The Whittaker

Context

A 42-room boutique hotel in a converted 1920s warehouse. Exposed steel, lobby gallery, real restaurant, rooftop bar. The property is the brand. The brief: design for it without letting chrome typography or franchise-template thinking get in the way.

Approach

Growth tier. Tabbed room gallery, masonry photo lightbox, press carousel, accordion amenities, embedded map, and a booking widget. Cormorant Garamond at light weight against Outfit sans for a quiet-luxury read. The photography does most of the work. A contrast pass on the type: Cormorant Light at small sizes is a known a11y risk, so the minimum tested size is 14pt against every backdrop it sits on, holding at 4.5:1 contrast or better. The masonry lightbox respects the OS reduced-motion preference, with a static grid as the fallback.

Designed to test

A 42-room boutique hotel marketing site where editorial photography carries the brand and quiet-luxury typography stays out of its way.

What good looks like

Good looks like: the photography carries the page weight, not the type or chrome. Booking-widget conversion holds rate against the franchise baseline. Cormorant Garamond Light is tested at 14pt minimum with at least 4.5:1 contrast against every backdrop it sits on. The masonry lightbox respects reduced-motion.

Live site