Mexout is a fresh-mex eatery in Singapore. We imagine Mexout to be a young eccentric Mexican food expert, or “Mex’pert” as we coined, who is living in his parents’ basement. The shop’s interior is therefore styled as such.
As with most eccentric experts, he keeps a wall-of-clues with a Mexican map and pins of locations to track down the freshest ingredients and their suppliers.
Being anti-establishment, Mexout doesn’t adopt the proper brand logo. Every time you see the name it appears differently. We came up with about 20 hand-drawn logos for the restaurant to use in rotation.
For the rest of their collateral, everything is handwritten or hand-drawn. No computer was used for the creation of the graphics.
The process for Mexout was an interesting one for us. It was something relatively different from the other projects we’ve worked on.
We started of with the naming process, proposing 8-10 names, each with their own concept and possible art direction. From names such as Mexology (playing on their store concept of a DIY mex burrito/taco bar) and Just Juan or Yepa Yepa (more silly but fun/catchy names) we settled on Mex Out (a twist on the phrase to max out / to go out for mex food).
From there, we developed three visual directions that could go with the name. However, both us and the client couldn’t settle on any of the three with certainty so we went back to brainstorm a more wholesome concept.
All visuals were hand drawn in-house, from the logos and menu text to the graphics in the shop (which we painted ourselves).
The design project took about three months to complete, from conceptualisation to launch.
The Mexout website.
View more identity work on the Bravo Company website. Follow Bravo on Twitter.
Comments
This is amazing branding! Excellent job. I’m also impressed that someone is bringing Mexican food to Asia. I hope they do well!
I like this, full of personality, fun and crafted by hand. Looks like the designers had a really good time doing this. Which is exactly as it should be.
Definitely, Lee. If there’s no fun in your job it’s time for change.
Thanks for dropping in, Brooke.
I just love this project cause I’m a fan of handmade. Well done!
Lovely. I only wish the taco cannon on the website was an actual game, I’d be stuck there for hours shooting tacos.
This definitely steps outside the “comfort zone” of the one-and-done logo I’m used to. But it works very well here! The fact that everything’s hand-drawn really makes the variations click (reminds me of my school notebook sketches); and being able to cycle through them is brilliant. I agree with Lee, this project looks like a lot of fun.
Wonderfully crafted work, a fine example of handmade design. 5 stars.
This is wonderful – it will definitely challenge how I approach branding projects in the future. I’m impressed at how the visual language is strong enough to allow so many variations of the logo. Very clever.
Love this project through and through. I covered it a bit ago at http://www.gritsandgrids.com/2013/08/mexout-classy-diy/
Very good understanding of traditional Mexican iconography.
The only thing missing for me as Mexican is the use of color.
No color no Mexico!
Love the mono hand drawn creative. My only gripe is the use of 20 different identities. Surely this dilutes the brand and confuses customers? Also I tend to agree the comment above from David re: no use of color – maybe and injection of bright, traditional colors would have given the brand even more life? It still works in mono though…
Love the hand drawn styles but really don’t like the varying logos. Using the same logo but with varying colour may have been better. But overall it’s very nice.
I’m with Mark, this project exudes fun, but (with the exception of the pattern created from combining the logo variants for the paper wrap) I can’t help but think the lack of one set logo will slow people’s recognition of the brand.
Hi! I’m from Mexico and I think this is missing a lot of color, texture, and life. This makes Mexico seem to be a boring place. Very much European design.
The eagle symbol looks very similar to the restaurant Hecho En Dumbo:
http://www.hechoendumbo.com
Amazing Branding! Simple but uniquely designed brand identity. Thanks for sharing.