Chris Businsky

The Arcos re-design was one of my favorite projects to direct and design. The owners are some of the nicest most creative people I’ve ever met, and helping them bring that out through the look and feel of their branding and collateral was very rewarding for me. The owner really wanted to push the Authentic feel that the restaurant portrays. The logo was built in Adobe Illustrator and I pulled elements from the Mexican flag as well as colors from the branding to tie it all together. I also added a weathered look to take a little of the edge off the mark, making it less perfect looking.

The restaurant is what made this special. The owner is an incredibly creative person and he designed, remodeled and built every piece within the restaurant from the custom bar, tables, chairs and patio to the swirl design on the ceiling. After my initial meeting and a lot of guacamole, I had the idea to base the entire rebrand off of that ceiling treatment. At first glance you would think it was made of tin, but Nico the owner created every swirl of the 1,000 square foot ceiling with his own fingers. The attention to detail and symmetry was incredible and I knew all that personality had to show through in his website, menus, and print collateral. Bringing small, personal elements of the client into a design is really what I think differentiates good design from exceptional design and makes them unique to the client. Laid out in Adobe inDesign, bringing in elements from Illustrator and Photoshop.

The website was another part of the integrated campaign for Arcos. The design I created for the print menus drove the direction of all the branded collateral including the swirls I created in Adobe Illustrator. I brought them into the background design her to help tie everything together and continue the experience on the website. I developed the design using the WordPress content management system so they could continue to update content themselves which saved money for the small business.

This was a brochure for the catering portion of their business. We were fortunate to have a fantastic photographer and she helped me capture some great product shots as well as some shots of the building I could also incorporate into the design such as the brick wall and the wall of crosses that I incorporated into the background of all the menus and collateral. I utilized the vibrant colors in the images to brand the packages. The font choices work in perfect harmony with the Arcos branding to make one cohesive package. I also felt it was important to really make the owner a prominent part of the design since he really makes you feel at home in the restaurant and gives the viewer someone to identify with.

This flyer was used to promote a special event at the restaurant and was part of an integrated campaign that utilized Print, Email and a landing page to capture the traffic from the email. I really love how the image used helps interacts with the logo, making it more playful and adding a little bit of dimension to it.

This was the HTML email design for the campaign which plays off the print version. I’m grateful for them to be a part of making Arcos such as special place.