Mesovrika Diner logo for the exterior sign | final version
When I initially joined the Director's Guild of Canada as an Art Department Apprentice, there were a number of seminars I needed to attend in order to properly introduce all apprentices to the guild and to the world of film. In the seminar on graphic design for film, one of the points made by the instructors was that, unlike in the commercial world, often graphic designers are tasked with "under designing" or "undesigning" in the name of realism. After all, in the real world not every business can afford to hire a graphic designer or a marketing team to make everything polished and cohesive.
In researching similar mom & pop restaurants, I looked at menus that were densely packed and visually busy, sometimes with mysterious watermarks that only served to make them look more cluttered. I saw photos of food taken without the benefit of studio lighting. I saw different typefaces mashed together in ways that were visually nonsensical. And then I had a lot of fun breaking some design rules in order dress this set in a similar way!
Wall menu, mounted behind the counter, complete with roughly cut out and poorly lit photos of food.
Hand held menu pages. These were then stuffed into marvelous, enormous, multi-page vinyl menu covers.
Framed restaurant reviews to be included in a gallery wall of sourced vintage black & white family photos.
