The Podgy Spaniel
A steak and fish house on the Sussex coast, with a brand as warm as the welcome.
The brief
A new steak and fish house needed an identity that felt premium and warm at the same time — and printed materials that wouldn’t date.
The Podgy Spaniel opened on Sea Road with a clear point of view: locally reared Sussex beef, fresh fish, and a room you’d want to stay in. The brand had to carry that across everything a restaurant touches — the sign outside, the menus on the table, the gift cards at the till.
The brief we set ourselves: premium, warm, inviting and authentic. Nothing that would look tired in a year.
The challenge
Character without cartoon. A restaurant mascot can tip into novelty fast; this one had to sit comfortably next to a wine list.
Menus were the real test. Prices needed to be clear, dishes easy to scan and the whole thing legible in low evening light — while still looking like it belonged to the brand on the wall outside.
The approach
01 / 04- 01
Discovery
We started with the name and the room. A podgy spaniel is a warm, slightly cheeky idea; the interior and the menu told us the brand should be handsome rather than jokey.
- 02
Concepts
The first spaniel wore a chef’s hat and carried a fish. Over twenty-odd numbered iterations it lost the hat, gained a paw-print bandana and picked up a steak — the dish the restaurant leads with.
- 03
Refinement
A stacked serif wordmark and a light ‘Steak & Fish House’ descriptor were locked in, then the mark was cut into a circular badge for coasters, signage and stamps.
- 04
Rollout
A 72-file logo package in four colourways, then menus, gift cards, vouchers, business cards, letterhead, flyers and a customer feedback form — most of it added month by month as the restaurant grew.
The identity
A smiling spaniel, steak in mouth, paw-print bandana — drawn as a single-colour mark so it prints cleanly on a menu, a coaster or a sign facing the sea.
Deep burgundy on cream gives the brand its warmth; black and white versions cover everything else. The wordmark is a confident stacked serif with a lighter sans for the descriptor, so the name always reads first.
The rollout
Print01
Menu02
Menu03
Print04
Print05
Print06
Print07
Signage08The result
The identity now runs across the whole restaurant — from the exterior sign to the kids’ menu — and we still update it month by month as the menu and the seasons change.
The small details carried the brand further than expected: a spaniel variant for the WC signage, and a feedback form that rates the meal with five spaniel faces, from a grimace to ‘pawsitively amazing’.
