We decode The New Company’s panoramic work for Durango Casino & Resort

“We started working with Station Casinos early in the development process – about two years before their property, Durango Casino & Resort, opened. At that point, only the Durango name and the plot of land where the future hotel and casino would be built existed,” recalls Seth Mroczka, President & Co-founder of The New Company, about their experience of branding Durango, a sweeping casino and resort in Las Vegas. Being involved early definitely helped the team, given the nature and the scale of the project – the LA and San Francisco-based design and marketing agency did not just develop the identity and branding for the main resort and casino, but also its confetti of on-site bars and restaurants.

Before the team even began building the visual world for Durango, it first got its basics in place. “Our team spent time with the marketing, creative and property development teams at Station Casinos, along with their architectural partners, to understand design and material languages that were planned across the property,” Mroczka tells us. “We also worked very closely with their Executive Creative Director, Tal Cooperman, for the entire duration of the project,” he adds. Once the design strategy for Durango was fleshed out, the team created design briefs for each of the individual bars and restaurants within it – five, to be precise – “accounting for a spectrum of tones and qualities that would be present in the other venues on site,” says Executive Creative Director & Co-founder Matt Luckhurst.

For the main Durango brand – which is where the design work kicked off – The New Company looked to the immediate landscape around the resort. “Vegas is known as an entertainment hub, but off-strip there are vibrant neighbourhoods and vast deserts and mountain ranges that are often overlooked by visitors,” Creative Director and Partner Jules Tardy explains. The location became a well of inspiration for the team, who pulled the brand’s earthy and sun-washed colour palette from the natural landscapes and crafted the icon to resemble both an agave plant and a sunrise/sunset motif, that “signals a sense of place but also the versatility of the property, offering 24/7 entertainment,” Tardy tells us. The custom wordmark, with its soft, swelling curves “combines the bold confidence of a sans serif with refined details and subtle curves of a serif, achieving a balanced and elevated look. The letterforms signal refinement and luxury, with a slight influence of desert motifs,” he adds.

The main Durango brand served as the North Star for the project, guiding the way for the five F&B brands within the resort and casino, but never overpowering them. Each restaurant and watering hole carved out a distinct space, and hence had to be imbued with its own individual flavour. There’s Nicco’s, an elevated steakhouse restaurant; the Bel-Aire Lounge, a versatile space that turns a daytime lobby bar into a vibrant evening venue; Bel-Aire Backyard, Durango’s expansive pool, bar and restaurant; Eat Your Heart Out (EYHO), a hall of foods that brings together some beloved restaurants from New York, LA and Philadelphia; and finally, Oasis, a cocktail bar.

While each of the spaces had to have its own brand voice, The New Company and Durango teams ensured that they “carried the connective tissue of ‘approachable luxury’ that we had defined early in our strategy work,” says Luckhurst. “Some brands, like Bel-Aire Backyard, have an upbeat and playful tone, infusing illustration and bright colours into the brand for the pool bar/restaurant, while more upscale experiences, like Nicco’s, took a more textured and tactile approach to signal an elevated dining experience. This range allowed for numerous designers at The New Company to play a role in crafting the overarching look and feel, leaning on different styles and talents to create each unique visual language.”

As Luckhurst says, the expansive range of the project meant that almost every designer at the agency contributed to building the collection of brands, focusing on unique executions, such as the glinting, 3D logo for the Bel-Aire Lounge, derived from the modernist gold light fixture that hangs above the bar. “Its curvature and form were the inspiration for our script wordmark,” says Tardy. “The rest of the identity was designed to complement the bar’s interior design – from the colour palette reflecting the natural finishes to the printed foil accents that adorn the collateral.” 

Moments of surprise and contrast were woven throughout the brands that inhabit the Durango world – from the polished, tasteful look of Nicco’s, all felt through the textures and typography of the identity, to the heart-on-the-sleeve approachability of the EYHO brand, starring a chonky wordmark set inside a heart with a bite mark.

The work didn’t end there. The team was also entrusted with the design of the physical objects that are synonymous with a resort and casino – such as chips and room keys. “This was some of the best collateral we’ve ever had the chance to design – there’s nothing like losing money with your own poker chips,” confesses Tardy. In the end, each identity, brand and object came together to form the whole. “Experiencing these brands living in a single environment is unlike anything we’ve done before,” he adds. “From driving down the highway and spotting the massive marquee signage to the front door appliques, walking over the Bel-Aire tile inlay, picking up food in the EYHO bag, to the in-room collateral – it’s a visceral and complete experience that gave us the special and unusual opportunity to ‘step inside’ our work.”