B’04Restaurant & smoothie bar

Island Fish Head

A Jamaican restaurant and smoothie bar under one roof — two offers, one mark, and a mascot doing the talking.

Client: Island Fish Head · Jay’s Smoothie Bar
Sector: Restaurant & smoothie 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 carries the brand’s line as it is set in the specimen: “Good food. Fresh smoothies. Island vibes.” Three things at once, which is the actual design problem here — a restaurant and a smoothie bar sharing a single sign.

A mascot badge solves it. A character carries warmth and personality that a wordmark cannot, and a roundel holds both halves of the business without ranking one above the other.

The board delivers the full-colour mascot badge alongside a one-colour roundel, because a six-colour character is not going to survive a stamped bag, an embroidered cap or a vinyl cut. Both versions are specified, so the simplification is a decision rather than an accident.

What it had to do

One mark for two offers: a full-colour mascot badge, a one-colour roundel for single-colour production, a six-colour palette with its codes, a rounded type pairing, and a watermark rule for food photography.

A mascot badge that holds a restaurant and a smoothie bar together
A one-colour roundel for stamps, vinyl and embroidery
A six-colour palette with codes, warm end and fruit end
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 Sand Cream

ReversedThe mark reversed on Charcoal Ink

Sun Gold#F4B400

Mango Orange#F2811D

Palm Green#2E9E4F

Smoothie Pink#E23573

Charcoal Ink#241A10

Sand Cream#FBF2DE

Baloo 2Display

Good food. Fresh smoothies. Island vibes.

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

NunitoBody

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 mascot badge studies with a cartoon fish-head character inside construction circles, ring lettering blocked in as solid shapes, and a one-colour silhouette study — **Drawing the mascot**The character gets drawn three times at the size it will actually be used, then flattened to a single-colour silhouette on the same sheet — that reduction is where most mascots fall apart, so it is tested early rather than discovered later.Concept visual

Out front

Process visuals — art direction by Dalc, not photographs of client production. A roadside food brand is judged on its sign and its counter, so we art-directed both — neither image is a photograph of this client's premises.

Concept visual: a large wooden sign board being hand-painted in bright colours outside a small roadside food shack — The signConcept visual

Concept visual: smoothie cups, lids and kraft takeaway bags being stacked and stamped at a service counter — At the counterConcept 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.

Restaurant signMockup

Smoothie cupMockup

Takeaway bagMockup

Good food. Fresh smoothies. Island vibes.
Island Fish Head’s own line, set in the type specimen on the brand board

In conclusion

A mascot is the most expensive kind of mark to get wrong and the most valuable to get right: it gives a small food business a personality that a typeface cannot, and it is the thing customers actually remember.

Delivered with its one-colour reduction and a palette with codes, it can go on a hand-painted sign, a stamped bag and a smoothie cup and still be the same brand in each place.

Lockups: 2 — primary and reversed
Palette: 6 colours, codes on the board
Type: Baloo 2 + Nunito
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