Logo and Branding: The Honours
Posted: January 24, 2013 Filed under: Food & Drink, Logos & Branding | Tags: Art, branding, Branding News, Business Card, design, Edinburgh, Fine Dining, foil, food, graphic, graphic design, identity, logo, logo news, logo-mark, logo-type, monogram, news, opinion, Print, restaurant, review, texture, typography, uncoated, visual identity 3 Comments »
The Honours is an Edinburgh-based and Parisian-influenced brasserie owned by two Michelin-starred chef and restaurateur Martin Wishart. The brasserie’s visual identity, developed by creative agency Touch - also responsible for the branding of Martin’s other establishments, combines a well-spaced logo-type, a creative monogram, black and cream colour palette, tactile material textures and a block foil print finish to communicate a traditional crafted approach to food, the use of high quality ingredients and personal service practices set within a contemporary environment.
“Given its illustrious location on North Castle Street, near to Scots literary hero, Sir Walter Scott’s townhouse, we came up with The Honours. (In 1818, Sir Walter Scott famously unearthed the crown jewels – or Honours of Scotland – at Edinburgh Castle.) We then developed a stylish mark based on the initials ‘TH’, which also formed an abstracted table shape.
In addition to developing the brand identity, we were also responsible for the art direction on the project, working with photographer Matt Davis on a suite of stylised, reportage-influenced images that communicated the vibrancy and feel of the space. These were subsequently used in press advertising, pre launch material and a clean, modern HTML website with an integrated booking system.”
- Touch
This is the second piece of work from Touch to feature on BP&O this week following Monday’s Pizza Luxe article. Both culinary experiences but with significantly different propositions. Rather than the urban cool of Pizza Luxe, The Honour establishes the formality and professionalism expected of a modern fine dining experience through the serif letter-forms of a well-spaced, uppercase, logo-type – which features a lovely variation in stroke width. A TH monogram with an iconographic duality executed with the contemporary sensibilities of a single consistent line weight – conveying craftsmanship and personal service but with a distinctive and creative twist. And the perceived luxury and timeless quality of a gold block foil – enhanced by the delicate fine lines of the pattern work -, the tactile finish of what looks like a Gravure emboss and the classic cream and black material combination of the collaterals.
Visit the BP&O Logo Gallery for a chronological guide to all the identities reviewed on BP&O.
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Richard BairdRichard is a British freelance designer and writer who specialises in the development of logos, branding and packaging. He has written for Brand New and Design Week, is an editor for The Dieline, has featured in Computer Arts magazine and also runs the resource Design Survival. |
The HONOURS logotype looks to be off centre intentionally. Why?
So it is, perhaps it was the only way to aesthetically balance a conventional mark and type lock-up. I tend to prefer ‘free-floating’ assets, like Touch have favoured across the stationary and window. Might have been better not to compound the two elements in this way but it’s a pretty tiny detail, I myself didn’t notice.
My guess is, there’s three characters either side of the ‘o’ so perhaps it felt right for the designer to centralise the mark off the central character, rather than the word.