Arkadë Studio’s identity for Camelot tells a legend instead of a view

Camelot is a 26-room hotel in Ksamil located on the Albanian Riviera. Arkadë Studio was tasked with creating its identity to match the iconic nature of the name without being overly cartoonish. The remit that the Tirana-based multidisciplinary studio took on covers the mark, wider visual language, collateral and applied details across the guest experience. “Camelot is a big word to put on a building. It carries expectations,” explains Gabriel Memsuri from the hotel. “Our worry was that the design would either run away from the mythology entirely, which would make the name feel random, or lean into it too hard and make us look like a themed resort. We needed the middle ground: confident, grounded, with just enough myth to earn the name.” “Ksamil already has its postcard. We didn’t want to compete with it, so we didn’t,” Arkadë Studio’s Co-founders Eduina Jaupi and Gea Madhi tell us. “Ksamil is full of places that look the same: blue and white, beach chairs, Mediterranean vibes. We wanted to signal that Camelot is a destination, something worth travelling for,” Memsuri details. The beach destination is often marketed as the ‘Maldives of Europe,’ but the coastline appears only in the blue of a wax seal and in the language of arrival. “Once you’re telling a legend instead of selling a view, you’re allowed to be poetic and literary,” Jaupi and Madhi note.