The Sandwich Spot

Building a San Francisco restaurant identity across storefront, menu, apparel, and web.

Industry

Restaurant / food & beverage

Engagement

Brand identity, signage, apparel & website

Relationship

Defined project, delivered and handed off

Location

Marina District, San Francisco

Scope

Brand strategy, identity, illustration, signage, menus, apparel, collateral, website design and development, and restaurant brand applications

Ground-up restaurant identityA complete visual identity created for the San Francisco location

Bay Area visual directionClassic-car, tattoo, surf, and local influences brought into one recognizable brand

From street to tableSignage, menus, collateral, apparel, and restaurant applications

Website designed and builtThe same identity carried into the digital experience

The restaurant had a location. The brand still needed a point of view.

The Sandwich Spot was preparing its Marina District location with a restaurant to build around, but no distinctive visual identity for the San Francisco market.

Keeks created the brand around the classic-car, tattoo, surf, and Bay Area influences surrounding the location, then carried it across the storefront, menu, signage, apparel, collateral, and website.

The Sandwich Spot built and operated the restaurant. Keeks built the San Francisco brand and the customer-facing visual system around it.

The Sandwich Spot mark: an illustrated hot-rod driver holding a sandwich, a surfboard behind him, inside a red disc over a banner reading The Sandwich Spot, Marina District, SF

One identity, from the street to the screen.

Four stages show how a Marina District location became one identity carried across signage, apparel, and the website. Each stage built on the one before it.

01The locationA Marina District restaurant preparing to establish its own identity.
02The brandIllustration, logo, typography, color, and visual language.
03The restaurantSignage, menu, apparel, collateral, and physical applications.
04The digital experienceWebsite and restaurant information carried into the same visual world.

The identity had to feel local without becoming a costume.

Classic cars, tattoo graphics, surf culture, and Bay Area references all shaped the direction. The challenge was bringing those influences together without turning the restaurant into a collection of disconnected themes.

Keeks created the illustrated mark, typography, color, and graphic language that became the center of the brand.

The brand had to read from the street.

Keeks carried the identity into the exterior sign, sidewalk signage, and restaurant environment so the same visual character people saw online was present before they walked through the door.

The dimensional exterior sign in close view, the illustrated mark cut and mounted on stucco

The same sign installed above the restaurant entrance on the street

The same language carried onto the table.

Menus, business cards, stickers, and other small-format pieces brought the same illustration and graphic language into the details customers handled directly.

The printed menu, opened to show its panels

Business cards stacked, showing the dark back and the red front

A sandwich wrapped in branded liner paper printed with the mark

Built to work beyond the storefront.

The graphic system extended naturally into apparel and other physical applications.

A black t-shirt printed with the illustrated mark

The website stayed inside the same visual world.

Keeks designed and developed the website using the same illustration, voice, menu language, and graphic character established in the physical restaurant.