Faucet
The concept of Faucet is that it’s a restaurant that only serves water. While I was fond of the idea of Faucet, It presented a few problems to solve. The biggest problem I was presented with was synthesizing an engaging brand identity for such a restaurant that only sells one simple product. To combat this issue I decided to lean into an elegant, high-end aesthetic.
I began the design process with the logo. I sketched out thumbnails of marks related to water. This included many ideas related to the ocean, cups of water, and even a faucet itself. However, these ideas did not mesh well with the sophisticated branding I had in mind. Instead I decided to go with a text based logo. The typeface I ended up using to create the logo was Aviano Didone.
While my treatment of the type fit the brand, it still did not scream water, so I decided to implement something that represents water into the text. After a few iterations I decided to add a ring inside of the “U” to make it look like a glass of water. Upon incorporating the logo into some of the branding, it seemed necessary to create an alternative mark. I played around with different variations of placements and repetitions of the ellipse from the “u” in the original logo to create an abstract ripple logo mark.
After the logo process, I proceeded to work on the Faucet menu. I gathered images of menus I found that captured the Faucet aesthetic and created a mood board. Reflecting on my mood board I knew I wanted the Faucet menu to be tall, elegant, and have an engaging element to it.
I then started to draft thumbnails of possible layout ideas. The Faucet menu has multiple collections, so it was important that the menu consisted of multiple pages. Two of the collections have connections to location, the Laurentian Great Lakes and the Seven Seas. Because of this I decided to incorporate topographical elements into the menu. The best way to approach this was to create a spread of the menu that folds out, both preserve space, as well as to add an interactive reveal element. This lent the menu to take on a tall and narrow composition, allowing the fold out to not take up too much space horizontally when opened. While closed the height of the menu adds an elegant quality. To add to this quality even more the menu is bound in a leather sleeve with the logo placed on the front.
After the menu process I started to create environmental elements that would reflect the branding I already established. To do so I brainstormed ideas of unique elements that could fit into the restaurant. Through this brainstorming I found that light features, a mural, and coloring would play the most vital role in creating an atmosphere that reflected the branding. For the wall I created a subtle topographical map of the great lakes. As for lighting I used raindrop shaped light fixtures.
The next part of my process was to create branded products for the restaurant, so I thought what better to sell at a water only restaurant than bottled water. I knew I wanted these bottles to be different than that of the everyday bottle of water, and to more so resemble bottles produced by high end liquor brands. At first i designed the bottle for the brand in general and struggled with what to put on it. Later I decided to home in on the individual collections. For the various label designs, I incorporated a topographical representation of each body of water that the bottle correlates to. I placed each body of water into a linear circle design that responds to the secondary logo. The background of the labels are watercolor, which can be seen also in the menu and ADS.
Another large part of the branding was creating a mobile website for Faucet. I wanted the website to consist of three different sections, an about page, a menu page, and a reservations page. To create seamless navigation I implemented a hamburger menu that is present on every page, except for the home page. Additionally you are able to scroll down to view every page. Each page displays a different photo of water, reminding the user of the true essence of the Faucet brand.
From there I made ads for the brand. I decided that the most effective way to advertise for a niche high-end brand like faucet would be through social media. So I started to design layouts for an Instagram AD. To grab viewers attention I used photos of bodies of water. On top of the photo I added the secondary logo, a tag line, and a quote about water. .
