Taza Flores is a Montréal-based wine and tapas bar, established in 2004 by father and son duo Gilbert and Harry Marciano, that blends culinary elements from the Spanish and Moroccan culture. The creative intention was to portray establishment and experience, with the notion of mess, fun and noise: simply being humans sharing food and good times. We created a multi-faceted identity with an array of handdrawn logotypes, a seemingly unbalanced yet dynamic type treatment, and a series of hand doodles to highlight certain cocktails.
The ‘vase’ illustration, which appears regularly throughout the identity, is inspired by a shape of pottery that is unique to Taza, Morocco. It was originally produced and sold in the souks of Taza in the early 1900s. It also creates a parallel with the French expression “prendre un pot”, which means and implies “to relax and have a drink”.
Apart from lettering and illustration, the identity pairs various styles of Monotype Grotesque, mostly its Bold Extended and Black style — which seem almost unrelated. The quirks of the Black style, reminiscent of monospaced type, perfectly match the relaxed style of the identity. MT Grotesque is a variety of disparate sans serifs with the Grotesque name issued by Monotype UK, that were bundled under a single family when they were digitized by Adobe and Monotype in 1992. Additional texts, such as the prices on the menu, use Pitch.