Lynsay Reynolds: Quality and Convenience Are Not Mutually Exclusive
Creative agency Mrs&Mr has designed the branding system for Wonder, a food start up that is pioneering a new category of “fast-fine” dining. Wonder features top-flight chefs, along with award-winning restaurants such as Tejas Barbecue, Di Fara Pizza, Barrio Café, Maydan and more. They operate a collection of delivery-first restaurants that bring convenience to at-home dining. With 10+ locations throughout New York City and New Jersey, customers can mix and match from more than 30 celebrated restaurants in one simple and seamless order. But all that choice needed to be captured in a visual identity to tie all these restaurant brands together within the Wonder brand. Mrs&Mr articulated the brand’s positioning and created the visual identity that was applied to every Wonder asset and consumer touch point. These included the logo, typography, color system, store signage, packaging, photography, uniforms, menus, delivery vehicles, promotional materials and physical designs.
Restaurant branding has a long history of using script fonts in their logos. Mrs&Mr wanted to tap into this cultural tradition, which communicates heritage and establishment, but do so with a modern take. The hand-lettering we created for the new Wonder wordmark is a fully custom monoline script with flat terminals to give it a contemporary edge. The italic nature of the letter forms – paired with the swash of the W curved up over the o and then continued by the ascender of the n – creates a feeling of motion, fluidity and energy. Wonder is a house of brands, so Mrs&Mr needed a color that would not clash with the many restaurant brands they partner with. The dark green, they say, serves as a neutral, anchoring color.
Inspired by the materials used in authentic French brasseries, the patterns the designers developed are reminiscent of vintage floor and wall tiles; repetitive geometric shapes in hues of green.
Iconography in the form of badges allows for efficiently communicating an abundance of information and expresses the feeling of a stamp of approval. It was important to localize per store, so the team built flexibility inside a framework into the iconographic system.
Most recently, Wonder acquired Blue Apron (the pioneer of the meal-kit industry) to further enhance its offerings and further stressed the necessity to design a brand and customer experience that captured Wonder’s super app for mealtime. “At the end of the day, convenience and quality shouldn’t be mutually exclusive. Mr&Mrs designed our brand to bring this promise to life – whatever people are in the mood for,” said Lynsay Reynolds head of creative and brand at Wonder.
Credits Chief Creative Officer: Kate Wadia. Chief Strategy Officer: Daniel Wadia. Art Director: David Zoppi. Designers: Arian Franz, Holden Kao.
