BRANDON VARA for The Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection
The Omnichannel Hospitality Ecosystem
IHG Hotels & Resorts
Role: Art Director / Brand Governance Lead
Project Type: Cross-Channel Identity Governance & Production Architecture
IHG Hotels & Resorts ran 21+ hotel brands across more than 6,600 hotels, from approachable lifestyle to ultra-luxury. Each brand had its own guidelines, audience and tone, and requests came in from loyalty, sales, luxury and social teams at the same time.
The role was external art director, embedded in IHG’s creative workflow. The job was to interpret each brand’s standards, make the creative calls on individual pieces, and carry them across web, print and social so every piece read as its own brand.
Three tiers. Three channels. One standard per brand.
Every brief started with the brand book. Each tier set a different posture for imagery, color, type and pace, and work for all three ran side by side.
IHG x Six Senses
![brand-campaign-banner-global-sales-[usen]-970x250.jpg](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/3b1389_6278b2f2ea534d3cbc03cda7e54a96aa~mv2.jpg/v1/crop/x_3,y_0,w_605,h_224/fill/w_605,h_224,al_c,q_80,enc_auto/brand-campaign-banner-global-sales-%5Busen%5D-970x250.jpg)
Design System:
Panoramic imagery, hyper-minimalist whitespace and breathing room.
Target Mandate:
Hyper-affluent consumer personas and elite partnership channels.
Ultra-Luxury
InterContinental
Design System:
Editorial symmetry, muted bronze palettes, structured serifs, lux leisure imagery.
Target Mandate:
Prestigious, highly refined metropolitan brand loyalty and integrity.
Premium Heritage Luxury
Garner Hotels
Design System:
High-tempo layouts, pop-color accents, casual typography, comfortable living spaces.
Target Mandate:
Mid-tier, high-velocity, localized digital conversion programming.
Approachable Lifestyle
The Production Architecture
This master-brand ecosystem demonstrates advanced system integration and design governance at the enterprise scale, executed by an embedded external creative authority accountable for outcomes across a massive global infrastructure.
THE SCREEN
Responsive Digital Ecosystems
Web pages were built from IHG’s component-based Figma toolkit. Each was designed at desktop width, then reworked for mobile so navigation, offers and booking held together in a single column. The same standards carried into email programs and display campaigns, which shipped as full size sets and often in several languages.
THE PRINT
Premium Material Touchpoints
Print ran from a hotel welcome card to large-format signage. Brand books were interpreted into editorial layouts for trade magazine ads, sales sheets and lookbooks for luxury travel advisors.
THE FEED
High-Velocity Kinetic Programming
Social briefs were loose: a post count and a few themes, such as the neighborhood, the property and a cultural moment. Concept, footage, music and edit were decided from there, with a copywriter on captions and on-screen text. Guest footage was sourced, cleared with permission and cut to each brand’s pace.
THE SCREEN
Responsive Digital Ecosystems
System Navigation: Mastered and stress-tested component-driven corporate Figma toolkits to maintain brand standards across expansive multi-property responsive rollouts.
Viewport Engineering: Directed the technical layout translation of macro-level desktop web environments down to high-density, user-centric mobile interfaces.
THE PRINT
Premium Material Touchpoints
Aesthetic Integration: Interpreted heritage luxury brand books to compose high-end editorial layouts, balancing strict color governance, margins, and premium type.
Tactile Scale Systems: Engineered layouts for high-stakes B2B trade collateral and intimate on-property guest touchpoints, proving absolute micro-typographic precision.
THE FEED
High-Velocity Kinetic Programming
Multi-Brand Acquisition: Coordinated relentless daily asset production pipelines across dozens of sub-brands simultaneously without ever letting contrasting tier codes bleed.
Video-First Architecture: Formulated programmatic content frameworks, setting precise execution parameters for color grading, audio rhythm, and typography overlays.
From 2025 to 2026, hundreds of assets were produced across 130+ projects, with several brands in production at any time. Intake, scheduling and stakeholder updates were run independently to keep pace with IHG’s internal teams. Across that volume, each piece was held to its own brand standard on screen, in print and in the feed, and the brands stayed distinct from one another.
SCREEN
Responsive Digital Ecosystems
System Navigation:
Mastered and stress-tested component-driven corporate Figma toolkits to maintain brand standards across expansive multi-property responsive rollouts.
Viewport Engineering:
Directed the technical layout translation of macro-level desktop web environments down to high-density, user-centric mobile interfaces.
Premium Material Touchpoints
Aesthetic Integration:
Interpreted heritage luxury brand books to compose high-end editorial layouts, balancing strict color governance, margins, and premium type.
Tactile Scale Systems:
Engineered layouts for high-stakes B2B trade collateral and intimate on-property guest touchpoints, proving absolute micro-typographic precision.
FEED
High-Velocity Kinetic Programming
Multi-Brand Acquisition:
Coordinated relentless daily asset production pipelines across dozens of sub-brands simultaneously without ever letting contrasting tier codes bleed.
Video-First Architecture:
Formulated programmatic content frameworks, setting precise execution parameters for color grading, audio rhythm, and typography overlays.