One mark asked to carry a barbershop and a cocktail bar in the same room, built from a single sentence of direction.
Role
Creative direction · Brand identity · Art direction
Client
The Anguished Barber · Atlanta, GA
Industry
Hospitality · Barbershop · Cocktail bar
Deliverables
Logo · Identity system · Signage · Menus · Matchbooks · Branded glassware · Interior direction
Palette and type
Carbon black, copper, pearl beige, steel blue, slate grey. A machined sans.
The anguish is in the letterform.
Challenge
A barbershop with a full bar, and a client whose only direction was a barber logo he liked on a trip to France. Two businesses in one room, and one mark expected to carry both.
Approach
Kept visiting the build and directed off the room itself. Locked the logo onto a frowning face, pulled the pattern straight off the bar millwork, and took the palette from the Dalí the place is named after.
Outcome
Logo, pattern, signage, menus, matchbooks, napkins and two treatments of branded glassware, all built from one sentence of direction.
The brief · A LEGO model
He could not describe it, so he built it. The LEGO model was the closest thing to a brief I got, and it was about the room, not the brand.
The client was opening a barbershop with a full liquor license. The only direction he gave me was a barber logo he liked on a trip to France, and one sentence: see if you can illustrate what I am thinking.
He had also built the room in LEGO before it existed, which told me how he saw the space and nothing about the brand. Everything else got worked out on site, while the place was going up.
Ornate lettering, worked out on paper with a nib and a pencil before any of it went digital.
The brief was a logo he half remembered from France. The frowning face was the thread I decided to pull.
Tightened by hand. This is the sketch I sent to check I was on the right track. The answer was a thumbs up, and that was the whole round of feedback.
The finished lockup. The teardrop on the A is one extra shape doing all of the emotional work.
Five values off the Dalí the bar is named for. Carbon black, copper, pearl beige, steel blue, slate grey.
Black stock, copper mark, contact details set in the mono.
The pattern, ripped right off the bar millwork.
The pattern applied. The menu was designed to be held, not scanned, and the weight of the board is part of it.
Salvador Dalí · 1934
The color came straight off a Dalí and stayed there.
Barber Saddened by the Persistence of Good Weather, also catalogued as The Anguished Barber. The bar takes its name from the painting, and all five brand values are lifted off the canvas.
The glass · Two treatments
Glassware and matchbooks were part of the system, so the brand reaches the table without a sign on it.
The second treatment. Bronze striping pulled straight off the hatching in the logo arch, no wordmark, for when the mark would be too loud.
In service · The table
I proposed the glassware, because the drink is the thing people photograph.
The mark in the hand, at the size it actually gets seen.
Cinnamon over the rim. The garnish is doing the same job the mark is.
The room · On site
How the room should feel was worked out with the client, off the palette in the painting.
The client wanted an experience, not a haircut with a bar attached. That meant the brand had to reach past the logo and into the room: the pattern on the millwork, the weight of the menu board, the glass in someone's hand.
None of it was in a brief. It came from being on site while the place went up, and taking what the build handed me.
Chairs on one side, bar on the other, one room. The brand does not switch when you cross it.
The back bar. Low light, good whiskey, and a palette chosen for exactly this.
Built for the customer who wants an experience, not just a haircut.
That loop is the whole business model, and the brand had to hold together across both halves of it.
Every project on this site started with an email.
