Case study: parson’s bar and grill

Inspirations

When I saw that we were able to pick a scientist, I knew exactly who I wanted for a hip, upscale restaurant: Jack Parsons.

The mad scientist in his backstory really appealed to me and I knew I could do some really great designs using the classic rocketry images. I gathered some of the iconic images of Jack Parsons and his team, as well as the projects he worked on to try to get a good sense of the man, and chose to source greyscales from the bottom image of Parson’s Crater, on the moon.

I also dove into images of classic rocketry and 50’s designs, from Googie architecture to hood ornaments.

logo design

I did a series of exploratory sketches from the images above, as well as the JPL sign, rocket engines, and other bits and bobs.

I was struck by the different designs on the original JPL sign and knew I wanted to use those in the logo, and so the arrow-shaped logo shape was my first favorite. I also wanted to call it Parson’s Rocket-Fire Grill because I enjoyed how clever it seemed to me, but the more I worked on it the clunkier it felt. Clever is fine and dandy, but I wanted a name that made the menu clear from the word go.

So, Rocket-fire was out, Parson’s Bar & Grill was in. Shortly after that, I ditched the “wedge” design, it just wasn’t feeling right. Instead, I took the swept wedge, attached it to a fork, and made myself a rocket.

I chose the final design because it had a clear fork in the design, the long trailing wingtips gave it that sense of sweeping motion that the 40’s and 50’s had in their designs and art, and then tilted it up to make the whole thing look like it was lifting off.

I knew I had a design that was modern but had classic design inspirations that suited my style. I knew I could work with this.

 Elements

The “elements” of the designs are my choices of colors and fonts.

I’ve been using the NASA branding guide for my senior show, and since rockets are NASA’s business I decided to use their colors for my main eyecatching colors. NASA Red and NASA Blue are bright but not quite primary blue or red, and I’ve found that they layer very well over other textures using Multiply. Rather than use straight black, I used the darkest image sourced from the photo of Parson’s Crater above, nicknaming it Parson’s Black. Then I created a midtone with the same image, Parson’s Grey. For my lightest color? NASA Silver, out of the branding guide. Since I had early on decided to use metal textures as a base, like a rocket’s body, I attempted to keep all of the metal values the same as these three greys, with color used to accent, highlight, and lead the eye.

For fonts, I first chose Proxima Nova. It’s a good san serif font with solid readability, but more character than Myriad or Arial, and not as commonplace as Helvetica. It’s something I used in a project for class, and it’s grown on me since. It’s sort of a workhorse in my designs.

When I was considering my headline font I went back and forth over different fonts that were all… “fancy”, but none of them felt right. Since I was using JPL’s sign as my inspiration and guide I started looking at signage from that era, and Highway Gothic dropped out of the sky into my lap during one of my font searches. It’s got that government sign look, the slanted lines on some of the ascenders gave it a fun look, and it was clear and easy to read.

Menu

The menu was the main piece to inform the rest of my branding, and it was the most fun piece.

You can see where there’s no blacks, but instead those shades of grey mentioned above, and the wedge design shows up both as a decorative piece and as a “tag” under the text.
I also added the metal pinstripes even if those aren’t something a rocket had, because the space felt empty and it added to the ‘57 Chevy look.

Highway Gothic served as the title font, with a slight outline in a contrasting color to help readability. Without, it lost a little bit of legibility. I also reused the pinstripes to frame things and create a connection to the front piece.

The parts I consider the best, and that I enjoyed the most, are the interior illustrations. I used the pictures above, found some good tex-mex food images, combined them, and created the sort of fun but useful images that fit an upper-scale but still family friendly restaurant. Since the location was Los Almos, the red white and blue also tied in well with a city built on the US Government lab nearby.