Bella Sky, in the middle of Copenhagen’s newest neighbourhood Ørestad, is the jewel in Comwell’s crown: Scandinavia’s largest hotel and a landmark of striking contemporary architecture. Its two towers slope shyly away from each other at a 15 degree incline, like the two strokes of a bold, chequered “V”, creating a vast range of different room layouts and views of the neighbouring nature reserve.

SDL was handed the task of turning the dynamic architecture into visual communication. We were to create an identity for the scheme and a signage system to help guests and visitors navigate the complex environment in, around and between the two towers. We developed a bespoke, geometric font that took the angular architecture as inspiration and replaced the curves of the characters with angled strokes. This brought a clear, monochrome identity to all hotel touch points including material for the rooms and restaurants as well as unified the signage throughout the hotel. In keeping with the functional, slightly industrial character of the identity, room numbers were punched out of perforated metal and was backlit. Huge metal letters spelt out the name of the hotel in a stunning 17 metre long metal sign on the approaching road.