Queen City Inn: Spearfish, SD

Logo for Queen City Inn over a faded background of a white building with a gabled roof, windows, and a door, situated in Spearfish, South Dakota.

Overview // Visual Guide, Logo

Role: Primary Designer

Team: Bighorn Design, Queen’s City Inn Owners

Queen's City Inn, a downtown Spearfish, SD hotel, needed a rebrand that felt fresh yet nostalgic. The solution channeled late-'50s/early-'60s neon-sign energy into a modern identity with an iconic logomark, timeless type, and a palette pulled from the renovation: bold blue and yellow.

I built a scalable system including logo suite, color palette, typography, icon set, secondary marks, and visual guidance documentation to roll out across merchandise, packaging, and exterior signage. The result is a cohesive, playful-but-professional brand that elevates market visibility, reframes the property from "tired" to "reliable and fun," and speaks directly to destination travelers exploring downtown.

Logo design for Queen City Inn in Spearfish, South Dakota, established in 2022, featuring a crown icon, and showing different color variations including navy blue, black, and blue and yellow with a band of colors at the bottom.

Complete visual identity system with logo standards, typography, color palettes, and application examples ensuring consistent brand execution across all digital and print touchpoints.

Branding style guide for Queen City Inn, Spearfish, SD, showing logo, color palette, fonts, handwriting, and signage examples.

These images showcase Queen City Inn using the visual guide to create a strong, consistent digital presence across social media and their website.

Mobile phone screens displaying social media pages for Queen City Inn SD, showing posts and profile information, and a laptop screen showing the hotel's website with navigation menu and booking options.