Capisce Sicilian Arancina Brand
A Sicilian Classic reimagined as a take-out window restaurant located in the City of Brotherly Love, Philadelphia.
Background
Before getting into the design of this brand, I want to go into some background. Capisce Sicilian Arancina is a brand design of a take-out window-style restaurant. Rather than having a completely furnished interior of a restaurant, Capisce offers their service through one window; as well as offering outdoor seating during the warmer months. The challenge with this brand was to create something unique for an arancina restaurant.
If you’re already familiar with arancina you may be asking why I am using the form ‘arancina’ versus ‘arancini,’ and the answer to that lies in the history of the word. The word ‘arancini’ comes from the Sicilian word ‘arancinu’ meaning orange. Depending on which region you’re in the term may vary, though ‘arancini’ is the more commonly used term, in a way to pay homage to Sicily, I chose to brand this design with the form of ‘arancina.’
The name of the restaurant also comes from the Italian verb, to understand. As a child of an Italian-American mother, you knew when you heard “capisce?” that that meant you were supposed to be listening. To incorporate this into the brand, I wanted to stem off this concept and turn it into a marketing strategy, especially working in Italian. For example, “Capisci perché si chiama ‘Capisce’?” translates to “You see (understand) why it’s called ‘Capisce’?” as a way to subliminally tell the viewer that they would eventually understand why it’s called Capisce after enjoying their food.
To separate this brand from other arancini restaurants I began to look into what made up the contents of the competing brands and what I could do to set this brand apart. One of my favorite parts of Sicily is the beautiful coastal towns, and quickly my idea for a brand was formed. I recalled these intricate and beautiful blue and white designs from a small ceramics shop in Sicily from my family vacation to Italy in 2015. These tiles were beautiful with intricate cornfield blue floral patterns, with pops of yellows, greens, and sometimes reds; occasionally sometimes adorned with lemons. I thought to myself how the word arancina was derived from the Sicilian word for oranges, and these beautiful ceramics that adorned blue designs with yellow lemons, I thought the coincidence was uncanny. I’ve now developed a unique idea for an arancina restaurant. Yet, merging these two concepts into a modern brand that would harmonize with Philadelphia’s distinctive design style presented me with a new significant challenge.
Logo and Brand Graphics
The logo design began when I wanted to somehow render this round shape of the arancina in the typography. After a quick sketching session, I instantly found a way to keep the ‘C’ of Capisce rounded, adorning it with two little orange leaves to represent the origin of the word. As a huge fan of symmetry, as most designers could agree, I wanted to keep this circular shape represented on the other side, taking advantage of the circular shape of a lowercase ‘e.’
The brand went through many variations, all with a bespoke typeface for the main logo. The first rendition begins with the circular ‘C’ and ‘e’ as mentioned before, opting for more kerned and tightly fitted letterforms in the middle (version 1). The second rendition began when I grew dreary of the strain on my eyes from staring at such thin letterforms on a stark white background, the realization came when I knew that if my eyes were straining, then so would everyone else’s. I began to thicken the lines, carrying over the rounded caps of the letters to call back to the circular shape. I adjusted the ‘A’ to curve to try and lead the viewers’ eyes through the logo, however shortly after I realized I needed one last adjustment (version 2). In the last and final version of the logo, I switched out the ‘A’ and the second letter ‘C’ to be fully rounded, keeping both of them symmetrical. I ended up altering the caps of the letters to be squared to promote more of a professional and clean look and also to reference back to the square corners of the aforementioned Sicilian tiles (final version).
I opted for the main color to be blue to evoke the inspiration of the coastal Italian towns, where the vast expanse of the ocean stretches as far as the eye can see. Additionally, I aimed to draw inspiration from the beautiful and intricate blue Sicilian tiles. The choice of blue was also intended to reinforce the perception of this brand as trustworthy. Given that arancina might be a new culinary experience for many, I wanted the brand to exude approachability and dependability.
Typography
The logo itself uses a bespoke typeface mimicking the shape of the arancina. The typography in this brand needed to stay round with its round and low-contrast counters and a uniform line weight, to match the type of the logo.
Dazzle Unicase was the typeface I chose as the main typeface. I found it to be very cohesive when compared with the type of the logo as well as the other typefaces. It matched the curves and with three different weights, it gave me a lot of variety to be able to use on my menu, app, and more.
Packaging and Merchandise
One of the many important parts of a restaurant’s brand is packaging. It acts as a marketing strategy that, aside from designers, many might not even take into consideration. I chose to occupy a majority of the free space on the to-go boxes with the brand’s pattern. I personally always love seeing beautiful and interesting package designs, it always beats just a plain brown box.
To take advantage of the real estate on the bag, I put the address and phone number and additionally an advertisement for their rewards app on the boxes.
Environmental Design
The environmental design was a crucial part of this project. While walking or driving around Philadelphia, I always tend to notice the small details in the environmental design of other restaurants. Occasionally I saw a few of the “take-out window” style restaurants. There’s not an ‘official’ name for them as far as I found, with ‘take-out-window restaurant’ being quite wordy; however, it’s concise. I was immediately drawn to this style of restaurant, especially because of how unique it was. Not many restaurants use this style of service (though food trucks and drive-thrus are very close) it gives this restaurant something that makes it unique from its competitors.
Capisce’s menu is printed on the facade of the building. I opted for this over paper menus because paper menus could cause an annoyance for both the customers and the workers with having to constantly collect and return the menus back and forth. Capisce also has a very simple menu, so allowing the menu to be printed at a larger size would be a possibility.
During the nicer weather, Capisce offers outdoor seating. Blue and white metal tables and chairs are lined on the sidewalk for customers to enjoy their meals.
UI/UX
The Capisce app would be open to all users, whether the user was a member of the Amici Club or not. Collecting points and redeeming rewards would be for Amici Club members only. A convenient code is provided for members to scan at the restaurant to redeem their points for that order.
AmiciClub
Amici Club is the rewards program synced with Capisce’s mobile app. The rewards program allows customers to gain points from orders and redeem them for rewards and exclusive promotions. The app allows the user to purchase through delivery or pick-up as well as use coupons, promotions, and points to earn money off on orders.
Advertising
The advertising campaign for Capisce is mostly centered around its play on words. I really wanted a fun and unique way to advertise this brand, as a contrast and cohesion to the clean brand elements. Many of us are familiar with those restaurant flyers that we find in the mail, however in Philadelphia, the amount of these flyers, I’ve noticed, have been vast. I decided to use this as one of my advertising points. I came up with three points in no specific order that I wanted to get across immediately from the flyers: a sale, the app, and a photo of food. I was able to get multiple photos on the back of both arancina being made as well as the final fried balls. On the back, I was also able to get on the address and the phone number. The front of the flyer showed off the app as well as the sale going on, placing the arancina in a specific place to draw the customer’s eyes in.
Designer’s Notes
This project was a huge project with many different meticulous parts to it. It’s been an experience like no other. I learned how to manage my time more, and realized that I shouldn’t jump the gun as much. I found myself wanting to do the mockups before I was completely confident in my logo, this required me to go back and forth with fixing mockups and rerendering them which is a lot of time wasted. I learned many new tricks for making my own mockups and how to do an environmental design. I really enjoyed the challenge that this project gave and felt confident about my skills towards the end of the project.
Credits
Instructor: Nathan Young, Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University
