LA TÊTE DE MOTO
2025
La Tête de Moto is a full branding and art direction project for a speculative restaurant, drawing from a childhood memory. Whenever my family and I cooked dinner together, we would pretend to be in our own restaurant, called La Tête de Moto. No one in my family remembers where the name originated, but its direct translation from French, “The Motorcycle Head,” is strange, playful, and highly visual. It was a great jumping-off point for the identity.The project is not only inspired by the cozy, candlelit nights that formed the basis of La Tête de Moto when I was a child. I wanted the identity to balance the intimacy of cooking with family, with feel of a fine-dining, fully realized establishment. The visual language takes that warmth and nostalgia with a slightly offbeat character, allowing the identity to feel personal without becoming overly sentimental. The unusual name became an opportunity to embrace humor and eccentricity throughout the branding, creating a restaurant that feels both inviting and distinctly its own.
Rather than treating the childhood memory literally, I used it as a foundation for building a broader visual world around the restaurant. Typography, imagery, and graphic details work together to evoke the feeling of a place that has existed for years. This is somewhere warm, dimly lit, and a little peculiar. The result is an identity rooted in memory but reinterpreted through a contemporary lens.
The project encompasses logo design, typography and type treatments, and a complete visual identity, extending into physical ephemera including business cards, menus, and other restaurant collateral. Each application is designed as part of the same visual world, translating the character of La Tête de Moto from the identity itself into the objects and details that shape the experience of the restaurant.