12 Dream Destinations for Graphics Designers
Featured Image: Matadornetwork.com
Life, for a designer, can often become rather hectic, with a rush of projects and oncoming deadlines leaving them gasping for breath. Every design they complete, each new project they undertake, and all the deadlines they miss or meet, make it ever more necessary to take a break, leave it all behind for a while, and simply recharge.
Also explore: 25 Productivity Tools for Designers
For creativity and innovation to flow, it is essential they be given the room to grow, and that just will not happen if you are cooped up with work month after month, stressing over the next design to finish.
Image Source: Matadornetwork.com
However, you cannot quite opt for just any other tourist spot, can you? If you need a complete break from it all, you would want a total change of scenery, one serene and beautiful enough to help you recover from the hustle and bustle of your usual routine. The 12 destinations listed below are hotels and resorts from the stuff of designers’ dreams. They will not only help you relax and recover, but provide renewed inspiration to you, so you can go back to work flowing with energy, enthusiasm, and a barrel full of ideas.
1. The Fogo Island Inn – A Destination as Remote as Any Designer Can Go
Image Source: fogoislandinn.ca
The Fogo Island Inn is the ideal destination for designers looking to go away. It is as remote as a hotel can be, and is beautifully designed too, providing the perfect environment for you to refuel. You will be engulfed in a rugged northern landscape, surrounded by the ocean, with nothing to interrupt your view of the horizon, but the inn itself – and while it may seem intriguingly out of place, the X-shaped building is still strangely familiar to the surroundings.
The Designer’s Benefit
The contemporary design of the Fogo Island Inn, with its rough contours and sharp angles, does nothing to mar the natural beauty of its environment. In fact, it rather complements the uneven, jagged landscape, and can potentially provide the inspiration for a host of designs. You will be far away from the rest of the world, and yet immersed in the culture and history of a people, suspended in time between the past and the future.
2. The Pantone Hotel – Every Designer’s Dream Come True in Brussels
Image Source: pantonehotel.com
Pantone, the color swatch company, has influenced both fashion and design for decades. Recently, it expanded into the hospitality industry, with the opening of the Pantone Hotel in Brussels – and unwittingly or no, it gave shape and form to the tourism dreams of every designer around the world.
The Pantone Hotel allows you to experience Brussels with a broad spectrum of comforts, and through a lens of color, providing you with both relaxation and inspiration on your getaway.
The Designer’s Benefit
There are playful surprises aplenty, and a whole array of delights to help refresh your mind and body, reawaken your senses, and refuel your creative juices, even as you vacation away from the world of design. Each guest floor has been decorated with a distinct hue, showcasing the colors of emotions, to offer an environment in keeping with your colorful imagination.
3. Hotel Fontevraud – The Mix of Tradition and Modernism Every Designer Must Taste
Image Source: fontevraud.fr
A designer, if they would create designs which resonate with their audience, must indulge in all sorts of experiences, and explore both traditional and modern environments to get a sense of flavor, texture, and feel for their designs. Nowhere else is this experience more tangible than in the Hotel Fontevraud, the eternal resting place of King Richard the Lionhearted.
The Designer’s Benefit
The ideal fusion destination for designers, the redesigned Hotel Fontevraud sits within the 12 century walls of the Abbaye de Fontevraud in Anjou, France. History and culture abound within this place, and the hotel has been designed with an amazingly elegant touch, offering a calm, sophisticated environment to designers for relaxation and regeneration. Private, magical moments profound in serene solitude and reflection can be found in abundance as you take a walk alone through the monastery of an evening or lie in bed in the tranquil silence of the Abbey.
4. Stora Hotellet – A Seafaring Fantasy from the 19th Century
Image Source: Storahotelletumea.se
The Stora Hotellet, in Umeå, Sweden has existed since 1895, but it wasn’t until Stylt Trampol redesigned it that it began to lay its claim to fame. Umeå is a port city, with a long and illustrious legacy of seafaring and shipbuilding, and the hotel keeps alive that tradition by offering its guests an experience which can only be described as a 19th century sailor’s fantasy.
The Designer’s Benefit
To walk into the Stora Hotellet is not unlike taking a walk inside the brain of Herman Melville, so skilfully and artistically has this fantasy been reproduced. All designers would wish to visit and live in this hotel even if only for a day, and no designer could walk away from it without a profound sense of awe and inspiration. It is a lesson in how your imagination has no limits whatsoever, and that all you imagine can indeed be wrought into reality if you but have the will, the desire, and the perseverance to pursue it to its completion.
5. The High Line and Standard Hotel – The Big Apple’s Finest
Image Source: Standardhotels.com<
An entry slightly different from the other places on this list, the Standard Hotel in New York is nonetheless one of the must-visit travel destinations for designers around the world. Straddling the innovative High Line Park, the beautiful glass structure was designed by Gluckman Mayner Architects, and serves as a wonderful getaway if you need a vacation set within a major city’s bustling environment.
The Designer’s Benefit
The magnificently renovated High Line has been transformed into a gorgeous urban park, and a center for design, art, and food. There are covered spaces for cafes, vendors, and perhaps most importantly in this context, for art installations, and they are right in the middle of the park. The Standard Hotel is the way to indulge in the world of design even as you take a break from it, with plenty of other attractions and distractions to help you reenergize yourself before you go back to work.
6. Die Liebeskuemmerer – The Heartbreak Hotel
Image Source: die-liebeskuemmerer.de
When Elvis first crooned out the words to his hit ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ he probably didn’t have Berlin-based Die Liebeskuemmerer in mind. However, the company took his words and made them a reality, offering holiday packages to the lovesick.
