Garner
SKILLS: Brand Positioning, Copywriting, Narrative Development, Web Design, Content Design
THE WORK
In 2023, IHG approached us to build a new brand for their latest hotel launch, Garner. As Covid ushered in wholesale changes to the hospitality industry — the blending of business and leisure trips, remote work, the growth of smaller to mid-sized cities — IHG needed a new offer catered to a new type of traveler.
Garner is a midscale conversion brand which means that, unlike new build hotels, Garner hotels are renovations of previous hotels. The exact layout of each of the hotels is different, so the brand needed to be flexible enough to accommodate a less controlled brand environment.
We were also dealing with the fact that this is a saturated market with very little differentiation between competitors. So we sought to bring a layer of warmth and generosity to the brand, infusing a sense of adventure into the verbal and visual elements, ultimately turning the differences between Garners into part of the experience.
The logo was rendered by hand, inspired by vintage letterforms and modernist typography, while we also worked with the IHG team and their manufacturers to design bespoke navigation icons, full interior and exterior signage, and the launch video.
Garner is one of IHG’s fastest-growing brands with more than 120 hotels converted since launch and global expansion into the UK, India, Japan, and Turkey. IHG plans on launching 500 Garners in the next 10 years, and 1,000 in the next 20 as a key part of IHG’s growth strategy.
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© Andy Reischling, 2026