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el camion header.png

 

Rebrand: El Camión

May 2018

Duration: 2 weeks

Team: Individual 

Roles: Graphic Designer

Tools: Illustrator, InDesign

This project challenged me to develop a new visual language for an existing local business that more accurately visualized its communication goals. I utilized composition, typography and color design strategies to represent their unique story and create four deliverables that fit the visual language.

Deliverables:   

 

Process

Research

In order to accurately capture El Camión's unique story, I informally interviewed a few employees about the restaurant’s background and mission. I gleaned from my interviews that the founders never lost sight of their authentic roots and embody an edgy, non-conventional outlook. In order to portray their story visually, I narrowed my findings down to three communication goals:

Communication Goals:

1. Authentic - this restaurant serves family style food and sticks to its food truck roots. 
2. Rebellious - the expansion from a food truck to a restaurant is non-conventional and the interior feel of the restaurant reflects this. 
3. 
Sophisticated - moving from on-the-go to sit down service allows the restaurant to have a more grown up, polished feel. 

Mood Board

The next step of my research process was generating a mood board for each of my communication goals to collect effective design strategies for a cohesive visual language. 

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Authentic

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Rebellious

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Sophisitcated

Design

Visual Language

Using my mood board and communications goals as a guide, I developed a color scheme, font family, and set of icons to use throughout my deliverables and create a visual language. 

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Saturated, complementary color scheme represents traditional boldness.

Bold display typeface adds energy and mimics lucha libre posters. 

Simplistic, heavily weighted icons intermix cultural heritage and restaurant information. 

Logo

Logo

I wanted to preserve the sleek boldness in the original logo, but add a more polished and professional feel.

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Negative space intended to feel clean and seamless while remaining authentic and understated.  

Sans serif font is sharper and has more movement than original font.

Poster

Poster

The poster had the most flexibility for visual communication. My aim was to evoke a modern, sophisticated twist on original Luchador posters. 

Border icons resemble traditional lucha libre posters, but the negative space and asymmetry add a modern twist.

Overscaled, stacked title conveys macho loudness and energy, but the clean typeface and contrasting background add sophistication. 

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Monochrome, overlapping images convey rebellion and stray from the status quo. 

New color scheme in logo is fresh and rebellious. 

Document

Document

The original menu was purely functional. This deliverable challenged me to reorganize content in a way that was still digestible but conveyed more personality and emotion. 

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Hierarchy mimics lucha libre display font and iconography.

Overscale iguana maintains visual language and uncentered alignment hints at rebellion. 

Understated logo adds sophisiticated brand recognition. 

Webpage

Webpage 

The original website felt rebellious and edgy, but didn't effectively capture their story or clearly organize their content. I reorganized the format and visually depict their credibility and their authenticity.

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Screen Shot 2018-10-24 at 12.55.14 AM.pn

Reflection

This project was exciting to me because it was my first experience utilizing research, visual communication and design strategy together. Generating a visual language to guide a cohesive story made creating deliverables challenging and rewarding. I learned about the culture and personality behind the restaurant as well as how to effectively communicate emotion with information. 

My biggest takeaway from this project was the value of establishing clear design goals early on. While iterating through several designs for each deliverable, I found it was easy to stray away from my original direction and lose sight of the cohesiveness of the final product. It helped me to pause and flesh out my overarching design goals to better grasp how each piece could work together. 
 

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