BUOY & ANCHOR IDENTITY
Overview
Buoy & Anchor is a unique location, being two restaurants in one building. They wanted to provide a modern, elegant seafood restaurant with stunning views of the ocean, but also have a place customers can have the unique experience of being around the fishermen who catch the food they eat and hear their legendary fishing stories in a pub-like setting.
First, at street level, is Buoy, a modern seafood restaurant where the food of the sea is the star on every dish. They take pride in serving fresh seafood every day. They don’t freeze anything and the menu is dependent on the product that is brought in that day.
To make it easy on the kitchen staff, they have recipes that they will use, but the veteran chef will create special daily plates to take advantage of the stock of food they have. This can make every visit to Buoy different and exciting by having a simple, yet ever-changing menu.
The second half is Anchor, a pub in the basement of the building. This is the where you can get fish and chips and grab a pint while in the company of the fishermen who caught the food you’re eating. The owners of Buoy & Anchor give the fishermen a free meal at Buoy each day they sell them their catch which helps provide the authentic atmosphere and perhaps salty, yet fun character.
Looking for a nice evening out? Visit Buoy. But if you want to grab a beer and some grub to watch the game or hang out with the guys and have a good time, Anchor is your place.
Direction
One of the biggest challenges with this client is that there are two substantially different restaurants, thus two different audiences.
Buoy is for those who want a pleasant dinner out enjoying a bottle of wine with dinner and taking in the views of the ocean. Buoy is going to attract a mostly male audience who go out to grab a couple drinks and some fried food with their friends.
Since there are two different audiences, it was fitting to come up with two separate logo systems (one for each restaurant) that could be combined into one pictorial logo.
Process
As I was designing the logo, I was exploring ways that the two objects, the buoy and the anchor, would be able to work not only together, but independently without much alteration. This includes retaining the angles they have from when they’re crossed on their own. By doing this, the logos would be recognizable no matter where or how you saw them.
I sketched ideas of the two together to find an angle that would work, then draw them out separately and vice versa until I found the right combination.
Details
Although the logos may appear fairly simple, they required a lot of precise refinement and attention to detail to create something that would work.
- The buoy and anchor share the same skeleton and rounded corners to create harmony between the two symbols. This way, they share the same style and are easily recognized as being part of the same brand.
- The corporate color is a dark, cool gray paying acknowledgment to the sea most of the food served at the restaurants comes from. It also provides a very modern feel for Buoy and a masculine appearance for Anchor.
- Instead of creating two vertical logos and pivoting them to create the combined logo, the logos have been designed to be at those particular angles together or on their own. The buoy rocking in the waves and the anchor leaned over because it can’t balance on the point.
- Arno Pro Semibold is used for the logo type for its classic and clean style. It works well for both applications; the clean appearance for the modern restaurant, and the serif type works well for the classic pub. This versatile typeface also allows for a coherent visual identity even when using other fonts from the family for menus, signage, and other branding applications.
- The buoy is set in the foreground so that when someone reads what they see, they will saying the object that appears closest to them first, “Buoy and Anchor.”
Final Concept
Despite having two different atmospheres and audiences, the owners of Buoy & Anchor wanted to make sure it was understood that they share one fundamental ideal: Seafood should be made and enjoyed fresh.
The goal was to design a logo that would bring these two restaurants together, but also work on their own. To do this, I designed the logos in a way that they share some characteristics, but still made them unique on their own.
These three logo marks (Buoy, Anchor, and Buoy & Anchor) work as a versatile logo system that is extremely pliable no matter what the application. From chef’s jackets to murals, from signage to printed on menus, these logos are unique, memorable, and easily recognizable with their shared style no matter where it is seen.
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