Restaurant brand design built for the island.
Rocco's Sandwich Shop (opening late 2026) came to us with a name, a French Bulldog, and a dream location: Bald Head Island, NC — a car-free, golf-cart community accessible only by ferry, with its own lighthouse, alligators, egrets, and a pace of life that the rest of the world has mostly forgotten. The challenge was to build a brand identity that could honor the mascot, capture the irreplaceable character of that place, and position Rocco's as the real deal in a world of generic sandwich chains.
CLIENT
YEAR
2026
SERVICES
logo design, brand style guide, illustration, creative direction, typography
OUR APPROACH:
We centered the restaurant brand design identity around one core idea: Authenticity of Food & People. From there, we asked what the most natural way was to put Rocco the French Bulldog into the world of Bald Head Island... and the answer was a surfboard. That single visual bridged the mascot's personality and the coastal setting in a way that's charming, unexpected, and immediately ownable and recognizable.
We built the full brand identity system: logo family, color palette drawn from the island's own landscape, vintage type pairing, and a hand-drawn icon library featuring BHI-specific details like the Old Baldy lighthouse and the island ferry, around four design principles: Fresh, Fun/Playful, Coastal, and Proudly True.
THE RESULT:
The end result is a restaurant brand design that feels like it's always lived on Bald Head Island. Rocco's has the visual personality to stand apart from every chain and tourist-trap competitor, while staying warm and approachable enough to welcome anyone who steps off the ferry. The whole system, from the surfboard bulldog to the ferry boat icon to the sandy white palette, adds up to something genuinely ownable, built for future business success, and genuinely delicious.
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