The Designer’s Benefit
There are a range of getaways available from cottage breaks, spa holidays and mountain retreats and the only stipulation is that the tourist must be suffering from heartache, whether in a relationship or recently coming out of one. Psychologists and health and styling therapists are on hand to give guests a much-needed boost. A niche area that is perhaps overlooked, this travel company is innovatively catering for a unique market.
7. Marriott’s Renaissance Pittsburgh Hotel – The Complete Digital Break-Away
Image Source: Marriott.com
When you are choosing between luxury downtown Pittsburgh hotels, the Renaissance Pittsburgh will surely be at the top of your list. Housed in the iconic Fulton Building, this boutique luxury hotel delivers contemporary style within an exceptional atmosphere. Enjoy scenic views of the Allegheny River and the Pittsburgh skyline from the magnificent building, and then indulge yourself at the two exceptional on-site restaurants, Braddock’s American Brasserie and Braddock’s Side Street, which serve unique dishes and cocktails in a classic yet trendy environment.
The Designer’s Benefit
The point of a break away is to immerse yourself in relaxation, but all too often this is forgotten by those who find it hard to switch off from their busy work lives. The Marriott Renaissance hotel in Pittsburgh recognized this problem and decided to employ tough love with its guests. Guests must surrender their laptops, cell phones and any other digital device when they check in to the hotel. In their place, the hotel offers a selection of literary classics for guests to delve into.
8. Ladera Resort – The Perfect Caribbean Excursion
Image Source: Ladera.com
Possibly the singular spot for your perfect Caribbean excursion, the Ladera Resort represents the intersection between design, luxury, and the ideal location. Amenities include a full spa, a host of excursion experiences, and the ability to swing straight from a bench into the pool.
The Designer’s Benefit
A thousand feet below, an intensely blue Caribbean Sea dashes against the volcanic Piton Mountains. Faintly scented tropical breezes cool your skin. Your private plunge pool beckons. Each offers fine linens, luxurious amenities and four-poster beds made of polished tropical hardwood. And each, deliberately without a fourth wall, invites the spectacular sunsets and astonishing views right inside, to be a part of your very private, very special retreat. Need we say more?
9. Ascher Cliff, Switzerland – A Getaway High Unlike Any Other
Image Source: Myswitzerland.com
Nowhere else in Switzerland is the change from the hilly landscape of Central Switzerland to the craggy alpine scenery as abrupt or as impressive as in the Alpstein area. Mighty rock formations up to more than 2500 m high tower up as if from nowhere. Deep, steep-sided valleys cut through this region.
The Designer’s Benefit
More of an inn and restaurant than a luxury resort, this getaway built right into an Ebenalp cliff is the best spot to take a breather on your trek up the northern Alps. The views here will keep you charged as you continue your trip through the Swiss mountains.
10. Hotel Kakslauttanen – A Cold Retreat for Warm Inspiration
Image Source: Kakslauttanen.fi
If you’ve never heard of this place, you’ve probably spent an enviably small amount of time on the internet. With its infamous glass igloos and log cabins, the Hotel Kakslauttanen offers an exclusive inside-while-outside winter experience. You know, so you can be immersed in the beauty of frozen forests and incredible winter auroras while simultaneously safe and comfortable inside your own private bubble of warmth.
The Designer’s Benefit
The Hotel Kakslauttanen is one the best places in the world to view the Northern Lights, a sight no designer should miss if they can afford to experience it. There is a lot more in store though, here in the wilderness, from the northern Lapland experience at its purest, to the discovery of the magic of the world’s best kept secret.
11. Cocoa Island Resort, Maldives: Truly, the Middle of Nowhere at All
Image Source: Comohotels.com
Just a 40-minute speedboat ride from the archipelago’s main airport, Cocoa Island floats as a cluster of 33 over-water suites (straight out from those sweeping white sand beaches you’ve seen in every tropical island fantasy you’ve ever had). With two private diving reefs to explore, who’s got time for spa treatments?
The Designer’s Benefit
Cocoa Island by COMO is an intimate private Maldives island resort with 33 overwater suites allowing you to slip right into the turquoise lagoon to explore an exceptional house reef. Encircled with powder white sand, the carefree, understated luxury experience includes holistic wellness treatments at COMO Shambhala Retreat, South Indian-influenced cuisine and world class diving.
12. Hotel Marques de Riscal, Spain
Image Source: Marriott.com
Designed by renowned architect Frank Gehry, this luxury hotel is situated in the heart of Spanish wine country in the medieval town of Elciego. The property is famed for its Basque-Riojan cuisine and also has a rooftop library lounge with views of the Spanish countryside.
The Designer’s Benefit
Since its unveiling in 2006, this masterpiece created by Frank Gehry to house the Hotel Marqués de Riscal has become a highly sought after contemporary, luxury retreat. Design, art, gastronomy, wine and the lush landscape all combine to create a memorable sojourn at The City of Wine.
The hotel’s luxurious interior bears the unmistakable stamp of Gehry’s design. Tilted walls, zigzag windows, cathedral-height ceilings and a host of bespoke details create the impression of accommodation as a work of art in its 43 rooms & suites.
Here then, are 12 travel destinations every designer in the world dreams of visiting, and you too should go to at least one of them in your lifetime. They will help not only provide a break from your hectic lifestyle and routine, but could offer revitalized creativity and innovation, with a healthy dose of new motivation and inspiration. So, pick a destination, get away from the world for a while, and do let us know where you went, and what your experience was like.
Its really interesting to see, there are some destination places available which may be designed keeping mind only the designers. Thank you Raquel for sorting out all of the perfect destination places here. Its awesome.
I am totally amazed to see your manipulation work in this blog. The artist done a mind blowing manipulation work. Thanks Mr. Raquel Addams for showing different aspect of manipulation work.