Top Spot Motel

I worked closely with Bryant Property Group and Blake Sign Co to build the identity and take it through to signage. The client set the direction, I built the identity system around it, and Blake Sign Co fabricated the hero sign and neon to match. I managed the identity end to end, from concept through to what’s now fixed to the building.

The building already looked like a classic roadside motel. The brand had to look like one too, without turning into pastiche.

The name and the tagline were staying. Top Spot since 1980, and “the name says it all” still does the job it always did. The challenge was building a proper system around what was already true, not replacing it.

Classic American roadside motel, leaned into rather than fought. Sign-first, because that’s how these places have always worked. A tired driver looking for a bed reads one word off the pole, and that word is Motel. So Motel is the hero word, bigger than the name above it.

TOPSPOT sits in BN Carta Noir Bold, all caps. Motel runs underneath in Hello Radio Script, set inside a diamond, the same diamond shape that shows up on old roadside signage and motel key tags.

Roulette Rouge and Dusty Flamingo carry the palette, straight out of the era the motel comes from. The diamond repeats as a pattern across collateral, and TOPSPOT itself is set as a palindrome, reading the same forwards and back.

The hero sign led the project. Everything else followed it.

Blake Sign Co built the dimensional lettering and the neon No Vacancy sign that still works. It’s the kind of sign that used to be standard on every motel strip and is rare now, which is exactly why it belongs here.