Creating a Custom Catering Brand

In 2018 Indiana University Dining welcomed taking on a new partnership with Indiana Memorial Union Catering and contractor Sodexo to establish IU Catering. Through this transformation, IU Dining could offer more levels of options for serving students and visitors, which also meant that we needed to adapt our branding to reflect these offerings. Working with catering and retail directors, we identified the following categories for the teirs of selections that would be made available: Students, Everyday, Wedding, and Presidential.

Design Services

Concepts

Branding

Design

Illustration

Design Services

Tailored Designs for Every Occasion

Once the different categories were established, each of the options needed to be branded to indicate the varying degrees of formality for visual presentation and distinction. Starting with a fresh slate, there were many avenues to take with developing a style, and ultimately we saught to create something that would be simple, elegant, and timeless. Using custom illustrations and playing on different textures, the branding for IU Catering takes on a bespoke quality to emulate the options provided.

Explore the Brand

Software Tools

InDesign

Illustrator

Photoshop

Brand Identity Elements

Typography

Sticking to Indiana University’s brand guidelines, the IU Catering brand was developed with the Benton Sans typeface using the light font variation to give the brand a clean, modern impression. Listing out the different catering categories, uppercase is employed to emphasize the different options that can be selected from. Seen below is the type specimen for Benton Sans along with an example of how it is applied to the IU Catering brand.

Textures

The color palette for the brand is black and white, and it is for that reason that the textures play a unique role in creating the identity for IU Catering. Suppressing the color options, the intent was to communicate a sense of formality and elegance while also reflecting the level of service offered. Understanding this design choice, the custom textures infuse life into the brand identity by adding contrast and depth. These textures were then formatted into brush presets for Adobe Illustrator to apply as patterns for a variety of elements that comprise the full brand suite. Samples of the textures can be seen below.

Logos and Submarks

The primary goal with creating the new catering brand was that it needed to be adaptable to reflect the different tiers of established services. Designing a variety of logos and submarks, elements are incorporated to symbolize each of the different grouped offerings. Starting with the Student and Everyday categories, the aim was to be less formal by using items that are more commonplace or rustic. On the opposite side of the spectrum we had the Wedding and Presidential categories, which often meant black-tie events and required the brand to portray a heightened level of sophistication. Integrating and applying the textures that were created, Student and Everyday categories use a greater amount and variety of pattern and texture to be more expressive, while less is used for Wedding and Presidential for a more dramatic contrast. Fulfilling the original goal, the designs offer a way to distinguish the selections from one another, but maintain a consistency that establish a brand identity. Scroll down to see how elements are used and grouped together.