Griff’s Kitchen & Bar
Logo Design
Candler restaurant that focuses on local
Designed in 2020
Griff's Kitchen & Bar is located in Candler, NC and serves lunch and dinner with a focus on contemporary American cuisine. Their values are based around community, inclusivity, and everything local. They source locally as much as possible to support farms and keep money in the local economy. Ian and Gina are a husband and wife team and stressed the importance of teamwork and a family atmosphere with both their employees and customers.
As I was diving into the research mode, I became very interested in the Enka-Candler history and the old American Enka Company rayon factory that supported this area back in the 1930's. What was fascinating to me was that during the Great Depression, this community thrived because of this plant. I checked out a few books at the library and read all sorts of stories from former employees of the plant. Many of them lived in mill houses (Enka Village) and talked about how it was the best time of their lives. The plant provided work for everyone in this area and did so much for their employees. They had sports teams, choir, church and more. The entire Enka-Candler community was humming and new businesses were popping up around the plant including jewelry stores, barber shops, shoe shops, fashion boutiques etc.
Griff's opened up in the same shopping center where the post office and all of these businesses were located. I couldn't help but feel like we needed to honor this time in history since it truly embodies everything Griff's is going for: community and family. While we wanted to maintain a minimal/clean look, I was inspired by the old signage from the old Enka Community Building. Each business name had an arched look and I chose a font that had "hand painted" looking edges and paired it with a script font that kept that old-time feel. The final design is bold and fun with a nod to the the industrial, blue collar past.
Follow along with their journey on Instagram: griffskitchenandbar and visit their website here.
“If you have a chance to work with Katie, take it. We were on a pretty tight time frame for our project and somehow, Katie was able to squeeze us in and still make it feel like we were her only clients. She was able to take our abstract and incoherent ramblings and really create a logo and branding guide that was exactly what we were after. She went above and beyond and created a whole story behind her work. To be fair, this is my first experience with branding and logo design, so I don’t have anything to compare this to, but I don’t need to. We would not hesitate to hire Katie again and could not recommend her enough.”