Riant Capital · Taipei, Taiwan · 2023
Hotels & Resorts . Brand Transformation
Client brief
Strip it down to what actually matters
Riant Capital is the Taiwanese developer behind Taipei Sky Tower, future home to Park Hyatt and Andaz. Its first hospitality venture in Hsinchu had opened as a Hotel Indigo. The ownership wanted more: an independent brand, built from the ground up, that could mark JdV by Hyatt’s debut in Asia Pacific.
Normal . was engaged to convert the property’s brand identity and brand experience in full — proposition, positioning, and the spatial programming that would carry it through to guest rooms and public space. The result was EPISODE: Do Less But Better, an essentialist take on the modern hybrid lifestyle hotel.
Who is Normal .
Normal . is an independent brand strategy and experience design practice built entirely in hospitality.
Normal . is a preferred agency of Hyatt in Japan and Micronesia. EPISODE predates that relationship — it marked JdV by Hyatt’s debut in Asia Pacific, and Normal . built its brand identity and brand experience from the ground up, carrying JdV’s independent-minded spirit into a hotel making its own case for hybrid living.
Do Less But Better
The Big Idea, Normal . Method
Want less. Want Better. Know how to mix it up.
To build EPISODE’s identity, Normal . applied its own proposition to the creative process — a disciplined pursuit of less, leaving only the exceptional building blocks. Three convictions carry it through:
Do Less But Better
The way of the essentialist isn’t getting more done with less. It’s getting only the right things done. EPISODE simplifies and elevates through disciplined pursuit of less, innovating by process of elimination rather than addition.
Hybrid Living
Work-from-anywhere has already blurred the line between business and leisure at home. EPISODE meets guests where they already are, replacing rigid business-vs-leisure codes with fluid, intentionally blurred boundaries between work, rest, and entertainment.
Design-it-yourself
EPISODE’s guests are proactive by nature, already championing a DIY attitude toward their own lives. EPISODE goes past simply working from the hotel and builds a platform that lets guests make the hotel work for them.
Seven-Stages of Guest Journey
Normal . Method
At EPISODE, essentialism isn’t just a proposition — it’s a discipline applied to every touchpoint. Normal . structured the full guest experience using the Seven-Stages of Guest Journey, mapping each stage from Arrival through Wellbeing to a hybrid rhythm the guest can make their own.
“Hybrid Place”
Experience Principles, Normal . Method
Shorter, flexible work hours have changed how guests expect to use space — not just at home, but on the road. EPISODE does the hard work of intentionally designing and running a hybrid place, so guests can move freely across the full spectrum of working and living moments. That principle runs through the guest room and, most visibly, through Social — EPISODE’s all-access living room.
Social
Moments That Matter, Normal . Method
Social is built to feel like a member’s club, not a hotel lounge or a co-working space. By day it’s a relaxed, collaborative work environment; by night, the same room shifts into a cocktail bar — one space, carrying two functions without ever feeling like either.
Its position does the work: Social sits off the Living Room, the nexus every guest naturally flows through, with an optional adjacency to F&B that lets evenings extend on their own. Anchoring it all is the Bar and Kitchen — day service runs on minimum staffing with quality complimentary coffee, tea, and snacks; evenings bring full cocktail service.
The clearest expression of Design-it-yourself lives inside it: the Honor Bar. Where most hotels stock a minibar as an afterthought, EPISODE turns it into an elegant, self-serve, revenue-generating program — kombuchas and natural seltzers, quality health snacks, half-bottle wines, canned wines, sakes, craft beer, premium single-serve spirits. It’s a small mechanism that hands guests exactly what Do Less But Better promises: control, without asking permission for it.
Normal .’s work outlives the initial engagement
Proof of Impact
EPISODE’s Do Less But Better ethos didn’t stay in Hsinchu. In 2024, EPISODE Daan Taipei opened as the brand’s second property, continuing its “Less but Better” ethos with rooms built around elevated amenities and comfortable, attention-getting spaces and self-service check-in paired with a front-desk Experience Provider.
Social — the space Normal . built around Hybrid Place and Honor Bar — carried forward too, evolving into The Social by Lay Low, a hybrid social space that turns the traditional hotel lobby into a relaxing living room open to in-house guests and the neighborhood alike. It’s since been recognized by the MICHELIN Guide, which points to the hotel’s design-led rooms and buzzy restaurant offering as what makes it a social destination in the Da’an neighborhood.
One brief, one hotel, now a second property built on the same essentialist spine.
Aaron kept repeating in our first meeting — “I keep telling people what EPISODE is, but they just don’t seem to understand.” He already had the conviction. What he needed was the language for it. That became “Do Less But Better.”
Jinou Park, Founder of Normal .
Talk to Normal .
We help brands uncover what makes them different — and express it with clarity, craft, and conviction.
Every project runs directly through the founder and senior experts — no account layers, no dilution. That’s how Normal.’s clients get strategic depth and creative artistry, undiluted.
Whether you’re defining a new brand, repositioning an existing one, or shaping a place that tells a story, we help translate purpose into experience — turning insight into impact.
