EXOTIC PLAZA TALENT VOICE x MISS EXOTIC PLAZA BRAND IDENTITY
A hotel can be more than a place to stay. It can be a place where people discover talent, celebrate culture, and come together for experiences worth remembering. This was the opportunity behind Hotel Exotic Plaza’s launch of Miss Exotic Plaza 2026 and Exotic Plaza Talent Voice, two events designed to promote the hotel while celebrating African beauty and Cameroonian talent. DjayStudio partnered with Exotic Plaza to bring both events to life, taking on a creative role that extended well beyond visual identity design. From developing distinct creative directions and visual systems to designing campaign materials, producing promotional spot videos, and overseeing print production, and on-site installations, we worked across the different stages of bringing these events to the public. The goal was to give each event its own personality, create a consistent presence across every touchpoint, and translate the creative vision into tangible experiences that audiences could see, engage with, and remember.
Problem
The Challenge
An event can happen once. A brand has to be remembered.
Exotic Plaza was developing two signature events, Miss Exotic Plaza and Exotic Plaza Talent Voice. Beyond the events themselves, they represented an opportunity for the hotel to strengthen its position as a destination for entertainment, pageantry and live experiences while attracting new markets and visitors.
The challenge was to create two distinctive identities that could stand on their own without losing their connection to Exotic Plaza. Both had to follow the hotel's existing brand guidelines, with room for thoughtful creative adjustments.
The objective wasn't simply to design two attractive logos. It was to give each event a visual identity with the potential to become part of the hotel's lasting brand personality.
Approach
The Strategy
We had to start with meaning, not decoration.
Event branding often relies on familiar category cues. Beauty pageants lean towards crowns and glamour, while singing competitions gravitate towards microphones and dramatic graphics.
These elements can communicate the category, but they don't necessarily give an event a distinctive identity.
Our approach was to look beyond the obvious and find a more meaningful starting point for each event. For Miss Exotic Plaza, we explored the relationship between the winner, hospitality and a wall painting of an African Female warrior in the Hotel.
For Talent Voice, we focused on the most direct expression of the experience: voice and performance.
Two different approaches, guided by one objective: create identities that could be recognized without needing an explanation.
Miss Exotic Plaza Concept
The starting point for Miss Exotic Plaza was the role of the woman who would eventually wear the crown. She wouldn't simply be the face of a competition. She would become a brand ambassador for Exotic Plaza, representing the hotel's spirit beyond the event itself.
That insight led us to the female silhouette with open arms. The gesture communicates confidence, presence and openness. More importantly, it reflects the hospitality at the heart of Exotic Plaza. The woman becomes an extension of that hospitality, welcoming, representing and carrying the Exotic spirit wherever she goes.
During the exploration, we looked inward at the hotel itself at a painting of an African female warrior within Exotic Plaza and rather than introducing generic African motifs, we translated elements of the painting's visual language into the African-inspired stripes surrounding the female silhouette.
The stripes weren't simply decorative additions. They helped ground the pageant's visual language in the cultural character of Exotic Plaza.
Exotic Plaza Talent Voice Concept
Talent Voice needed a different visual language and sometimes the strongest idea is the simplest one.
The competition was built around discovering performers, developing them through coaching and eventually giving them the opportunity to perform on the event's biggest stage.
Instead of building a complicated symbol, we stripped the idea back to its essentials, a word mark paired with a microphone. The microphone immediately establishes the connection to voice and performance. The word mark keeps the identity simple, confident and easy to recognize.
There was a reason for this restraint. We didn't want an elaborate symbol competing with the people at the heart of the competition and the identity needed to identify the event clearly, work across promotional materials and the physical venue, and remain associated with Talent Voice wherever it appeared.
Building the Visual Systems
Once the identities were established, we extended them into complete visual systems.
The deliverables includeds:
Brand Identity
Brand guidelines
Main event flyers
Main event flyers
Supporting promotional flyers
Wall posters
Roll-ups for both events
Spot Videos.
This stage was essential. An identity needs to remain coherent as it moves between formats, audiences and environments. The graphic language that introduces an event must continue to work on the materials that promote it and the displays people encounter at the venue.
Each application became another opportunity to reinforce recognition and establish a consistent visual presence for the events.
Solution
The Discovery
Two events. Two personalities.
Following a discovery meeting with the Exotic Plaza team, we identified a fundamental difference between the two experiences.
Miss Exotic Plaza was about beauty, elegance, representation and the woman who would eventually wear the crown.
Exotic Plaza Talent Voice was about performance, self-expression and discovering singers who could develop their talent and take it to the competition's biggest stage.
Although both events shared the Exotic Plaza name, they needed different visual approaches to communicate what made each one worth remembering.
Results
The Exotic Plaza project explored how two emerging signature events could develop distinctive visual identities without losing their connection to the hotel.
For Miss Exotic Plaza, the design connects the woman who wears the crown to hospitality and the hotels own African character.
For Talent Voice, a simple microphone and word mark to communicate the essence of voice and performance without distracting from the talent itself.
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