Restaurant Project: Happy Plate

Happy Plate is a fun and energetic restaurant that has been designed by a host of experts to help encourage positive mental health through eating. At Happy Plate, wellness is a main focus for us. We believe that being healthy doesn’t just mean going to the gym religiously but caring for your body and mind by eating a nourishing and balanced diet.

As part of our drive to promote wellness, we’ve decided to open a restaurant with a unique twist. At Happy Plate we make dishes that aid in your mental health, but here’s the twist. What makes us different from other restaurants is that if you like the dish you ordered, you can ask your waiter or waitress for the recipe. You will then get the ingredients to make that dish delivered to your home so you can make it again! Happy Plate combines eating at a restaurant and a meal delivery kit together with the perk of boosting your mood.

When I first started brainstorming for this project, I had a lot of ideas flowing. The two concepts that I narrowed down to were problem and experience. The problem one aided in mental health and the experience one let you ask for the recipe and get the ingredients delivered to you. I then decided to combine the two ideas into one. I knew I wanted the restaurant to be fun and playful so I came up with two different names and played around with logos for them. The two were Serotonin to Go or Mind fuel. With the help of my classmates I went a different route and came up with Happy Plate and the slogan as “food for your mood.” I spent hours scrolling looking for design ideas to bring my restaurant to life

Once I came up with the name Happy Plate it was easy for me to generate ideas. I wanted to play around with the Serotonin molecule because Serotonin is a naturally occurring monoamine neurotransmitter that carries signals between nerve cells throughout your body. It plays an important role in various brain and body functions, including mood stabilization, cognition, learning, memory, and sleep. I played around with the hexagon and pentagon shape. I wanted the logo to reflect the name so the obvious way to go was combining a plate with a smiley face

The design I decided to go with was the second one at the top because I liked that it still had the eating aspect in it with the utensils making the hexagon and the smiley face in the middle. I tweaked it a little to make it more playful and used a subtle yellow instead of a bright yellow that you would typically see on a smiley face. For the mouth I decided to use an arrow to indicate my concept of delivery. I felt that this design reflected my restaurant well and stuck with it.

Design Process

Name: This restaurant came from two different concepts, problem and experience. When I combined the two together I came up with the idea of making dishes that had certain ingredients that would benefit your body and mind. I wanted to find a way to blend mood and eating together. Since all of the dishes help boost your mood and you eat food on a plate, I chose Happy Plate as the name. With the word “happy” in the name, hopefully customers want to come in and eat at the restaurant because who doesn’t want to have an enjoyable experience when dining out.

Colors: To represent Happy Plate I used my aesthetics of fun and energetic, but still kept a technical side because it had to do with health. My restaurant is also meant to be informative. To find a happy medium between fun and technical, I chose colors to reflect the playfulness of the restaurant, but made them more subtle to reflect the technical part of my restaurant.

Typefaces: When finally choosing my logo it came down to the font I wanted to use and the placement of it. I chose a serif font and settled on Volkorn because it was big and bold and conveyed the technical aspect of the restaurant. I used this font for the name of my restaurant in the logo. I then wanted to find a san serif font that would work well with the serif font to make it less serious and more playful. I chose Muli because it was simple which was perfect for the slogan and my menu.

Patterns: I was drawn to the shape of my logo and decided to take out the smiley face because I felt that it would be too busy. I made several patterns with that shape using my color palette with different values to make it more subtle. I then did the same with another pattern I made. Still sticking with the hexagon shape I made the serotonin molecule and made a pattern out of that. I still used the same color palette I used with the other pattern. I felt that if I used black it would be too bold and heavy which is not what I thought reflected my restaurant.

Environmental

For my environment I wanted to really reflect my adjectives I chose; energized, happy, empowered. I chose to use my yellow hexagon pattern for the wallpaper. I found a mockup that had good lighting to brighten up the restaurant and make the atmosphere feel energized. I colored the shades of the lamps blue because I wanted to bring another color from my color palette into the environment. The blue helps bring that playfulness into atmosphere.

Menu

I experimented with having a traditional menu and having it be somewhat playful but keeping it simple. I then came up with a cool concept and decided to show it to my class just to see if people would like it. My idea was to create a menu that played off of the scientific aspect of my restaurant so I made a periodic table. My peers liked the idea so I moved forward with it. This is where my color palette formed. Combining the multiple colors with the periodic table makes the menu playful but easy to read. There’s plenty of evidence linking food with mental wellbeing — showing how certain foods have the power to impact mood and general wellbeing. This helps to prevent, plus manage, mental health problems. With this in mind, we have created a menu for Happy Plate packed with seasonal, mood-boosting foods and ingredients that are known to complement positive mental health.

Alongside the dishes and their descriptions I wanted to put their benefits. I felt that it would be too crowded to do on the front with the rest so I put the benefits on the back. To easily organize the benefits I wanted to stick with the technical side and created a color key as a circle to imitate a plate. I color coded all the benefits and put each color as a hexagon next to each food that had that benefit. I added in utensils next to the key to play off the plate.

Mockup Recipe

Packaging

Website

For my website I wanted to create an easy, simple accessible website. For the header I decided to just put menu, benefits, and recipe so it was easy to navigate. I felt that those were the most important things that needed separate pages. For the home page I made it a scrolling page to show images and give information about my restaurant. On the landing page you see an image of the interior of the restaurant and my slogan. As you keep scrolling you get to learn about my restaurant and the reasoning behind my menu and benefits. I decided to put an example recipe as well if people were curious or wanted to know more. At the bottom I allowed for customers to make a reservation and contact information.

Collateral 

For collateral I came up with stuff that is related to my concept. Since you can ask for the recipe and get food delivered to your home, I figured things like cookware would be perfect. I did things like pots and pans, cutting board, wooden spoons and spatulas, table and teaspoons and bowls and plates. I used the hexagon pattern in the pots, pans, bowls, and plates because I figured people would actually want to get them instead of the science, molecule pattern. I used the molecule pattern in other objects like the table and teaspoons, the oven mitt, and the water bottles. I also decided to make food containers aside from the packaging so people could store their leftovers. I kept those simple and just used the basic colors in my color palette.

Advertising

I created fun graphics and sayings to get the customers attention while still sticking with a playful and colorful theme.

Conclusion 

While working on this project I found that I learned a lot of new things, but was also able to practice some of my skills. I had a lot of fun with this project and because it allowed me to use my critical thinking skills and improve each week. I enjoyed getting into a branding and I believe that this project will definitely help in the future for this field.