Georgia’s Kitchen
Soul Food for Change
Deondre Linder
For this project, we had free range to create a food business of our choice. Starting with food industry research to get a feel for what a restaurant needs to understand what the pitfalls and opportunities might be.
Our Story
This idea came to my mind when I thought about my grandma’s cooking. The idea of home-cooked soul food was the main purpose of the restaurant but there needed to be a twist in the proposal to make it unique. When you think of soul food, you usually think of warm comfort food and sitting around with your family at a gathering enjoying your time together. In Philadelphia, there are several high-end restaurants so the thought of high-end soul food came across and I ran with the idea. When it came to names I immediately thought of Rosa Parks and I felt that it was the ideal name for this restaurant, but with a little more research I came across Georgia Gilmore. A female activist who was crucial in the Montgomery Bus Boycotts and ran a secret kitchen, cooking every day for other activists.
At first, the concept was strictly soul food, but with more research, it became a civil rights/soul food restaurant that would honor the heroines of the civil rights area. With this new direction Georgia’s Kitchen: Soul Food for Change was created. This design approach is educational and would teach customers more about these heroines and the Civil Rights movement in general, in addition to bringing families together to enjoy a nice meal and celebrate the importance of soul food in the black community.
The Mission
Georgia’s Kitchen seeks to bring soul food to the next level while highlighting the heroines of the Civil Rights struggle. These courageous women took a stand to change history for the better. Our restaurants’ name celebrates Georgia Gilmore who was one of these women that had a pivotal role in the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
Logo
This logo had many variations and went through many iterations to capture the feeling of the brand. At first, I started with many names such as Rosa’s, Harriot’s, 1865, and Soul.
Progress
These are what I brought to the plate, all having an elegant feel to them but not going in the right direction, then I started to stick to one name (Rosa’s) trying to play with the R, making it cursive, adding elements to it but still wasn’t feeling the way I wanted to restaurant to be seen as. It had an elegance to it but with these first starts, it was just missing the big feature.
Naming
Still, with Rosa’s in mind, I kept tinkering with different ways I can come about with the Idea. Making the R a little more of a calligraphy style and more like Rosa wrote it herself.
When it came to the name of the restaurant, Georgia’s, I kept playing with the idea of keeping it a single letter and in cursive when the element of flowers presented an opportunity with the logo. The flowers are incorporated to represent the floral elements of hats women wore to church. There., is a deep connection with hats in church, where they symbolized a crown for these women to wear in the presence of God.
Once I started getting the floral pattern resolved, I incorporated the G that worked well in the circular shape. While researching typefaces, I found the typeface Freight by Joshua Darden while doing another project., Darden is an African American type designer and I felt that it would fit perfectly into my brand with this being African American inspired restaurant, having someone that is a black-type designer would put it over the top and celebrate the accomplishments of these queens. The flowers help with the flow of the logo and the circular form loosely relates to a hatbox. It took a while to find the correct cursive type treatment but after finding Parkside it had the best balance of elegant and historic.
The New Palette
With the brand’s color palette, the main focus was to have darker colors to make it have an underground feeling with the story being an extension of the civil rights movement. It also helped the brand not feel overly feminine, as the target audience is families. Once I chose to include more female activists in addition to Georgia, the brand the color palette changed for the better. Having a darker tone, the colors became warmer and the contrast helped the floral elements become visible.
Empathy Map
With this being done at the very beginning of the project, a lot of things stayed the same and others changed. In the Say portion of the map, I wanted customers to tell others that Georgia’s is a great environment to be in, that they had a delightful experience, and that the designs sparked conversation. In the Think portion, I wanted customers to think about African American history and the people that are represented by the brand. There was also critical thinking with customers who might wonder, “Am I really going to spend this much money on soul food?” I worked to address this with my brand design choices. With the Do section, customers would order food, interact with the staff, recommend the restaurant to friends, and family, and they would learn about these heroines. For feel, the objective is for customers to feel warm, welcomed, included, and at home.
Feature Design: Menu
The menu is the main element of the brand. This is where the audience will be informed the most, each page has a short biography of the featured heroine, a photo, and a category of food that is offered. Georgia Gilmore, being the opening feature, has a full spread containing several images and a bit more history than the rest of the crew. Initially, the background color palette was all navy blue giving it a monotone feeling that looked nice but wasn’t quite right. As the project evolved the colors expanded from the flower palette and were incorporated as full-color pages.
Each page uses the freight sans text ranging from 10pt-18pt along with the parkside font as the headers along with the activist names on the tags. The name tags are designed to mimic old-style nameplates seen on old portraits, each one being color-coordinated with the page it represents.
Packaging
With packaging, it was important to include a to-go box and a to-go bag, but I wanted a little more since it is meant to be a fine dining experience. So I came up with a box idea that is meant to, represent a hat box (going back to the hat idea I brought into the brand early on). This became a specialty box that includes house-made hot sauce, a matchbook, and some high-end cigars. All items are branded and would be great for a gift or something to remember the restaurant experience. This is a top-tier box with a pull-out function and includes a floral pattern around the exterior of the box along with a beautiful interior wrapping paper.
With the to-go box and the to-go bag, my research revealed that a lot of restaurants have been using black containers. So for Georgia’s Kitchen, I wanted that luxury feeling. The to-go boxes are made black to have that modern feel to them and with the to-go bag, it makes it look like you are walking out with a gift. When it comes to the bag, I made the decision to only feature the G logo and the floral pattern, the idea was that people would see the bag and be curious about where it came from.
Website
When it comes to the website I wanted to keep it simple yet packed with enough information to communicate the meaning behind the brand to the viewer. I took a lot of inspiration from the Starr Restaurants websites located here in the Philadelphia area. The home page of the site opens with an auto-animated slideshow changing from the logo with “Soul Food for Change” under it to one of three main dishes Georgia offers and a photograph of a modern-day protest in Montgomery. The next portion of the site features the mission statement along with a button that brings you to a page that features the heroines, three of them have additional pages with more information about them (Georgia, Daisy, and Coretta) At the bottom, there is the reservation section and the location of the restaurant. The top navigation bar is “sticky” and stays visible as the viewer scrolls down the page where you can see the restaurant menus, special events, reservations, and contact information.
Website Walkthrough
For the walkthrough, this goes on to show you how the website will function. Locating everything that the site has to offer, from seeing what is on the menu, learning about the heroines, and making a reservation.
Table and Coaster design
For the environment portion of the project, I came up with a table design that is a collage of different activists and protest pictures. This design was also used on coasters since the restaurant serves cocktails.
The tables represent the heroines featured throughout the brand and each table is a sign of respect to them for what they did to fight for their rights.
Conclusion
This project pushed me to step farther into my design skills, at first it was a struggle to figure out what I wanted this project to portray but it clicked once I looked back at my family. I enjoyed every moment, from the research to the final adjustment on a menu mock-up. I hope you all enjoyed the story for Georgia’s Kitchen: Soul Food for Change.
Credits
Designer: Deondre Linder
Instructor: Kelly Holohan, Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University
Stock Photography sourced from Adobe Stock
