St. Lawrence, restaurant Québecois

Serving classic French cuisine with Quebecois inspiration, St Lawrence restaurant is country cooking at its finest. With a rustic menu created from childhood memories, Chef JC Poirier dusts off and reimagines the classics in a vibrant and intimate setting. Glasfurd & Walker developed an identity that uses the Fleur-de-lis as a classical representation of French identity in North America, most commonly known from it’s use on the Quebec Flag. The Menus are bilingual and the identity is applied in a classic and simple manner that truly reflects the intention and origin of the restaurant.

Tenez is used as the central element of this identity, used in the wordmark and whenever the place communicates with the guest. It is paired with Goudy Oldstyle (for small size text), lush printing techniques (gold foil stamp, shop window signage) and a subdued color palette.

It is a true delight to see a typeface you designed being put to such beautiful use. One thing that I really gave much thought – being somewhat conservative in my letter shapes – was the shape of the R. It was a rough sketch of an ‘R’ by one of my colleagues at Plau that made me decide to design a complete typeface to match it. Midway through the design, I questioned whether to keep the original ‘R’ as the main version and have an alternative, more conservative ‘R’. In the end, I’m super glad I decided to keep the original ‘R’, as it seems like one of the key distinctive features for other designers to pick it up as something original, or quirky.