IMAGE (left): بشبشا is v.1 of hand type digitized

بشبشا Restaurant

project: rebrand restaurant, create digital assets, and make entirely new menus.

What started as me assisting with creating a workable digital file for the owner to edit and maintain independently, slowly grew to address menu hierarchy and the general readability to conceptualizing a logo rebrand.

original materials provided by client

Photo of current printed copy of menu

Abandoned project of rebranding to establish digital presence

name explained

اشا (basha) : Turkish (paşa) honorific for someone of high status

بشبشا (bashbasha) : Egyptian slang used similarly to combination of “hey dude!” “what’s up!” “yerr!” in NYC

Interviewing the client and my own research inspired a new, yet familiar direction for the design reset. Client is upstart street vendor in Alexandria, the Egyptian birthplace and center for graffiti arts.

Initial Idea: Old, battered and textured street sign, including additional, newer graffiti elements like stickers combined with clean, modern text and formatting.

introducing the new brand concept

elevated – graffiti – lively – textured

explore visual elements & inspiration below

initial logo sketches

01 : practicing strokes

With limited experience with Arabic script, I spent time practicing writing right-to-left. As this improved, I began using different utensil thicknesses to study stroke and holding these differently, as seen above with a green marker.
02 : applying styling

As I grew better command of writing in Arabic (a close eye of these sketch notebooks included will illuminate elementary mistakes), I expanded visually to understand early boundaries of style and legibility.
03 : experimenting with strokes in styling

Now begins the fun. I begin adding more visual elements (see: above) and other inspirations to push myself to uncover different interactions within writing Arabic in this context.
04 : expanding styles and concepts

Previous iterations in experimentations give way to honing in on styling. Here a proliferation of different styles emerge as a result.
05 : stroke mastery allowing deconstruction for more graffiti styling

And finally, with practice and deeper understanding, I narrow in once more to ideate styling to fit the outlined brand.