The Lucky Duck Story
Creating the Right Design
The Lucky Duck is a Korean small plates restaurant now open in downtown Clawson, Michigan. In 2020, before the pandemic shut down the country, Chef Grant Vella had a dream to open his own restaurant that represented his blended heritage. The name “Lucky Duck” was given to him by the Korean adoption agency and means “fortunate one”. After his adoption, his mother would lovingly call him her “Lucky Duckling”, hence the title of the restaurant.
Chef Grant’s story was the inspiration for The Lucky Duck’s logo design and branding. The challenge was creating a minimalistic design, which follows his own personal tastes, and showcasing the heart of his story. The simple script lettering adheres to the modern minimalism that he had envisioned, while the combined ‘L’ and ‘D’ represents his American and Korean heritage.
Style: Modern Minimalism
Rejected Logos
Here are the logos that didn’t make the cut. The original idea was to create an illustrative design that spoke to Grant’s Korean heritage without looking cliche. After the first round of logos went through, we discussed his true vision of having a solely typographic logo, to suit his modern and minimalistic style. This process was the most important because it would determine how the rest of the restaurant’s visual identity would come about, from colors to print & digital material, and eventually to the interior design.
