Absolut Flavor Suite
Project Vision
Visitors to the Absolut® Flavor Suite at Caesars Palace are soaked in color, pattern, and branded ambience like the proverbial orange slice in a Blue Cosmopolitan. The Rockwell Group branded six separate “flavor” rooms using digital output to image everything from carpet to wallcovering, upholstery to window treatments, even lampshades. A visit to the suite invites a careful search: guests discover hidden iconography as they explore, adding depth to the “Find Your Flavor” theme.
In the lounge-like Absolut Raspberri room, a dance floor is inset into a custom-designed carpet that combines Absolut bottle shapes with a fruity motif. When a 20-ft.-high solar shade is drawn, a city skyline-themed mural continues around the room. A custom, laser-cut metal chandelier brings the graphics into three dimensions.
“Guest rooms” each evoke a different personality. In the ski-lodge inspired Vanilia room, custom vector graphics transform carpeting into a sea of cracked ice, walls into wood paneling, and draperies into a snowflake-laden sky. In Ruby Red, a grapefruit pattern covers carpet, walls, and bedding, and a watercolor illustration printed on a solar shade evokes the French Riviera. Everywhere you look, Absolut iconography and brand spirit abound. Overall, the result is some cleverly complex marketing, with a twist.
Project Details
First, let's applaud the technological accomplishment: digital output of literally every flavor (carpet pattern, wallcovering, furniture upholstery, window draperies, window shades, lampshades). Then note the variety of room themes deployed in these media, each pulled off in their own clever, successful way with little replication between. Now stir in the brand-saturated references using familiar advertising pattern and iconography at environmental scale, all accomplished without visual hangover. The garnish for each room is the furniture selections and material finishes that supplement and often integrate with the digitally-output upholstery, bedding, and pillows. One can imagine an ongoing discovery process as, over time, the integrated wit and hidden visual language reveal themselves in 'ah-ha' moments.
Design Team
David Rockwell (founder and CEO), Barry Richards (principal in charge), Christian Arkay-Leliever, Matthew Goodrich, Lucinda Wait, Eri Nagasaka, Craig Byers, Lauren Adams, Timo Kuhn, Chad Rush
Design Firm
Rockwell Group
Consultants
Dale Wisniewski, Caesars Palace (facilities manager)
Fabricators
Design Setters (furniture, millwork, and fixtures); Fabric Innovations (custom bedding and curtains); Leucos (custom lighting); MechoShade Systems (custom-printed solar shades); Milliken & Company (custom carpet); Wolf-Gordon (custom wall covering)