Novotel is a mid scale hotel brand, founded in 1967 in Lille, France, inspired by American motels. In 1983 the company became a part of what is now called AccorHotels Group. Novotel manages 492 hotels in 59 countries.
The history of the Novotel hotel chain brand begins in 1967 when the first hotel was opened in the French city of Lille. The company kept growing, opening new locations across France and other European countries, and this is how one brand turned into the huge and influential Accor Hotel Group. It happened in 1983, and today the Accor company has become the hotel operator № 1 in Europe, which has 4,780 hotels and 36 brands in more than 100 countries.
As for the Novotel brand itself, it is still operational, and the banner with this name can be seen on more than 500 business-class hotels, located all over the globe.
What is Novotel?
Novotel is a famous middle-class hotel chain, which was established in France at the end of the 1960s, and by today has grown into an international company with almost 560 locations in more than 50 countries across the globe. Today the French chain is owned by the Accor Group.
The original design is a black rectangle with a big letter ‘N’ in it. The letter is wider, its right bar a bit taller than the other one, with a long triangle protruding from its extra height. In short, it makes it look like a building they initially occupied. On top of the longer bar, there are three stars. In its base, the black word ‘Novotel’ in clearly visible.
Later, they replaced all the black stuff with blue. Not much changed, except the stars were scrapped, and the font in ‘Novotel’ became a more basic sans-serif instead of the old Gothic style they had since 1967.
In 1986, a similar wordmark, but with bolder white letters, was put in a black rectangle. Below it, there was a much slimmer word ‘hotels’ written in black with large gaps between the letters. That was the new logo.
In 1994, the wordmark was a collection of pleasant white letters using a slightly serif font. Below it, an orange line separated it from a white ‘Accor Hotels’ (the parent company) wordmark. Above, their new emblem – an orange curved line looking like a smile was added. All of it was put on a tall, blue-grey rectangle.
In 2008, the logo was instead a bright blue figure with a much thinner, yellow line in its center. The bottom was occupied by a similar white wordmark, except without the rudimentary serifs. The parent’s label was erased, but instead they put the yellow word ‘hotels’ beneath the main word’s right side. It was smaller and had a similar style as the main writing.
The Novotel logo is an example of minimalistic design. Using just deep blue color for its typeface on a white background, the logo looks confident and modern.
The bold lettering is accompanied by a caps tagline and a curved line above the letters V and O. No other details or colors.
The Novotel logo reflects the quality of service, provided by the brand’s hotels and their vision and philosophy — aesthetic and functional, modern and timeless, simple and statutory place with a unique atmosphere, where guests are free to live as they want.
The Novotel brand and it’s logo design fully represent the idea of “Modern Easy Living”.
The smooth and heavy uppercase lettering from the primary badge of Novotel is set in a fancy custom sans-serif font with the softened lines and distinctive contours of the characters. The closest fonts to the one, used in this insignia, are, probably, Adoria Regular and FM Bolyar Sans Pro but with significant modifications of the characters’ contours.
As for the color palette of the Novotel visual identity, it is based on a deep and dark shade of blue, which looks chock and confident, evoking the reliability and responsibility of the company, and accenting its professionalism and a value of high quality in services provided.