CITY ROCK BRANDING
OBJECTIVE
City Rock is a Korean restaurant in Chicago that was just opening up and needed an identity. They had a loose idea of what they wanted and I helped them bring it to fruition. They provided a rough idea of what they were already envisioning, which helped us get started. Just below are some of the ideas/notes they sent my way.
WORK DONE
Client: City Rock
Role: Art Direction.
The owners were already starting to develop a sense of what they were wanting in a logo. They knew the colors were going to be variations of red, black and white and that they wanted a youthful feel. They referenced Supreme and Kith. They also mentioned wanting a nod to Chicago and being Korean.
PROCESS
With some ideas already presented, I started cleaning up what they sent and doing some explorations. I also started playing with the idea of "CR" in different ways and somehow incorporating a red box ala Ms. Kruger's work. It was a start.
PROCESS (CONT.)
By the next round, we started to focus on what we agreed on. These were "CR" explorations similar to their initial ideas. None of these graphics were going to work as a whole but it did help the client discover that they were leaning more towards a contained/cleaner graphic. So we didn't move forward with any of these but this round gave me a focus and an idea of what they wanted.
PROCESS (CONT.)
This is the stage where we steered away from the original icon idea of chopsticks but we were also getting super close to what they now had in mind. The word mark idea stayed close to the same, iterations happened but the icon went in a new direction. They wanted an almost "cute and hand drawn" look while still keeping the original ideas we discussed in the beginning. A cutesy robot was even brought up at some point.
So thru multiple iterations we started moving a way from the super clean and polished edges to a more "hand-drawn" look. Instead of just drawing a robot, I started playing around with adding "eyes" to the "R" in the icon and City Rock. It felt like a cute character without drawing a full-on mascot.
FINAL THOUGHTS
In the end, the final logo came out great and the client was happy. We were both able to explore a wide range of looks but inevitably ended with a lot of pieces that still were inspired by their original drawings.
