Building a beast of a brand: 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.