Afrofuturism was really spearheaded and brought into the mainstream by the movie Black Panther. It is an interesting combination of traditional Africanism with a futurist facelift. The whole idea of Wakanda is a perfect example of this. There have been a number of African artists who have been working in this realm long before Black Panther though.
(Created by openai Dall-E, an Afrofuturistic hotel for Wakanda)
Email Marketing Campaign Images
I came up with the idea of doing a series on Afrofutristic hotels as I was using AI to generate some images for an email marketing campaign I was working on for hotels in my area of Ghana. I wanted to visualize a hotel that is easily identified as Ghanaian but connected to the digital world in a digital revolution.
This was the first image I created but it was a little too whimsical, candy land style for me. So back to the drawing board.
This did not give me feelings of digital revolution and connection or even Ghana or Africa.
Now we are getting there. This email campaign included Kokrobite which is a beach community with a number of hotels. I really liked this beach scene and this really gave a Ghana feeling with flag and kente-type textiles around but it did not give them the digital revolution side I was looking for.
This definitely gave the digital revolution feeling with the connections in the sky. But it felt a little Arabic and also Christmasy to me. Maybe I can use it on a newsletter around Christmas time.
Now we are getting somewhere that speaks to me both traditional Ghana and also the connections for the digital revolution. It was just a little on the dark side.
This image is cool it ticks all the boxes but the digital connections are not as obvious. I will still keep this one for future use.
Once again this was dark, it looked almost haunted and there is no feeling of Ghana here.
This was perfect I almost used this one but it did not crop well to the horizontal banner style I wanted and it was not quite clear the buildings were hotels and it was very traditional. I will probably still use this in the future.
This did not give me any feeling of being in Ghana.
This hit on the digital revolution side very hard but no feeling of being in Ghana. This feels more like Dubai.
Finally, Perfect this hit the nail on the head for me. It is interesting to look at and I think readers would beg to know more when they see this at the top of an email. It is Ghanaian, it shows digital connections, a mix between future and tradition. I used this image in the first email I sent out.
Follow-up Email
The next week it was time to send another email. This time I needed to create a fear of missing out and also once again pull in the reader with an interesting image. I decided to move forward with a hotel lobby again with the theme of the digital revolution.
This felt very Asian to me there was no feeling of Ghana or Africa here.
This was much closer the textiles and tapestries gave that Ghana feeling but the digital revolution was missing eh the Hootel lobby sign was a little off.
Once again, nailed it. This is what I ended up going with for the next email. It ticked all the boxes, clearly a digital revolution, and a feeling of an African hotel lobby.
An Afrofuturist Hotel for Ghana
This gave me the idea to come up with come Afrofuturist Hotels for different countries in Africa. I started with Ghana because that is where I am. I will share some of them here but I will probably continue with more countries on another post.
Here is the first one I produced and it is clearly a very futuristic hotel probably for the capital Accra. I like the curved balconies with a lot of greenery.
This one is a kind of industrial feeling and a more rural, I sure hope forests like this exist in Ghana in the future. I like the metallic look of the outside of the hotel but it still blended into the natural landscape very well.
This one is a very epic very futurist feel but I like the traditional look of the people in the foreground and the open-air spaces around it.
Ghanaian Ecolodges
I wanted to do the same concept with some Ecolodges also. So for each country, there will be the stately urban type large hotels and then some more natural Ecolodges also.
I liked all of these they blended into nature well and were sort of timeless but with an edge of future to them.
Nigerian Afrofuturist Hotels
I know we have a lot of Nigerians in the house so this one is for you all. Here are some hotels to start with.
The Nigerian persona is strong and I think that these designs had even more character than the Ghana ones.
Nigerian Ecolodges
Once again some very strong and cool designs blending natural and futuristic ideas.
Rwanda Afrofuturistic Hotels
Here is one interesting hotel designed for Kigali the capital of Rwanda.
Rwanda Ecolodges
These were the Ecolodges created for Rwanda. I like the curves and how it looks like they would almost have to be 3D printed.
This post is getting kind of long so I will wrap it up now. I will continue next time with Egypt, Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa and more.
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