Skuna Bay produces raised salmon from Vancouver Island for the North American market. Oslo-based design agency Mission developed the brand’s new visual identity using IvyPresto for headlines and Barlow for text. Mission summarizes their design as follows:

The picture series portrays everything from pure raw materials to preparation by professional chefs, up to delicious dishes where the salmon plays the main role. With a minimalist color palette based on white and black, we let the images of the fish and delicious dishes speak for themselves. Everything wrapped in a modern and elegant typeface with a message that underpins high quality and professional pride.

The new logo pairs two widths from Acumin.

When Željko Knežević and Matko Barun of fledgling distillery High Spirits planned to launch their premium gin, they realized that a superb packaging was needed to make some waves. Luckily they knew whom to turn to: Izvorka Jurić and her studio in Zagreb have repeatedly proven that they are a first class address for design that can make a difference.

Sampé gin is a strong alcoholic drink distilled domestically from the finest Croatian grapes. With its refined combination of herbal aromas that include pine, lemon, and Adriatic salt, it has a strong connection to the sea. Izvorka Jurić (Creative and Art Director) and Jurica Kos (Senior Designer) explored this link for their approach. They comment on the background of the name:

Many countries on the shores of the great sea know the legend of how St. Peter once caught the John Dory fish and left fingerprints on its body; that’s why this sea delicacy is still called by his name: Šanpjer, Sant-Pierre, Sampé. Inspired by an ancient tale, we gave the name Sampé to a premium gin that pays tribute to the Mediterranean – a mythical place where the divine touch permeates nature and its precious gifts.

This theme was then translated to a unique bottle and label design:

The originally designed bottle has the shape of the sea surface on the front. The brand name is mirror printed on the back of the bottle, so on the front, it is visible through sea waves and the gin liquid which gives the impression that the brand name Sampé is in the water. This position deforms the typography and creates exciting shapes and structures that change by turning the bottle in hand or changing the viewing angle. […] The light blue-colored glass and wooden stopper in the conical shape of a sailor’s cap contribute to the overall Mediterranean feel.

For the typography, Jurić and Kos selected Rector “for the ideal combination of monumental and graceful”. The lapidary serif with sharply cut shapes and majestic capitals was designed by Hrvoje Živčić and published by Production Type. On the labels, Rector is contrasted with a sans serif by another Croatian type designer: Nikola Djurek’s Brioni Sans, available from Typotheque.

The hopes of the distillery were fulfilled: Sampé won Gold in the IdejaX Best of Ad-Making Awards and Silver in the Dieline Awards, one of the world’s most prestigious packaging design awards.

Website detail with the origin story of the name

The distorted letterforms of the brand name as seen from the front of the bottle

Bottle neck with the brand name in raised ink

The slogan in caps from Rector Bold …

… and how this setting translates to the raised glass lettering on the bottle

The brand story as shown on the side of the bottle, in English and Croatian, and set in Rector combined with Brioni Sans

The highlighted words in Brioni Sans caps are scaled to match the x-height of Rector.

The wooden stopper features a single S from Rector.

Website detail

The mirrored type on the back of the bottle

Eat, drink, love – that’s the motto of Abstinence, a stylish restaurant located on La Motte-Picquet in Paris. Abstinence is the latest addition to the portfolio of Guillaume Benard’s Fitz Group, which already operates the Fitzgerald and the Vesper. According to Elodie Rouge’s review for Do It in Paris, Abstinence is distinguished by “a highly instagrammable decor”:

Here, you can disembark to flirt with your loved one or have fun in a group around a cocktail and plates to share in a glam and sophisticated atmosphere with a socialite clientele at the rendezvous.

Velvet curtains, candles, banquettes and tall seats in olive or tobacco leather, vibrant playlist, impressive Sarrancolin marble bar, extraordinary glass roof that fills the place with incredible light: the tone of this singularly cool address in the 15th district is set!

