Crafting the brand identity & creative strategy for LA-based pop up Abbiocco Italian Foods
Project Summary
Abbiocco Italian Foods is a (you guessed it) Italian American foods and natty wine pop up, originally started in the Bay Area, now based in LA. The idea for Abbiocco was born in one of those classic Noe Valley Victorian apartments my husband and I lived in during the pandemic. Like any good chef (him) + designer (me) duo, we had big dreams of owning our own restaurant one day, and the pandemic seemed like a great time to bring our dreams to life. (I say that somewhat unironically.)
The food and in-person experiences had to be excellent, but to get butts in seats, Abbiocco very quickly needed a brand identity to help communicate what this concept was, a social presence to advertise, capture and share our events to relevant audiences, and a website to do all the things a site does, plus allow us a space to share (then) business goals with potential investors.
Services
Art Direction
Brand Identity
Creative Strategy
Graphic Design
Illustration
Web Design
Business Development*
Social Media*
*Vital components of my role with Abbiocco, but I won’t get into these here for the sake of brevity
My Role
Owner, Designer, Social Media Manager, Event Manager, Host, Server, Cook 😅
Logos
Primary Logo
Developing the Brand Identity
As the business concept developed, so too did the brand ID. I was originally inspired by design and advertising made popular around the early mid century, when Italian American restaurants started gaining popularity. Abbiocco was our homage to those original cultural gathering spaces, and it felt as important to pay reference through our brand as it did our food.
As we shifted our long-term vision of what we hoped Abbiocco would some day become away from those traditional “red leather booths & Sinatra over the speakers” restaurants, and into a more modern European style natty wine bar, the visual references also started to shift.
Mascot
Social Logo
Colors, Fonts, Imagery & Illustrations
Getting Playful with Visual Design
Most, if not all, of the communication between Abbiocco and our community was happening on Instagram. That was where we were announcing our pop up events, where I was booking reservations, how we built the business really. And as we all know, Instagram is a visual-based platform, so I needed to find ways of leveraging and expanding on the brand identity quickly.
I was developing the art direction and our event collateral concurrently, which gave me a lot of flexibility to evolve, but meant I didn’t have a clear set of guidelines to navigate within. Thankfully my experiences at GoPro, both as the maker and follower of various campaign art directions, gave me a high degree of comfort “writing the recipe while cooking the meal”.
The idea for custom illustrations for each pop up poster started from our very first event, and came from that initial reference towards mid century advertising and design. It was a joy (not only because I’m the client) to take each event’s menu or collaborator, and find points of meaning to play with. I love crafting a story, and those posters felt like chapters in the novel of Abbiocco.
A To-The-Point Website
Like all things with Abbiocco, the site has evolved to best suit the current needs and goals of the business. There was a time the site geared towards providing a more robust picture of who we were and what we were looking to do, a place to drive more formal communication between ourselves and potential investors, and to share documents like our business proposal and pro formas.
With our business focused only on pop ups for now, our current goal for the site is to provide a more abbreviated taste of who we are, and better direct people towards more active channels.
