Rebranding / Stationery Systems

Magnolias Restaurant was brought to the neighborhood of Payne Avenue in Saint Paul, MN in 1984 by its owner, Dan Hanf. This little restaurant, known for its large portions and family-friendly diner atmosphere, is a great place for newcomers to experience good American food and for regular customers who make a point to visit as often as they can, because they can't get enough of this great environment and friendly service that makes them feel like it is their home away from home.

My task was to recapture the restaurants' identity. This would include a new logo as well as a stationary system with a letterhead, envelope, and business card that goes along and complements the new identity system. To start, I wanted to keep it simple. The old logo design was very illustrative and that may work in other cases, but for me and my experience, food based logos and their brands are more simple and clean and, more importantly, iconic and easily recognized even from a distance. My thoughts were to make the main idea of the new logo to represent the M in Magnolias name, so I started brainstorming on that. However, I soon found myself thinking it would be better to recreate the magnolia flower. With this new design the logo I wanted to bring new life to Magnolias Restaurant as if a new flower bud had just bloomed but was still on the same tree as the old flower. I kept the color palate simple with one color to go off of. In color theory, red is meant to stimulate hunger, but I felt red would be too bold for the logo and instead it worked with a vibrant magenta. Overall, I believe that this fits the idea I was going for as well as stays true to the restaurants overall principles of warm and welcoming family-friendly eatery.