In 2020, I was approached by Megan Gill of Overtime Family Restaurant & Sports Lounge and Shaunavon Liquor to redesign for Overtime. I was, and still am, quite thrilled about this opportunity. Overtime is essentially the Boston Pizza/Original Joe's of Shaunavon, Saskatchewan. Their food is delicious, and their atmosphere is great. I highly recommend their Buffalo Chicken Sandwich (it might have a different name), and their wings look great too, although I haven't had them yet.
Anyway! I guess this is my portfolio website, so I should say something about the logo (but seriously, go eat there).
Logo design is a peculiar space within creativity. Your business's logo design needs to fall within the constraints of looking like it obviously belongs to a specific type of business (in this case, a restaurant), while still trying to look original. There's a restaurant in Saskatoon that I can't recall the name of, but I was positive it was a print shop for quite sometime...until I read the words in their logo and signage. Apparently it's a restaurant. If you just assume a place is a copy shop, you're probably not going there for food.
The font in the wordmark was the first place I wanted to address this. Let's find a font that tells the viewer what kind of food they are going to order, and roughly what it's going to cost/it's quality, without having to say any of that. There was also the added danger of choosing a font that made 'Overtime' look like a sporting goods store, given the name. I believe we completely hit the jackpot with the end result. To me, this screams 'Boston Pizza/Original Joe's equivalent in quality, price, and type of food'.
For restaurants, colours are also especially constraining. If the logo was red, white, and green, you would automatically assume it's an Italian restaurant. Just red and white with a prevalent circle? Well that might be Japanese if I don't see a maple leaf on it. Restaurants that serve their home countries meals very commonly borrow their colours from their national flags. So that throws a whole host of options out the window.
Beyond that, colours have quite deep meaning. If I told you that red was a calming colour, and blue provokes lust and stress...you'd probably reread the sentence, right? You know that blue is calming deep down, and that red is attention grabbing, sometimes lustful and stressful. You may have no idea why this is...and there are books about that I won't take the time to retype. I think a lot of it comes down to human's essential needs. Blue reminds us of water, which we need to survive, and a clear sky. If we are near water, it's easy to be at peace because, well, we have water so we're not going to die of dehydration. Green is similar. Seeing green reminds us of healthy plants, if we have those, we probably have food. What is red in nature? Not as common. Maybe you'd think of bright red as being a warning of an animal being venomous. Attention grabbing and stress inducing.
Anyway, some colours are conducive to restaurants, and others are not. Red is, actually. Especially in fast food. Thinks McDonald's, Wendy's, Edo. Red shouts 'hey, pay attention to me and make a quick decision'. Ideal for fast food.
Black is affiliated with several things, but a few of those things are class, expense, quality. Using black in Overtime helps convey the quality of the restaurant and it's food. Yellow is an energetic colour. It grabs attention like red, but not with as much force and it leaves out the stress. It's creative, and hey, some food is yellow. (Is it just me, or when you see the purple and orange Harvey's hamburger logo, do you also loose your appetite?)
For the icon, we wanted something that conveyed this quality still, and it needs to look like a restaurant. Take a good look at the Boston Pizza logo sometime. It's a unique BP with some filagree (ornamental design elements). Overtime often gets abbreviated to OT in sports, so it made a ton of sense to use the letters. We then made them unique, and gave the icon a sort of a stained-glass style.
When your restaurant has an amazing name like Overtime to work with, good branding and advertising can cause locals to be reminded of the restaurant when they hear the term 'overtime' when not in the restaurant context. I wanted to try and make this happen. The tagline 'We're going to Overtime!' is straight from sports commentators. What do they say when there are 2 seconds left on the clock and there is a tie? Perhaps they'll inadvertently remind you of the restaurant down the street once you've seen it under the logo a few times. And having the icon be an 'OT' may cause some folks to call Overtime OT, and sometimes associate the sports phrase with the restaurant.
I can't believe you read this whole thing. There were some nuggets in here though! All in all, I think it's a solid brand, a solid logo, and ...have you tried that Buffalo Chicken Sandwich yet? Oh man my mouth is watering just typing it.
We're going to Overtime!
@OvertimeRestaurantAndSportsLounge
910 3 Ave W, Shaunavon, SK - just off the highway!