This mix of cool and chic extends to the typography. While the logotype sports whimsical sans-serif caps with Art Nouveau characteristics, all other text from the menus to the website is rendered in a contemporary serif with sharp details.

Abstinence’s visual identity was conceived by Abmo. The Paris-based studio led by Sonia Cordier and Dezyderiusz Gusta specializes in spectacular identities for the hospitality industry, see for example their work for Frenchie Restaurant and Hotel Sookie.

For the logo, Abmo created a custom typeface: Abstinence is characterized by a high waistline and an idiosyncratic S. The font has wide caps in the uppercase and narrrower alternates in the lowercase, which get mixed via OpenType features. Keussel provided the font production.

The brand typeface is Rector. Drawn by Type & Media graduate Hrvoje Živčić, it was published by Production Type in 2021, just a few months before Abstinence opened its doors. Rector often is used in all caps and big sizes, like for the three-word messages “EAT DRINK LOVE” or “OPEN ALL SUMMER”, flaunting its wedge-shaped bars and knife-like diagonals, which hint at its inspiration in stonecarving and monumental letters. Rector also appears in mixed case on the website and the printed menus, where it makes for a dignified text typeface with an unmistakable voice.

Guests are greeted by the custom logotype on the awning.

Staff members wearing T-shirts with the restaurant’s motto

Homepage

The website illuminates the triad of Eat, Drink, and Love in words and images.

Rector Regular, set center-aligned

For some subheadings on the website, Rector is supported by Abmo’s custom Abstinence font.

Rector in use for the cocktail menu

Stills from a video posted to social media

Auckland-based studio Seachange has updated the identity of Cazador, a family-run neighbourhood restaurant specializing in wild game.

In 2016, Seachange already designed an award-winning cookbook for Cazador. The font used back then was Zuzana Licko’s Matrix. For the new identity, Seachange followed this lead and again went for a style with triangular serifs, but further bumped up the spikiness.

We created a slightly eccentric, yet classic logotype that alludes to wild game with its antler-esk exaggerated serifs and knife-like chisels. — Seachange

The wordmark is based on Zangezi, a recent reinterpretation of Salem (1901), by Daria Cohen. A preliminary version was released in April 2018 via Future Fonts. Seachange customized some of the letterforms. Most of Zangezi’s already pronounced serifs were further elongated, and the wedge terminals in C and r bent to point inwards. Zangezi is such a wild design, it can easily bear such modifications. However, with the tightened overall spacing including the interlocking d-o-r, the gap created by the za pair now is particularly evident. I wonder if making the bottom of z a bit narrower would have helped here. The other edit I can’t quite get behind is the top terminal of d: The bracketing is not found back in any of the other letters. These are minor quibbles, though – the result is a unique and expressive logo, and the debossed version on the leather-bound menus sure looks mouth-watering.

The custom logotype is paired with Maison Neue (incl. Maison Neue Mono) for print. On the restaurant’s website, Maison Neue’s role is filled by Nimbus Sans.

Nordic Blu is a new Norwegian premium brand of salmon which just had its debut at Seafood Expo North America in Boston. Nordic Blu is “the world’s first and only marine net-pen farmed Atlantic salmon rated ‘Green — Best Choice’ by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch®.” — Clean Fish

Designed by north™, using Lausanne by Nizar Kazan.

World Packaging Design:

Hardy’s graphic identity results from two main ideas: the use and manipulation of a strong typography that evokes a Germanic aesthetic, rigid and sharp as a cutting knife and the symbol that reproduces the Hardy process, the salmon fillet, with its texture and repetition of pattern, and a drawstring tie that binds it to the smoker.
The visual representation of the fish is adapted to other fishes in the Hardy portfolio, such as the slender and longer Eel, the Mackerel (small and group) and the extension to future new products. The chromatic palette was defined with great care: the salmon orange and a deep blue exist in balance and in alternation.

Alias Harbour is used for the logotype, supported by Montserrat for tagline and product information.