In a charming neighborhood near the heart of Bruges, a few streets away from the main tourist activity, there’s Onslow.

Onslow is a restaurant by renowned chef Lieven Vynck – who used to run restaurant ‘Lieven’. Lieven was a more traditional restaurant, more up-scale and high end as to say.

With Onslow, they wanted to go in another direction, no fancy dinners and no wearing your best shirt to go out for food. A casual, fun experience with good food as it’s main idea. No concept, you can share all you want, or eat it all by yourself. Do whatever you want, just eat good food.

Food with drinks, drinks with food is Onslow’s baseline, and it says it all. Named after the laidback ‘Keeping Up Appearances’ character, Onslow has instantly become Bruges’ go to for great food in a great setting. With no barriers, and open to everyone.

I worked on all things visual for Onslow. The visual identity and creative direction is a subtle play on classic restaurant branding elements, using classic fonts in a slightly tweaked way. Times New Roman and Helvetica are squashed together and used throughout the same sentences. I thought it’d be funny to use such traditional and classic typefaces for a restaurant that wanted to be anything but that. But in the way we used it, it changes the look and feel completely and feels equally refreshing and new as nostalgic. The venue for Onslow used to be an old traditional Belgian pub, and it was important for all parties involved to keep some of that feel. The warmth those places have, and the noisy environment with lots of cheerful people is something Onslow still has, even while having a different purpose.

Mixing typography and having a bold, organic logo with an instantly recognizable color palette. The aim was to create a visual language that can be interpreted to any format, and used and reinterpreted for many years to come all while being instantly recognizable as Onslow.

Main goal was to create something lighthearted, no nonsense and distinct to Onslow.