THE DATAI PITCH : THE CHIMERA

The original pitch brief wants to focus on Malaysian Hospitality. But what really is Malaysian Hospitality? It baffled me. As vague as it is, it is something elusive. So elusive that it is impossible to capture. Malaysia, like Singapore, is a melting pot of cultures and races. These cannot be summed up with one thing. It really is a chimera of a nation. 

So, a chimera, that is interesting. What if we do design a chimera to represent The Datai. 'Datai' is a name of the bay, it doesn't mean or stand for anything. 

So looking at the horses in the lobby of The Datai, the eagle mascot of Langkawi, and the tiger which is the national symbol of Malaysia, the chimera was born. The other hotels still keep the main feature of the flagship symbol which is the horse head. Their bodies differ depending on the nature of the hotels.

I thought the chimera needs some sort of secondary graphics to accompany it. It would be fitting to design some batik patterns to go with it. However, I wanted these patterns to be more contemporary than traditional. The batik itself is borrowed from Indonesia so it isn't new or typically Malaysian. I looked at modern nature graphics and combined them with the geometric shapes and lines found in Kerry Hill's architecture of The Datai.