A new sign for Le Bouchon Alsacien, the restaurant run by Jacky and Fred, new owners of the former Cazenove in Lyon’s 6th district.

The exterior now features a glass gilding panel combining engraving and gold leaf gilding (manufactured by Giusto Manetti Battiloro). The deep blue background highlights a swirl of shimmering letters, creating a classic and luminous result that pays tribute to Lyon’s and Alsace’s heritage.

Inside, a lime fresco bears the owners’ tribute phrase, “the cellar of my father, the dishes of my mother” alongside other hand-painted elements that extend the artisanal touch throughout the space.

The typefaces in use are Albuquerque by Ornamental & Title Type, LHF Thick and Thin Sans by Thomas Kennedy of Letterhead Fonts, Gandur New by Blackletra, and Drafter by Double Dagger.

Design and execution by C’est par là.

Loquat is a new bakery and café located on a picturesque corner in the Hayes Valley neighborhood of San Francisco. Named after the trees found throughout the city that are beloved for their sweet and tangy golden fruit, it’s a joint venture from the team behind The Mill and Four Barrel Coffee and an alum of another local gem, Tartine. Loquat sets itself apart from the myriad other bakeries and cafes in San Francisco with a focus on classic Jewish and Levantine pastries and opened in autumn of 2022.

House of Gul was hired to design Loquat’s brand identity, visual system, and print assets. Forgoing any visual association with its sibling businesses, Loquat is defined by a selection of vibrant and warm earthy tones to reference the color of its pastry selection, and the design studio also makes prominent use of Sharp Type’s blackletter revival, Respira Black.

The design direction was built from the idea of modernizing classical illuminated manuscripts and imagining how the ancient coffee houses of Europe and Asia would show up in a modern society. Respira was inspired by a particular style of Spanish blackletter often found in illuminated manuscripts of Andalusia, making it a perfect candidate for Loquat's branding. Used for the main logotype, the blackletter's gothic elements and ornamentation are tastefully balanced for contemporary applications, imparting a timeless elegance. The bold gold logotype set in one of Loquat's windows is particularly fun.

Gage & Tollner was a beloved landmark of Brooklyn’s fine dining scene for over a century, an oyster and steak restaurant operating continuously from 1879 to 2004. In the decade after it closed, the space fell into disrepair and was occupied by a clothing store, a TGI Fridays, and an Arby’s.

In a successful 2018 crowdfunding effort, restaurateurs Sohui Kim, Ben Schneider, and St. John Frizell raised enough money to restore the space in hopes of reviving the restaurant. After the meticulous restoration of the space and development of a menu honoring the restaurant’s history, the new incarnation of Gage & Tollner had its soft opening in February 2020, before temporarily closing due to the pandemic. It reopened fully in April 2021.

Order designed a broad-ranging identity system for the restaurant, paying homage to its long history. They write in their case study:

From the outset, we decided that we wanted to try and bring back the original feeling of the restaurant’s branding, but updated for the 21st century.

Over the years Gage & Tollner used several different logos. The original window lettering was distinctive, but was not found on any other materials. Our research showed the oldest printed logo the restaurant used was set in a typeface named Art Gothic.

Rather than working with one of the lumpy digital versions of Art Gothic currently available, Order commissioned custom lettering from Jesse Ragan of XYZ Type for the logotype. The crisp digital rendering of the typeface was drawn from scratch based on specimens from American Type Founders, its ampersand significantly re-proportioned while retaining the structure of the original.

Continuing the homage to period typography, Order chose a serif and sans pairing for extensive use:

The 1890 menu served as a starting point for the new typographic system.

De Vinne, based on Bruce Foundry No. 11 c. 1860 was chosen as a “Modern” typeface that resembled the fonts used in the early menus.

Proto Grotesk from Production Type was selected to be used when bolder type was needed. Its forms are reminiscent of turn of the century sans serifs that oscillate between an Egyptian and Modern.

Order’s extensive case study of the project includes greater context and images of the historical menus and signage.

Wine cellar numbers are set in Proto Grotesk’s alternate numerals

Travis Fitzsimmons of Travis Signs applied the logo to the restaurant window in gold leaf—see a time lapse here.

I did a double or triple take when I saw this butcher shop in Portland, Oregon, with their logo and signs using Zangezi. The secondary sans serifs are Roboto and a yet unidentified sans.

As told in an article in Eye magazine, Winter 2004, Barbara Glauber and her firm Heavy Meta once worked upstairs from Hoefler & Frere-Jones and often visited their office to ask, “Got some fonts for me?” This resulted in several designs using the foundry’s typefaces, including this commission from Glauber codenamed They Might Be Gothic. It would later become Giant.

“We wanted the idea to be illogical to reflect the way TMBG work,” says Glauber, “and stencil bevel doesn’t make any sense: a stencil is flat and a bevel is dimensional.”

That said, the stencil aspect of Giant isn’t shown in the final artwork.

The other type is Steile Futura, an underrated 1950s design by Paul Renner, which has nothing to do with the original Futura just named that way to capitalize on its success.

In later work for They Might Be Giants, Glauber got her hands on another H&FJ typeface before it reached the public: Gotham.

[More info on Discogs]

Traulha Frenchie is a custom style of Traulha Regulara for the restaurant Frenchie To Go. Graphic design by Content Design Lab (now named Abmo).

Frenchie: It was Jamie Oliver who gave Gregory Marchand this nickname in the kitchens of his Fifteen restaurant in London, and the moniker has stuck ever since. So it was a natural thing for him to lend that name to the restaurant he opened in April 2009 in Paris’ second arrondissement.

Sign painting by Julien Raout (studio 6 lettres).

Oscar Maia:

Founded in 1946, Barbearia Porto has a remarkable heritage in its midst. Guided under the most strict principles of excellence and through constant update of its methods, rapidly it transformed itself into a barber shop of reference in the city. Reinvented from generation to generation, Barbearia Porto holds a unique historical legacy that is passed along to each of its successors. So, with the arrival of the contemporary gentleman, it is important to adapt to an urban lifestyle, offering not only a new haircut but also an unmatchable experience that represents the vast heritage gained throughout the decades of the shop’s life.

In October 2015, the barber shop received a new group of successors who were interested in transforming and adapting the place to contemporary standards, but simultaneously seeking to preserve and assume a strong presence of its important historical heritage.

It seemed fundamental to me that Barbearia Porto’s new graphic identity should somehow be based on all of its “vintageness” and everything related to vintage, not only by the way how typography and layout would be used, but also by how the various materials would be produced and finished.

The shop’s window display was completely made by hand, recovering the almost extinct technique of gold leaf glass gilding and representing a more detailed and historically accurate approach to the project. Letterpress printing and other fine manufacturing techniques and materials are also used to produce the shop’s stationery and the other designs, as a way of making a statement on the concepts of timelessness and rediscovery which are associated with the shop and the services it provides.