The challenge
Enzo serves Italian cooking with a steakhouse menu, in a small Georgia town rather than a big city. The brand had to feel properly Italian without looking like a red-checkered trattoria, and polished enough for a filet mignon and a bottle of Barolo without turning cold or formal. It also had to work at very different sizes, from a monogram stitched on a chef’s jacket to the paper lining a bread basket. The old website made things harder: its homepage opened on a large food photo with no clear message, and booking a table, finding the menu or planning an event all took more clicks than they should.
The approach
We built the identity around a single letter: an italic E inside a hand-drawn oval. It is simple enough to embroider, stamp or print as a repeating pattern, and it carries the brand on its own wherever the full name will not fit. The wordmark uses a condensed, slightly slanted ENZO, paired with the Denton serif for Italian headlines like “La tavola, il vino, la pasta” and ITC Avant Garde Gothic for menus and body copy. A deep signature red runs through everything, set against warm cream so the look stays rich rather than loud. The voice mixes Italian and English on purpose, with lines such as “Il gusto di vivere” and “Rooted in Italy, served with grace”, so the brand identity design speaks to local diners while keeping its Italian roots.
The outcome
The identity now runs across the whole guest experience: menu covers and inner pages, table tents, business cards, aprons and chef jackets, printed napkins and cutlery pouches, branded bread basket paper, social media layouts and campaign spreads. Whether a guest sees the monogram on a napkin or the red menu at the table, it reads as one restaurant with one point of view.
The restaurant website redesign follows the same system. The new homepage leads with “The modern Italian table” and two direct actions, order online and make a reservation. Catering splits into four clear options with their own photos, events show the date, time and a ticket button up front, and the Enzo Elite membership has its own place on the page. The footer brings opening hours, contact details and the newsletter signup into one section, and every page was designed mobile first, where most restaurant bookings start.
