The redesign of Condé Nast Traveler’s 27-year-old logo, which you might have noticed on the cover, is not something we took lightly. After all, a good logo must feel as though it’s been around forever at the very moment of its debut (thus, one hopes, simultaneously guaranteeing its longevity).
But recently, we realized that the year-long process of mulling over this change forced us to ask deeper questions about who we are and what, exactly, should be the role of this magazine (or any travel publication, for that matter) in the age of Instagram and TripAdvisor, when so little is left to the imagination. We believe it is our job to keep that travel dream-state alive and well between journeys—to bring into focus that sense of how it might feel to walk the street markets of Oaxaca, for example—by providing a sketch, if not a fully articulated blueprint, for your next trip.
Because ours is a business of images and words, of nostalgia and anticipation, we’re always thinking about how those dualities combine, about how they achieve that subtle alchemy which shapes how you think and feel about a place. The cover image—of the historic Belmond Grand Hotel Timeo in Taormina, Sicily, as seen reflected on the surface of its pool—hints at the power of travel to literally change your lens. At a time when most magazines and Web sites are designed within an inch of their lives with bursts, charts, and type that often requires a magnifying glass, we find that the most successful design is that which kneels at the altar of clarity and restraint. “A logo has to be capable of being sympathetic to the image that sits underneath it, not fight with it,” says Matt Willey, our redesign consultant who created our new logo. In the case of travel, it should hew to the primacy of place. Its main function is to draw you into the pages and then step aside so that you might insert yourself into a picture.
As ours is a travel brand that toggles constantly between the thrill of the new and the deep pleasures of the tried and true, it seems appropriate that our logo nod to the traditional and the modern in equal measure. You see, we love a 200-year-old hotel and the ceremony of its afternoon tea as much as we do a new skyscraper for the engineering feat of its rooftop pool—that is, as long as everything these hotels do is in service to the guest experience and not a luxury gimmick. (As with all things we love in life, whether places or people, we’re willing to turn a blind eye to such shortcomings as old elevators and faded upholstery.) For this year’s Gold List, rather than skim off the top of the more comprehensive Readers’ Choice Awards—as the magazine has done for close to 30 years—we polled our editors, writers, and network of influencers about their favorite hotels: Don’t think too hard, we told them—just tell us. What follows is a group-written love letter to the properties that inspire memories which linger long after we’ve left them. As a starting point, every hotel listed gets high marks for service, luxury, and beauty. Rather than odes to the miles of marble or the ever-attentive private butler service, these nominations are striking for their intimacy, offering tributes to the housekeeper who delivers a message to the tooth fairy after overhearing that a young guest has lost her tooth, or the low stool that magically appears beneath a guest’s clutch purse in the cocktail lounge. Like travel itself, the best hotel experiences often can’t be measured by a point system—they’re as ineffable as memory itself.
