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 restaurant branding package deliverables - from the surfboard bulldog to the ferry boat icon to the sandy white palette - add up to something genuinely ownable, built for future business success, and genuinely delicious.
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