Branding for a Spanish restaurant. The concept was 0km cuisine — the hyperlocal philosophy of only using ingredients caught or grown within the restaurant's own radius. Pulled the wrong way, it falls into the usual organic-restaurant pool. Beige tones, handwritten script, leaf illustrations. Getting out of that pool was rule one.

I went the opposite direction. Not the softness of organic, but the solidity of the street. The air of a neighborhood bar, the wear of a market, the rough type of a 1970s Spanish restaurant sign. I wanted honest to land as a rough word, not a soft one.

The wordmark OKM SPAIN® is a heavy condensed sans with a slightly bled-print texture — finished like something stamped on. The ® is small but solid; it carries the tone of a place that's been planted in the neighborhood.

The tagline: "ZERO DISTANCE. ZERO COMPROMISE. MAXIMUM CHARACTER." The 0km concept compressed into three words. The supporting line "Olive oil from nearby groves. Seafood landed at dawn. Vegetables harvested within sight." is built to read through the senses. The piece I pushed hardest on was the hand-drawn illustration — a chef holding a beer in front of a grill, deliberately scrappy in a doodle style. Its job is to lay a layer of human warmth and humor over the polished gravity of the wordmark. Without it, the brand becomes just another minimal restaurant.

Applications: painted wall signage, window posters, menu boards, paper-bag stacks, t-shirts, business cards, envelopes. My favorite is the painted wall — white paint over red brick, black wordmark on top. Not a digital mockup ending in itself, but a frame that builds the air of an actual neighborhood spot.