Make it stand out.

Grill Concepts, Inc. Brand Portfolio

(2020 - 2021)

This restaurant group has been operating some of Southern California’s most iconic restaurant brands since the early 80’s. After going through a pretty dramatic corporate restructuring in 2017, leadership wanted to take a fresh look at the corporate level branding in order to more clearly define the company’s message.

The story I wanted to tell was that of a creative group of restauranteurs, a blank canvas that served as the bold backdrop for the liveliness and color of each individual restaurant concept. The idea that Grill Concepts, Inc. understood the building blocks about what made a restaurant tick and was passionate about redefining the basics. I communicated this by restricting the color plate to primarily black and white, which would effectively translate to customers from their fine-dining concept to their more casual gastropubs.

The logo redesign featured a series of very abstract “grill marks” to serve as a nod to the original restaurant that started it all, The Grill on the Alley. By abstracting these design elements, I also hoped to create a subtle brush stroke effect that reinforced the blank-canvas concept of the this new brand story.