Bluzy's Roadside: Logo and Menu Design

There are a lot of pro's to being a freelancer, one of which is having the opportunity to work on a variety of projects. The downside is keeping quiet until the project is over...

So it gives me great pleasure to finally be able to share one of the amazing projects I spent months working on! I was contacted to come up with the identity for a new restaurant that just opened in Blaine, MN: Bluzy's Roadside.

The owner of Bluzy's owns several other restaurants, and wanted this one to be different. A pared down menu (only 26 items) that are all served in baskets on trays, like an old school diner.  The restaurant itself was going to be in a converted gas station, so he wanted to have a very rustic / retro feel to not only the interior, but to the logo and menu as well.

There were many rounds of revisions on the logo design (as I'm sure you can imagine.) We came up with 2 final versions - one of which is an homage to the 40ft sign outside on the road.

 

The menu was fun to design, and actually didn't take too long to come up with something he loved. The revisions that we needed really came from changing prices / names of the items, etc., not on the design itself. 

 

We also had the idea of including a pin-up character to be a kind of 'mascot' for Bluzy's. The character was never finished, but here are some of the sketches that I came up with for the idea. 

 

Now that the project is done and the restaurant is open, I got to enjoy the best part of my job; eating the food for the menu I designed! :D I had the Ahi tuna ceviche tacos, and Ryan had the tuna melt. Both were TO DIE FOR. (Drool!) Just thinking about it makes my mouth water for more. 

I'll leave you with more photos of Bluzy's. If you ever find yourself in Blaine, I highly recommend you make your way over - you wont be disappointed! 

Process photos

I wanted to share with you a bit of my current process for recent work. This piece is entitled "Radiance" and will be in the show on Friday. Stop by the show to see more!

First I start with simple thumbnail sketches to get an idea of composition, then move onto larger sketches to get more clarity. Once I have the main figure the way I like it, I trace it with basic tracing paper.





Then I flip the drawn side down onto my piece of wood, and lightly re-trace. This is a simple way of "printing" my drawing onto the wood. I've found that it's difficult to erase on wood, so that is why I use this method.

Then I begin to paint. And in this case, it takes a while because of all of those lovely different colored dots.








Once everything is painted, I then go back in again with my pencil and darken up the line drawing. Presto! The piece is finished.





copyright Karen O'Bryan, 2011