The brief for my major practical project was to design and brand a contemporary canteen's graphic identity (inspired by London's Transport's history and design heritage) that promotes the canteen to Londoners and tourists. Then to create a campaign to launch the canteen to the intended audience.

 

The visual identity consisted of a logo, stationery suite (letterhead, business card, compliment slip and others) signage, placemat, cutlery sleeve, menu and staff uniform.

 

Upon visiting the London Transport Museum I had a large number of approaches to take that would inspire the logo but in the end I settled on steam locomotives.

 

The idea for the logo came from steam locomotives that were on the Metropolitan Railway and the Metropolitan District Railway they were essentially the first underground railways ever in London. The world’s first underground railway opened in January 1863 between destinations Paddington (Bishop’s Road and Farringdon street (now part of the circle line). The underground railway used specially built steam locomotives to haul their trains through shallow tunnels which had many ventilation openings to allow steam and smoke to clear from the tunnels.

The branding guidelines for using Central Diner can be found via the link:

After I had designed the visual identity and the visual formats that the brand will lend itself to, I moved on to the campaign. The idea I had for the first poster campaign was to change the stop 'Covent Garden' on the Piccadilly line to the name of the canteen (Central Diner). As that is the underground stop you get off at to get to the London Transport Museum (where the canteen will be), this will only be a temporary change as it is for promotional purposes only so the duration of the change would only be for a month.

 

Similar to the inspiration I had taken for my logo, I thought it would be a good idea to communicate the year of the opening of world’s first underground railway where the steam locomotives travelled through. So the second poster would just have the date 1863 with the tagline (Transport Your Taste Buds) I wanted it all to link on a practical level.

 

Travellers, viewers and the audience in general will be able to research up on the date as one of the posters will include a hashtag meaning a discussion on the date can circulate via the internet and social networking sites, such as Twitter. This can potentially expand the audience awareness, as more people will begin to know why the date is significant and therefore speard it to inform others that are enquiring.