Designing with material in mind: 5.5 create a soft, tactile identity for French youth hostel Pilo

Founded tucked away in a 19th-century college amongst the slopes of Lyon’s Croix Rousse, youth hostel Pilo looks to set a new standard for what’s expected from the hotel genre, offering not just an affordable bedsit but somewhere to work, eat, relax and dine. Embodying this attitude, Parisian design studio 5.5 crafted a welcoming, joyful identity, relishing in the multitude of outputs afforded by the space, which is locally sourced and produced with recycled materials. From bouncy menus and illustrative posters to fluffy locker numbers and sleeper-inspired pocket t-shirts, 5.5 allowed their material imagination to run wild, embracing Pilo’s distinct intersection between hostel and boutique hotelier.

Discussing the contextual melting pot, Associate Director Vincent Baranger tells us, “on the one hand, comfort is too often related to serious hotels,” he continues, “and on the other hand, youth hostels are fun places but rarely comfortable,” with Pilo balancing between the two. “It is the comfort of a good hotel combined with the uninhibited state of mind of a youth hostel,” Baranger explains, playing with this notion across the identity, hoping to invoke the best of both states.

“We hijacked everything you could find in the laundry room of a good hotel,” he remarks, emphasising its soft, fluffy, comfortable feeling. “We sewed a slipper on a t-shirt, wrote messages on sheets, and we made embroidered badges to indicate the rooms,” he recalls, essentially treating the hotel as a graphic, visual playground. “The feeling we wanted to create is very simple,” Baranger summarises, “at Pilo, it’s possible to have a comfortable stay and fun times at the same time.”

Pilo’s sense of comfort is led by the bespoke fluffy lettering that was crafted in-house by 5.5. “The concept was to create each letter of the typeface by twisting a bolster,” he remarks, “because, for us, bolsters are kind of iconic to youth hostels.” Beginning its design with rounded letterforms, Baranger explains, “we made it bolder and fluffier by adding pleats in the corners,” reflecting the resulting tone across the signage and illustrations found across the site. “5.5 was initially a product design studio before becoming a global design studio,” he concludes, “it’s why we always like to think about how branding can be produced,” focusing on the material and technical potential of projects. 

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Pilo