B’01Salad bar

Da Bomb Salad

A salad bar whose whole promise is that you build the bowl — so the mark had to be as bright and as legible as the counter it sits above.

Client: Da Bomb Salad
Sector: Salad bar
Departments: Branding, Graphic design
Delivered: Brand board, lockups, palette, type, watermark rule

The delivered brand board — lockups, watermark rule, palette and type specimen. Click to open it full size.

How it started

The board sets Da Bomb Salad’s line in its own type specimen: “Fresh ingredients. Bold flavors. Your bowl, your way.” Three promises, and the identity has to carry all three without a sentence of explanation.

A badge answers that. Lettering wrapped around a bowl icon reads as food service before anyone parses the name, and a circle survives being a sign, a sticker, a lid label and a profile picture without being redrawn each time.

The board delivers it twice — in full colour and as a one-colour badge — because a six-colour mark is a liability the first time it has to go on a till receipt or a single-colour stamp. Both versions are on the sheet, so nobody has to improvise one.

What it had to do

A mark that works above a counter and on a lid: a full-colour badge, a one-colour badge, a six-colour palette with its codes, a type pairing, and a watermark rule for food photography.

A badge that reads at sign size and at sticker size
A one-colour version for stamps, receipts and single-colour print
A six-colour palette with codes, so the greens stay the same greens
A rounded display face with a plain body face under it
A watermark rule for photographing the food

The identity

Everything below is read off the board above: the two lockups, the six colours with their codes, and the type pairing.

PrimaryThe mark on Cream

ReversedThe mark reversed on Deep Teal

Mustard Gold#F2A91C

Deep Teal#155263

Cayenne Orange#E8672C

Herb Green#8FB93E

Sky Mint#5FC1B6

Cream#FFFDF7

FredokaDisplay

Fresh ingredients. Bold flavors. Your bowl, your way.

Carries the headline and the short lines that have to land first.

KarlaBody

Everything read at length: detail, captions and the small print.

Set for the unglamorous copy a brand writes every week.

The sketch sheet

Concept sheets drawn as art direction for this page — they show how the mark and its placements were worked out, and are not scans of the original client drawings.

Concept sketch sheet: circular badge studies with ring lettering blocked in as solid shapes around construction circles, and salad-bowl icon variations inside — **Building the badge**A ring of lettering is a spacing problem before it is a drawing problem. These studies set the circle, the tick spacing and the bowl icon inside it, with the lettering blocked in as mass so the ring can be judged on its own.Concept visual

Putting it up

Process visuals — art direction by Dalc, not photographs of client production. A food badge lives on a board above a counter and on the lid of a bowl, so we art-directed it in both places to check it holds at those two very different sizes.

Concept visual: a large printed menu board being mounted above a food counter in a bright serving area — The menu boardConcept visual

Concept visual: round labels being applied to the lids of takeaway salad bowls on a stainless prep counter — Bowl labelsConcept visual

The identity in use

Mockups made by our own team to show the identity applied — these are images we produced, not photographs of installed signage or products.

Storefront signMockup

Takeaway bowl labelMockup

Tote bagMockup

Fresh ingredients. Bold flavors. Your bowl, your way.
Da Bomb Salad’s own line, set in the type specimen on the brand board

In conclusion

The badge ships in two versions with a six-colour palette behind it, which is what lets a small food business stay consistent across a sign, a sticker, a bowl lid and a social post without a designer on call for each one.

Because the palette carries its codes on the board, the greens on a printed menu and the greens on a screen are specified rather than guessed at — the difference between a brand and a set of files.

Lockups: 2 — primary and reversed
Palette: 6 colours, codes on the board
Type: Fredoka + Karla
Watermark: Rule supplied, shown on a food photo
Mockups: 3 shown on this page
Departments involved: Branding, Graphic design
Concept visuals: 3, made by Dalc for this case study