New Website: Chef In The Hat

This latest site for the Chef In The Hat is a work in progress. But it is live so I thought I’d go ahead and mention it here. Thierry Rautureau is one of the top chefs in the country (having appeared on Top Chef Masters, natch) and this is actually the second site we’ve worked on together. (The first being Rover’s) This time around we decided to combine his Seattle institution Rover’s with his new restaurant Luc, which opened earlier this month, under a single website and brand: Chef In The Hat.

Lost Luggage worked on the new identity for the Chef In The Hat family, while I handled the website and the new photography for Luc. As always the best part of working with Thierry is getting to hang out and watch him work the room. One late night while shooting photos of Luc, Mario Batali and Tom Douglas showed up and the kitchen was reopened for a late night party. Good times for sure!

Like I mentioned, this site a work in progress. The section for Luc will be fleshed-out shortly, as well as an online store and a reservation system. In the meantime, visit thechefinthehat.com and see what the grand chef has been up to. And get down to Luc for some amazing bistro fare as soon as the crowds thin out!

New Website: Monsoon Restaurants

I just launched a new site for longtime LookatLao client Monsoon Restaurants. This site combines both the Seattle and Bellevue locations into a single parent site with a blog for news & event updates, a simple online reservation page and a lunch box delivery application to serve the eastside location. Thanks to Paul Mealy for the lunch box delivery help and to Ryan Scherler for hooking up the reservation system.

Once again I’ve made the photography the hero with this site, which is to say I’m lucky: I get to work with Seattle’s best chefs and that makes for great food porn!

And if you haven’t been already, go eat at Monsoon. Still some of the best food in the area, and the best Vietnamese food hands down. Even better if you like Dungeness Crab.

New Work: Ethan Stowell & Marjorie

Since the day I left my full time job at the agency last February I haven’t had a single day off. Needless to say: business is booming! And no, I’m not complaining. (Mostly)

Just last week I launched the website for Ethan Stowell Restaurants which turned out really great. We are still tweaking the details here and there, but I’m very happy with the results. We also finished up the photography for Ethan’s first cookbook as I just sent 170 final print-ready photographs to Ten Speed Press. This book is going to be awesome. More on that adventure in a future post.

Currently in the works and almost live is a new site for Monsoon Restaurants, a new site for The Chef In The Hat, and a bunch of new work for the upcoming Marjorie Restaurant which should be opening soon. I just finished the logo for that a few weeks back:

Don’t forget to check out Seattle Restaurant Week starting on the 18th of April. Lorie and I did the logo and the poster and you can check out the later over on her website. (She did all the work on the poster, I just stood around and smoked cigars.)

More updates soon…

New Logo For Seattle Restaurant Week

I keep meaning to write a blog post announcing my recent career change from lead interactive designer at Phinney Bischoff Design House to running my own business full-time here at LookatLao—but I’ve just to been too damn busy! But I’m not complaining, this is actually the ideal problem to have when leaving the agency world and going it alone—and I’ll get to that new career post sooner or later.

One of the projects that has kept me busy has been a logo design for a new restaurant organization that has recently formed here in Seattle called Seattle Restaurant Week. You can get the full background on the organization from this article by Nancy Leson over at the Seattle Times.

The best part of this project was that I got to team up with good pal and fellow designer Lorie Ransom who runs her own design and illustration studio in Lake Forest Park. To kick off our collaboration we spent a couple of weeks working on roughs but could never seem to narrow the choices down to the magic three (or even four or five) that designers love to present. We had a giant pile of logos, we liked them all, and they all satisfied the creative brief in different ways. So, we ended up showing the client sixteen different pencil roughs at a crowded restaurant downtown! It was a big risk, but it paid off. The presentation went really great.

In the end, the project became a true collaborative effort as our client chose a design that I originally conceived with a final illustration that was hand-drawn by Lorie. We followed that up with a poster design that should appear around town in early March, but I’ll give Lorie all the credit on that one. (And post it here when it’s done.)

It was a great project and Seattle Restaurant Week is going to be a great new event for Seattle food lovers—and chefs!