Logo and Branding: Agricola

Agricola is a restaurant recently opened in Princeton, New Jersey, that offers simple, rustic American cuisine – created by Executive Chef Josh Thomsen – based around fresh seasonal flavours, local produce from their own 112 acre farm and regional beer. Multidisciplinary design agency Mucca was responsible for translating the ‘farm-to-table’ concept into a visual identity, website, signage and printed collateral solution that would compliment the earthy materials and intimate lighting of Seed Design’s interior design.

The etched shading of a large, uppercase, illuminated A, well-spaced bold sans-serif , the warmth of a flat sunrise orange and the playful flourishes of a cockerel and pig – their stacked and triangular structure sharing the qualities of a weather vane on top of a spire – delivers a straightforward union of subtle craft cues, an agricultural efficiency and familiar farm-yard form. Placing significant communicative weight on the origins of the restaurant’s ingredients.

The sharp, vector silhouette of the mark is juxtaposed alongside the rich, hand drawn illustrative detail of fruit and vegetables. Their organic texture, depth, light and shade, mixture of tone and aged quality – very much like scientific botanical observations of the 17th 18th and 19th century - appropriates a period authenticity that neatly resolves the traditional values of natural quality, provenance and locality – and gives it a coherent, contemporary quality through a combination of fills, borders and white space.

Visit the BP&O Logo Gallery for a chronological guide to all the identities reviewed on BP&O.

If you liked this then you may also like:

Richard Baird Richard is a British freelance designer and writer who specialises in the development of logos, branding and packaging. He has written for Brand New, Design Week and The Dieline, has featured in Computer Arts magazine and also runs the resource Design Survival. Follow:     |     Twitter     |     Facebook     |     Portfolio     |     Contact