El Harissa is a family-owned restaurant, deli, market, and catering service based in Ann Arbor, MI that specializes in healthy and delicious food inspired by the flavors of North Africa and the greater Mediterranean region. Their recipes and techniques are influenced by the cuisine of Tunisia, Morocco, Italy, Greece, the Levant, and beyond.

The following project is a rebranding proposal for the business that conceptualizes their core values and the warmth that they bring to the local an arbor community. This new identity design project captures the colorful, youthful, joyous nature of North Africa and beyond.

This new identity design project will capture the colorful, youthful, joyous nature of North Africa and beyond. It will take note of the cultural influences and symbols that El Harissa has been inspired by while also arranging these qualities into eye catching designs that engage with the community and draw attention to the restaurant.

New Identity Plan

Design explorations

Initial Logomark Sketches

For the logomark I wanted to place emphasis on the family-grown story through utilizing rough brushes and playing around with hand-drawn writing.
Type Explorations

For type I focussed on rough typefaces and became fond of the distressed detail of the Amerio Rough font and the underlined structure of Handler Rough.
Combination Mark Explorations

I began to explore ways I could combine my type explorations with culturally symbolic motifs such as tiles, the Fennec Fox, and the traditional pomegranate.
Combination Mark Development

First Version: includes solid shapes and circular seeds.
Second Version: shaped seeds with tapered ends to better resemble pomegranate seeds.
Final Version: incorporates a rough
and distressed texture into the layout.
Logo Variations

The pomegranate is a symbol of the North African and Mediterranean culture. Its vibrant color and flavor brings life to the Tunisian world. It offers a great representation of the unity and community that is found within El Harissa.

Item 1 of 5

Color palette

The color palette stays true to the symbolic colors of Tunisia. The secondary colors are additional colors which are muted and are represenative of the colors within tunisian cusine.

Style guide

Master Logo

The master logo is a representation of the handmade and personal, tunisian style, family grown restaurant ‘El Harissa.’ The stacking style represents the tunisian styles homes and their communal layering, while the pomegranate represents unity and community, The bright colors offer a sense of the inviting warmth that the restaurant evokes. Lastly, the rough texture and style creates a humanistic feel and conveys sense of the relationship between the restaurant and the natural world.

Exterior Signage

For El Harissa’s exterior signage I wanted to also experiment with the idea of adding the traditional pomegranate as a way to fill up the triangular space.

4’ x 10’

Business Cards

Menu Design

Dessert Menu

4” x 11”

Main Menu

8” x 11”

Webpage and Tech

Laptop and computer website front page

Iphone mobile website

Food Labels

For the food labels i created specialty labels for both the deli items, which are in blue, and the gelateria items which are in red

Food Packaging

The following labels can be either applied as stickers to the items or can be pre-ordered with these designs. They utilize both a circular label and a rectangular label.

Blue Deli Labels

red gelateria labels