CHIANGMAI, 2017
Our role in this project took place early on as part of a highly collaborative design process with the owner and the architect who was assigned to work on the renovation of multiple units of shophouses in Sompetch Market of Thailand’s Chiangmai province.
The foremost requirement is for the name to contain the word ‘bird’ to correspond with the name of the owner’s other hotel business. With Thunder Bird being chosen as the hostel’s moniker, we began creating a character of a backpacker wearing a bird head with a playfully mischievous face with pimples on both cheeks and a jumpsuit with a thunder symbol screened on the chest. The character is used as the hostel’s logo and made into a large sculpture hung from the ceiling of the main lobby.
The design of the logotype is customized from Thunder Bird’s imagined handwriting. In addition to Thunder Bird Hostel, the second floor of this collective space houses a vegetarian restaurant named ‘Hungry Bird’. The Hungry Bird’s logo is derived from the orange bird character whose design originates from a carved carrot and the bird’s visualised handwriting. The hostel’s bar, which goes by the name ‘Nok Bar’, is a pun of the Thai slang ‘nok’ meaning ‘getting snubbed’, playfully implying that the patrons of Nok Bar are safe from being snubbed or ‘nokked’. The bar’s logo is designed to be vibrant and simple with a pink neon sign that succinctly reads ‘NOK’.