CREATIVE DIRECTOR + DESIGNER
adam's nana lu pizzeria cucina
Adam’s Nana Lu Pizzeria Cucina is a pizza and pasta eatery located in The Street Food Hall in Honolulu, by the Mina Group. Chef Adam Sobel’s actual grandmother, Nana Lu, was the inspiration for the restaurant concept, which serves authentic East Coast style fare. Within the interiors and the branding, restaurant owners wanted to convey the warmth of a brick pizza oven and homemade marinara sauce simmering on the stove in Nana’s kitchen.
Roles
Concept Development | Identity Design | Branding Applications | Signage Design
EXECUTION
Identity options for Nana Lu took inspiration from a variety of sources. Homey decorative flourishes that you might see printed on a hand-me-down tablecloth or cross-stitched on a tea towel, neon signage from New York in the mid-to-late-1900s, galleries of family images in the hallway of grandma’s house in mis-matched frames, and tile from Italian kitchens and New York subways. Colors were kept traditional to American Italian pizzeria aesthetic, skewing a bit darker and subdued, and all of the combined traditional details were balanced by clean lines and geometric patterns that appear in the exterior awnings, the printed pizza and food wrap, and the pizza to-go box. Other branding applications that I designed were the paper menu and digital menu boards.