feedback (both internal and client-sourced). While the live-product does bear many key features that we began exploring at the very start of the design process, we also made many improvements and updates as we moved from concept to reality.