Intro / The brief

Clutch is a restaurant and cocktail bar in East London, known for its refine take on fried chicken and state of the art cocktails. The objective was to bring consistency and structure to its printed materials — refining typography, enhancing legibility, and introducing visual cohesion across menus, business cards, and promotional items, all while preserving the characteristics of the original brand.

The objective was to evolve the brand’s materials — enhancing clarity and structure without diluting its identity.

My Role

Collaborating with Clutch’s owner for the refinement of the restaurant and bar’s assets — developing a cohesive design system and introducing new illustrated material for events and promotions.

Working closely with the in-house team, my tasks included redesigning collaterals, menus and special hosted events cards — ensuring alignment with existing identity while improving clarity and usability. The project also included the development of original illustrations for events and social media materials, bringing an added layer of creative expression to Clutch’s hosted events, promotions with other stores, and collaborations with musicians and artists for their music nights or entertainment events.

Concept / Strategy

Reinforcing Clutch’s identity by establishing typographic clarity and visual hierarchy across printed materials, while and adding an illustrative nature to the promotional materials.

Building consistency across the brand’s assets without losing their established identity.

Approach

• Typographic Consistency: Developing a structured typographic system to refine layouts, improve legibility, and preserve the brand’s visual language.

• Reusable Templates: Creating adaptable layouts for menus, business cards, and event collateral — making it simple to update content while maintaining design integrity.

• Illustrative Expression: Introducing custom illustrations to enhance the tone of seasonal campaigns and special events — adding personality and/or humour to engage Clutch’s diverse clientele.

The updated assets carried Clutch’s through its printed and digital presence — supporting everyday operations, seasonal events, and collaborative functions.

The new materials carried the Clutch spirit with renewed clarity, balancing playful bold patterning with typographic clarity, and promotional material took a more expressive turn, featuring bespoke illustrations that reflected the theme of each event — from the hand‑drawn microphone for a spoken‑word event, a lions for a Reggae night, to spooky chickens for Halloween, and chicken mascots for festive seasons.