Decisions, Decisions...

Now that I've been working on this project for a couple of weeks, I really need to be entering the design stage, which I have been doing to an extent, but I haven't been saving any of my ideas as I can't decide on a name for my restaurant & personally, I think this needs to be done first in order to gain an identity for my restaurant & give me (no pun intended), food for thought in terms of how the interior of the restaurant, menus etc are going to look. Since I aim to make this restaurant a place for friends to go for casual lunch, an equally casual name should be given. So far I've narrowed it down to two names, and they are "Just Friends" & "The Lounge", both accompanied by the tagline "the casual meeting place". I have brainstormed a few design ideas for both of these names & they both work well, and I am leaning more towards calling my restaurant "The Lounge". It sounds more adult, mature & sounds like a relaxed, comfortable place for people to meet up & dine.

3D Typography

I just fancied having a browse through various forms of typography on Google, and one of the forms that struck me was 3D type. Carrying on from a previous blog entry, chronicling another designers approach to this brief, I think 3D typo would work well, if strategically placed within the restaurant, either as a piece of furniture or just for ornamental/decoration purposes. As a typographically themed restaurant, I think both of these methods will work equally as well.

Choosing a name & theme

Now I feel as though I am going along the right track with the "Mutton Quad" brief, in terms of how to approach my design, I must first decide on a name & theme for my restaurant. Since my approach to the design will probably be something along the lines of strategically placing typographic quotes & phrases on the walls of the restaurant, My first idea was to put my restaurant across as a warm, friendly & welcoming restaurant, that is more casual than upmarket, very similar to the Ha Ha Bar. My idea is to have this restaurant as a casual meeting place, for friends to meet up for a quick bite, or if they are going out for the night, to pop by for an evening meal, hopefully putting across more of a walk-in, sit-down atmosphere where you don't have to go through the process of booking a table. To focus in on this type of atmosphere, the quotes running up & across the walls would be nice, witty comments about friendship & meeting people, to fully enforce the casualness of the restaurant itself. The name selection is going to be the hardest part of this process, as I want to come up with something that is short, yet memorable & to the point, but can also be displayed nicely typographically & keeps within the theme of the "friendship" aspect of the restaurant.

PhantomCoconut

After Googling "Mutton Quad" out of curiosity, to see what came up to give me some inspiration, I came across someone else who appears to be blogging about this particular project. Scrolling through their blog, I found a post regarding several rough concepts & visuals, the most interesting being his or her experimentation with 3D type & using typography as objects within the restaurant. The most interesting idea that I noticed was the use of letters, words & typefaces as such things as tables, barstools etc (the stools in particular striking me as a very clever idea.) All of "Phantomcoconut's" blog entries showing the development of an idea are very thorough & in-depth & the visuals are particularly interesting & well thought out. To visit the blog & have a look round for yourself, click HERE!

Anamorphic Type

While on the subject of design.org & placing type on walls, I stumbled across this very cool article on the aforementioned website, which is all about anamorphic type. This is unbelievably well executed. The project was completed by Joseph Egan & Hunter Thomson, students at Chelsea College of Art & Design & is entitled, "It's more than just Print" & experiments with the use of type & flat, geometric shapes & surfaces. Very cool.
You can read the article, and watch the amazing point of view video, showing this project in full, by clicking HERE.

Mutton Quad

I've managed to decide on a brief to pursue for the ISTD project, and that is "Mutton Quad"... No, I don't understand the title but the project sounds interesting. Basically the overall theme is to base a restaurant around typography, which sounds easy enough. I've had a few discussions with my tutors & have come to the conclusion that the best way to approach this brief is to do something similar to the "Yo! Sushi" wall mural, having typography, phrases, quotes etc placed on the wall, on the menus, floors & so on.