Cafe Spice
Job:12-84823 Title:RP-Graphic Design That Works (LDW)
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Client
Cafe Spice is an Indian restaurant
located in Manhattan.
DESIGNERS
Douglas Riccardi, Kate Johnson
FIRM
Memo Productions
Process
In developing what would become the Cafe Spice logo, designer Douglas Riccardi
hoped to create a mark that combined an Indian sensibility with an American one.
“We felt the mark needed to have an ethnic feel to it in order to visually convey the
type of food the restaurant serves, but we also wanted it to feel young and hip to
appeal to the college-aged population that lives nearby,” says Riccardi. He discovered
a solution while thumbing through an Indian penmanship book that he had found on
a visit to New York City’s Little India. “I started drawing some of the Indian characters
and noticed similarities between them and English letters,” says Riccardi. “For exam-
ple, there’s an Indian character that looks like an English C, and an accent mark that
looks like the dot in the letter I. So I decided to mix the two styles of writing togeth-
er.” Working with a typographer, Riccardi constructed a logotype whose letterforms
incorporate both the teardrop shapes found in traditional Indian calligraphy as well
as the thick, bold strokes characteristic of modern typefaces. The result, says Riccardi,
is a mark “that alludes to Indian culture in a playful, modern way.”
What Works
Mixing English script with Indian calligraphy, the logo consists of the client’s name
spelled out in letterforms that hang from a horizontal bar above them. With its
hybrid look, the mark echoes the style of the restaurant it represents: a place where
Indian food is served in an American-style setting.
Graphic Design That Works
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Job:12-84823 Title:RP-Graphic Design That Works (LDW)
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DW)
ge:62
In color applications,
the logo appears
reversed-out from a
palette inspired by
Indian spices such as
cinnamon and turmeric.
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