Every brand is a hospitality brand. Whether you’re serving products, services, or big ideas, design sets the table for how people feel when they encounter what you offer.
It’s not just about looking good, it’s about creating spaces where your audience feels welcome, celebrated, and at home.
studio ethos
DESIGN FOR COMMUNITY BUILDING
Design gives form to shared identity, memory, and joy. Images and stories are a way for communities to recognize themselves.
DESIGN AS MUTUAL AID
Design can be a tool for survival, helping community-oriented businesses and ventures thrive in systems not built for them.
DESIGN AS INTERVENTION
Design, even when commercial, doesn’t have to feel soulless. Approached like art, it can carry authenticity, wit, subversion, and stories into the marketplace, shaping public life and norms.
DESIGN AS SELF-CREATION
Intentional design is a practice of becoming. Like personal style or self-expression, it is a way of saying: this is who we are, this is the world we’re inviting you into.
about the designer
I’m Ethan Wise, founder of Hot Welcome Studio. My work is shaped by a lifelong love of storytelling and a belief in design’s power to bring ideas to life. I studied poetry at Tufts University, where I learned to think in images, rhythm, and narrative, skills that continue to guide my practice today.
After college, I became a Graphic and Digital Designer at Fenway Health in Boston, creating campaigns that centered queer community and care. From there, I moved into hospitality, serving as Art Director at EOS Hospitality, where I built brand identities for hotels and restaurants across the country. These roles taught me how design can operate both as a tool for advocacy and as a way of shaping how people experience space.
I founded Hot Welcome Studio to bring these threads together. Since then, I’ve partnered with restaurants, hotels, artists, nightlife projects, and public-good organizations, designing brands and websites that are as thoughtful as they are impactful. My background in both creative writing and professional design gives me a unique lens: I see every project as both a system and a story, crafted to resonate with the people it’s meant to reach.
