A motel drawn by its founder and dressed in Tudor stucco.

Super 8 began in Aberdeen, South Dakota, in 1974. Dakota News Now reported in December 2023 that Ron Rivett, a 1963 graduate of Northern State University in Aberdeen, opened the original Super 8 Motel in the city that year, and LODGING magazine, relaying an announcement by the hotel company Rivett later founded, said he co-founded Super 8 Motels with Dennis Brown in 1974. English Wikipedia says the two partners each owned half of the stock in the new corporation, and that the numeral in the name came from the original nightly room rate.

The building was drawn before it was designed. According to Wikipedia, the Aberdeen motel was built near a Holiday Inn, with just some drawings made by Rivett serving as blueprints. Its stucco exterior in an English Tudor style was inspired by Rivett’s father-in-law, who worked as a stuccoer, and Wikipedia says the Tudor styling and the practice of placing new Super 8 motels near Holiday Inns became an established procedure for the chain for years afterwards. The white render and dark timber of those early motels are the source of the stucco cream and Tudor timber tones in the palette of this guide.

The model spread by franchise. Wikipedia dates the sale of the chain’s opening franchise to 1976, at Gillette, Wyoming, and says that by 1978 Super 8 had expanded from New York to Washington State and was no longer just a Midwestern company. Rivett stayed in Aberdeen throughout: LODGING wrote in 2023 that he lived his entire life in the city and always called it home.

Hospitality Franchise Systems, Cendant and Wyndham.

Rivett sold the brand to Hospitality Franchise Systems in 1993, according to the announcement carried by LODGING in December 2023, and he continued to develop, build and operate Super 8 motels and other branded hotels afterwards. Wikipedia says Hospitality Franchise Systems later became Cendant, whose hotel business is the ancestor of Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, the brand’s current parent, headquartered in Parsippany, New Jersey. LODGING described Super 8 Motels in 2023 as “now Super 8 by Wyndham,” a Wyndham Hotels & Resorts subsidiary.

The “by Wyndham” name arrived in April 2018. Hotel Designs reported on 13 April 2018 that a group of Wyndham Hotel Group brands, including Super 8, Days Inn, Travelodge and Howard Johnson, had begun adding the suffix to their names and signage. Updated names and logos were to appear across Wyndham’s digital placements from 16 April, hotel owners in North America could immediately begin ordering new signs, and the change was to progress around the world with an expected completion date of December 2022.

The name has travelled widely. Wikipedia says Super 8 Worldwide entered China in 2004 with a hotel in Beijing, where the brand is written 速8酒店 (Su Ba Jiudian); opened in Istanbul in 2013 and in Riyadh in 2014; reached Munich in April 2016; and arrived in the United Kingdom in 2023 at Chester Motorway Services, in a hotel rebranded from Days Inn, another Wyndham brand.

Rivett went on to found My Place Hotels of America in 2012 with his grandson, Ryan Rivett, a company based in Aberdeen, LODGING reported. Dakota News Now reported that Rivett died in December 2023, citing a death notice; the station described him as the founder of Super 8 Motels and My Place hotels.

Design and documentation.

The brands in this group are motel and economy hotel names: chains of roadside and city lodgings, many of them run by franchisees under a name owned by another company. A brand of this kind lives in a sequence of physical places rather than in a single package, and each place carries the name in a different way.

The pylon sign is one of them: a tall post or panel set beside a highway or an exit ramp, designed to be read from a moving car and often lit after dark, so a wordmark and its colours have to work at a distance. Closer in, a canopy over the entrance, a sign on the building itself and the lobby door repeat the mark at a smaller scale. Inside, the front desk, the key card, the room directory and the linen take the same name into the room. Some chains add a mascot, which can appear on signs and in advertising alike.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding, its owners and franchisors, and changes to its name, sign and identity — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Three logos, a redesign and a gallery of motel art.

The Super 8 mark has been redrawn several times. The image captions in Wikipedia’s article date one logo to 1982–2008, a second to 2008–2018 and the current mark to 2018 onwards, the year the “by Wyndham” suffix was added to the name and signage. Through each version the numeral has stayed at the centre of the identity, as it has been since the Aberdeen motel took its name from the room rate.

A major redesign came in 2016. Skift’s Deanna Ting reported in May 2016 that Super 8 was embarking on a nationwide redesign of its guest rooms and public areas in North America, and quoted Mike Mueller, the brand’s senior vice president: “I think, often times, people have this perception that affordable hotels like Super 8 mean ‘cheap’ and cheap design.” To mark the change, the brand gave away its old room art. Mashable reported on 3 May 2016 that, as part of a rebranding, Super 8 was clearing the art from its motels, with a selection shown at a gallery on the Bowery in Manhattan in an exhibition titled “When the Art Comes Down: Works from the Super 8 Collection,” hosted by the comedian Amy Sedaris, who was asked to name the pieces. The old works were given away to make room for new, local art in each motel; a spokesperson told Mashable the idea was that guests should know which city they are in when they wake up. Skift noted that the event was timed to Frieze New York art week. Wikipedia says a second edition was held in Miami in December 2016.

The redesign also went on the road. CNET reported on 29 March 2018 that Super 8 had shown a Jeep concept called the RoadM8 at the New York International Auto Show, fitted with a coffee machine and a fridge, its interior borrowing its look from the redesigned rooms. Wikipedia adds that in October 2019 the brand introduced ROOM8, a shared room concept aimed at young road-trippers.

For a design guide, Super 8 shows how a chain can keep a numeral and a roadside habit for half a century while treating its rooms, its art and even a concept car as places to restate the brand. Compare it with Days Inn and Travelodge, which took the “by Wyndham” suffix at the same time. For this guide we use super red, road gold and stucco cream with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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