Agricole Hospitality
Responsibility meets disobedience in this restaurant group's visual identity.
When the owners of Agricole Hospitality approached me to brand their company, I had already designed identities for several of their establishments. Central to all their concepts is the drive to source products responsibly, and to know where their food is grown and raised. This personal integrity—from farm to market to table—influenced the design choices in Agricole's identity.
Agricole's reverence for the food and drink they serve could have pushed the brand to be too squeaky clean or, worse, pretentious. In searching for a solution, we found a seamy and humorous tension between two very different cultural artifacts: illustrations of people depicted as vegetables from the 1800s, and AC/DC's album cover for Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap (by Hipgnosis). By placing eye censor bars over the genteel vegetables, they became a bit mysterious—a bit seedy (pun intended).
The wordmark uses Estilo Pro, an elegant headline typeface that references a 1930s art deco style. Balanced custom ligatures and small caps give the mark a unique quality reminiscent of hand-painted signage. The identity's color palette is black and white to allow the colors of Agricole's sub-brands to feature clearly on their collateral.
ROLE
Strategist and Identity Designer
CLIENT
