Cafes, Bars and Restaurants
All Purpose ditches wine clichés in its lurid new identity for natural wine importer Ancestrel
Based in leafy yummy-mummyish south London enclave Forest Hill, Ancestrel (yes that’s a deliberate misspelling) is a wine shop and so much more – it’s proudly the first company in the UK to import natural wine. Having started life in 2016, Ancestrel has spent the decade since making a name for itself as a renowned importer, wholesaler, and retailer of...
Pentagram nails controlled chaos in its identity for Manhattan “shophouse” style Thai restaurant LenLen
It’s not easy to make an identity look genuinely effortless – more often than not, the very intention to do so renders the result looking the exact opposite. And nothing, no one, ever wants to be levelled with the accusation of appearing to be ‘trying too hard’. However, Pentagram New York’s partner Andrea Trabucco-Campos and team has succeeded in that...
Makebardo’s charming illustrations for Cairo cafe/music venue E11VN just about rescue a rather hideous brand name
It’s never fun being negative about a project – it’s far more gratifying to show really great work, genuinely exciting or useful brands and organisations – and get under the skin of what makes them so. Obviously, a fair bit of this comes down to subjective taste; taking our own experiences and interpretations and cultural backgrounds and personalities and all...
Base’s brand for smalltown ’80s seafood spot Ray’s is a masterclass in earnestness done well
It’s always a joy to see an international design agency lavish the same respect, care, and craft on a relatively unknown, thoroughly local, but much-beloved brand as they would on, say, a household name product or world-renowned institution. And that’s exactly what Base Design (Kanal, 4P’s, The Huntington) – which has outposts in New York, Brussels, Melbourne, Geneva, and Saigon...
Another Collective’s identity for smash burger brand Brusco deftly reinvents classic burger joint design tropes
Food trends are a funny old thing aren’t they. And just as design trends are never just about ‘aesthetics’ – the ‘what something looks like’ divorced from the world around it, food trends aren’t just about ‘edible stuff’, or ‘what things taste like’. Such movements both hold up a mirror to, predict, and feed back to us (literally, in the...
OlssønBarbieri rewrites the rulebook on ‘formality’ in its melodrama-infused Theaterbaren identity
Oslo’s Nationaltheatret (simply translated to English as National Theatre) first opened its doors more than a century ago in 1899, and has since come to not only reflect, but actively shape cultural identity in Norway. Having staged everything from more traditional Norwegian dramas from the likes of Henrik Ibsen to experimental contemporary works, the building itself is also a marriage...
Mecca Coffee by Christopher Doyle & Co.
Sydney-based Mecca Coffee started life in 2005, and has since become one of the city’s leading specialty coffee roasters, importers, and retailers. To mark the company’s 20th anniversary, Christopher Doyle & Co. (Ortto, Machine Screen Printers, New Aim), which is also based in Sydney, was brought in to evolve its brand identity across “packaging, merchandising and collateral systems,” Doyle explains....
An act of restitution
Caffè Nazionale is a historic bar on Piazza Libertà in Arzignano, a small city in Veneto, Italy, which was the social heart of the town – a place for conversation, card games, billiards, and the daily ritual of an espresso at the bar – for generations, before falling into closure and decline. Having first opened in the 1950s, the Caffè...
Drizzle and Drama
I’ve never really thought about wedding venues needing a brand; but then again I’ve never really thought much about wedding venues at all – and neither is Chateau Engalin much like most other nuptials-centric sites. Recently bestowed with new brand design courtesy of Pentagram London partner Samar Maakaroun and her team, Chateau Engalin is based in the heart of the...
Mix and Match
Ten or so years ago I’d wager that most of us hadn’t even heard of padel, but the tennis-adjacent pursuit has boomed in recent years: there’s reportedly a whopping 30 million padel players worldwide, as of stats from late 2024. Despite the fact the name sounds somewhat Ye Olde-ish – it wouldn’t be surprising to see a reference or two...
Yes we Makan
The chintzy rose; the bright but slightly dusky pink; the multifarious wordmarks; the apparently haphazard, painterly decorative flourishes; an approach to letter sizing that’s borderline unhinged – the branding for Makan has the potential to be all kinds of terrible. Instead, it’s absolutely the opposite, thanks to the deft hands at Foreign Policy (Park Bench Deli, Project Send, Critical Mass)....
4P’s by Base Saigon
What with it being the season to be jolly and all that, it feels almost contrarian to not be as positive as I usually am in covering projects for BP&O – after all, it’s about showcasing the very best in brand design and packaging. But in the spirit of the ‘O’ for ‘Opinion’, it’s tricky to be as nigh-on-unanimously gushing...