Tuesday, 14 April 2009 | Levent OZLER
British Designers Create Italian Branding for Bahraini Restaurant
SHH has created a full branding package - including identity, environmental graphics, signage, menus, place settings and staff uniforms - for a new restaurant and takeaway concept called "Italiano", set to open this month. The first Italiano outlet, located in the food court of the Al A'ali Mall in Bahrain's capital city Manama, has been undertaken for client Al-Hilal Enterprises Group, for whom SHH recently designed and branded the highly successful Nu Asia new-build restaurant (about to roll out to a new second site in Bahrain).
The first Italiano outlet is located within a 667 sq ft site on the mall's 1830 sq ft food court and will offer a classic Italian casual dining menu of pizza and pasta, with the accent on takeaway food. "We were allowed to build quite creatively on the basic concept created by local architect Lewan Engineering," commented SHH's lead designer on the project, Ashley Thompson. "The colour blue was already a definite given element of the scheme, as was the new brand's name. We added a strong vibrant green to the interior to balance the cool blue and to add a fresh and obviously Italian element to the mix. We then created a bi-lingual (Arabic and English) identity with a marque representing the map of Italy, made up of classic pasta, pizza and vegetable shapes with a wood-cut grainy look, inspired by pasta's textured ribbing pattern when seen en masse."
SHH's full scope of works on the project included the identity and marque; fascia signage; environmental graphics in the form of cat-lacquered mdf with vinyl overlay using close-up elements of the new marque and a sideways logo lightbox; staff uniforms; placemats / serviettes / cutlery holders; takeaway packaging and lightbox and print versions of the menu (which was formed from an A3 sheet folded vertically into three and then once horizontally, so that it stood well on table tops).
Client Hamad Isa of Al-Hilal Enterprises Group commented: "The idea behind Italiano is to offer a step up in Italian food offerings in food courts or the QSR - Quick Service Restaurant - market. With SHH's fresh new branding for Italian, we hope this will be achievable."
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