Branding Points for an Upmarket Outlet
Sample Logo and Menu Cover for High End Restaurant
Jan 14, 2009
This Newbys restaurant is occupying the space at the high end of the market. It's a long established and aspirational destination for those looking to celebrate a special occasion in a big way or for those with plenty of disposable income.
The restaurant keeps an eye on passing fashions and trend, but never tries too hard and certainly never blindly follows what the rest of the crowd are doing right now. Their style throughout is classic. If Newbys was a dress, it would be little and black with a label that only those in the know would truly appreciate.
Target Market
There's one simple common thread that connects Newbys' target market and that is money. They offer a sophisticated and classy eating experience that doesn't come cheap.
Font
While there are now thousands of free fonts available for anyone to download from the web, that really wouldn't be a suitable option for this brief. Newbys' image requires a carefully constructed and sophisticated font style with an attention to detail rarely encountered in free fonts.
The choice in this design is Trajan, an elegant font that has the sophisticated classicism of a serif face, however there is a twist. Some of the characters don't have all the serifs that would be traditionally expected in a serif face and this is arguably one of the best executed semi-serif fonts available.
Some Graphic Designers may feel constrained by Trajan only being offered in upper case, but that emulates the style of lettering carved into stone in the ancient world and it seems to fit nicely with this font which will only ever be used in display contexts.
Color Scheme
The whole ethos of this design is 'less is more' and that particularly applies to the color scheme, which harks back to the analogy of the little black dress in so far as the color scheme is black on white. This does open the option of reversing the text out of black.
The accent color, so to speak, is an 80% shade of black that is utilised in the tag line on the menu cover. Such an upmarket restaurant probably wouldn't use the tag line 'Simply the best' but this article is concentrating on design rather than copy writing.
Picture
Once again 'less is more' with this menu cover relying purely on very simple typography to convey class.
Layout
This design relies heavily on negative space to make this logo and cover work and give the viewer the sensation of sophistication.
The individual letters of the Newbys name have had the tracking increased markedly which has opened up much more white space between the letters than would normally be expected. Combined with such an elegant font, the increased tracking produces a simple but classic logo.
Apart from the addition of a tag line, nothing more has been added but this design has a unified feel as the sense of open space is present both within and around the text. To maintain the classic simplicity, the text is placed centrally on the vertical and is situated in the top third of the page.
Conclusion
The design for this Newby's restaurant is very simple but by making the use of negative space a central part of this design, it appears far more sophisticated than if the text had been used with standard tracking, and the surrounding white space feels like part of the design.
There are more solutions to fictional Newbys briefs linked to from Suite101's article on the Essentials of Graphic Design.
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