Overview
Waffle House is a 24-hour diner chain with more than 2,100 locations across the U.S. All Waffle House restaurants feature a down-home atmosphere and commitment to serving simple, but classic American food. The current company logo has been in use since 1955 and fails to adequately represent the core values and communicate contemporary industry trends. The goal for this mock redesign was to create a functional and sustainable logo helping Waffle House transition into a modern eatery while still preserving its iconic, retro vibe. Starting the project Jason Weilee and I conducted research on competitor's such as IHOP and Denny's as well as on the general industry and what the predicted foresights are. With the data we pulled from research we then proceeded to use the ideation technique "10 plus 10" to quickly generate ideas. Below are some of the lo-fi and hi-fi prototypes.
Typography
The font we selected for the logo is Myriad Pro Bold. We selected the font after trying out many variations. Myriad Pro Bold was selected because it was consistent with the lines in the visual we had created. Although we wanted to give the logo a new life we still wanted to be familiar to the Waffle House customer base by continuing with a sans serif font.
Final Result
After many iterations we finally settled on the logo shown at the top of the page and on the mock branding material below. The half circle surrounding the "W" serves two functions; it reinforces the idea of a waffle and it can also be seen as a rising sun, which compliments the Waffle House menu as it consists of many breakfast items. We decided to use MyriadPro Bold as the logo's font because it was consistent with the lines of the illustration as well as being legible and of timeless nature.
Conclusion
What we achieved with this project is a logo that is modular as it can be repurposed as imagery as seen in the above menu as well as changed in color to adapt to new environments. The propositional density is highly increased as well as the logo's ability to seamlessly integrate into different mediums of branding material.