New Identity: Staple & Fancy

Posted in Design on Sep 20th, 2010

Shortly after launching the new Ethan Stowell Restaurants website, we got to work on the identity for Staple & Fancy. Staple & Fancy is Ethan’s new restaurant in Ballard and is going to become the Seattle chef’s permanent digs. The restaurant occupies a newly renovated space in the Kolstrad Building and a lot of the original brick signage still occupies the walls. One of the former occupants was a grocery store that offered goods both staple & fancy, as the old painted sign on the brick wall states, and a restaurant name was born.

For this logo assignment we went through quite a few rounds of revisions before landing on the final result. Trying to hit the sweet spot between old-timey but not too period-specific or hackneyed is harder than I expected. (Maybe in a future post I’ll show the giant pile of discarded attempts.)

In the end, the final logo seems like the perfect mix of old and new, and very appropriate for a restaurant which marries old and new architecture with Ethan’s simple and modern take on classical Italian cuisine.

We came up with a simple business card based on a photo I took of the original signage. The menu was a concept we all came up with during a late-night brainstorm. (I’m sure the hosts are questioning the need for a staple gun to keep the daily menu current.)

If you haven’t already, get down to Staple & Fancy and dine omakase style where Ethan takes care of all the ordering. Then simply sit back and relax with some of the best food in the country.

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