Across my 5 years working at FINE, I was a primary Project Director on the Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants account. Projects included everything from a new employer brand to a new global brand playbook to dozens of hotel and restaurant brandings in which I managed the client and its vendors, the internal design teams, the timelines, and the budgets.

I also played a key role in naming new hotels and restaurants and wrote brand messaging materials and new website copy.

Here is a look at a few of my major projects with Kimpton.

Global Brand Playbook

Most notably, Kimpton’s $430-million sale to IHG culminated in a global brand playbook, including messaging, standards, graphic guidelines, and everything in between, to form a comprehensive reference about the brand that pioneered boutique hospitality.

Working with a lean team over the course of a year, FINE interviewed, researched, and massively curated to organize brand tenets and details into digestible chapters, then put word to paper (several hundred pages of paper). The original playbook serves the U.S. team, with a global version that soon followed to outline region-specific standards.

Kimpton Seafire Resort & Spa

The Kimpton Seafire Resort + Spa in Grand Cayman is a new vision of Caribbean luxury and Kimpton’s first international hotel. Work included naming, conceptualizing, and branding the hotel, its spaces, its programming, restaurants, and residences, over a years’ long collaboration of branding from the ground up. Received IMA Best in Class award.

Kimpton Revival Bar & Lounge

Set in Sacramento’s new Downtown Commons, atop Kimpton Hotel Sawyer, Revival bar and lounge boasts expansive views of the ever-changing landscape below, including the Sacramento Kings new Golden 1 Center. Working within a musical concept, the new brand work plays up the conviviality of its location with a rhythmic identity that leverages the space’s sleek and lively environment.

Kimpton Dirty Habit DC

Kimpton’s Dirty Habit DC is an alluring downtown Washington, DC restaurant with a surreal edge. It sets three distinct moods within its space, all film noir-inspired and crawling with enticing social cues—a provocative take on small-bite dining, with disarming décor and a mysterious feeling of dark and unexpected twists around every corner.

The restaurant brand’s copy is a pervasive experience, creating an undertone of thrill and intrigue. Copy is purposefully dramatic, with a sensual tone that toes the line of enticing and intense. The brand dares its guests to submit to sensory overload, and the messaging does the same.

Kimpton Double Take LA

Located on Wilshire Blvd, Kimpton’s Double Take bridges Westwood and Beverly Hills with a modern restaurant and bar rooted in L.A. history. A clever merging of materials and textures creates an environment of high style with low pretension. The experience is inspired by the spirit of independent filmmakers—those who ply the craft of film by day and seek well-crafted food and cocktails after hours.

It began with a name exploration to capture the sense of duality behind the concept, before moving into identity, collateral, and web skinning.

Kimpton Buchanan Hotel

The Kimpton Hotel Buchanan is your personal San Francisco neighborhood pied-â-terre, at the junction of The Fillmore, Pacific Heights, and Japantown. It’s a quietly confident local experience, with a style that speaks to the area’s historic past and blends with Kimpton’s dedication to effortless, elevated experiences.