Hullabaloo Contemporary branding for Indian cuisine

Hullabaloo is a vegetarian, Indian street food venture based in London. They required a graphic design studio to develop the branding for their two locations – Hullabaloo Deptford & Hullabaloo Greenwich.

Named after Chef and Co-founder Harish Kumar's nickname – Baloo – the identity was already pointing in a vibrant and fun direction. Having been to India previously, the strategy was to position the brand identity with a clean & modern style whilst also capturing the colour and heritage of the country without becoming cliché.

For the logotype typography, a minimal, geometric sans serif style was modified with sharp, subtle angular serifs as a nod to the past. Despite them serving affordable, street style dishes, the quality would be exemplary – Baloo having worked with Michelin star Chef Atul Kochhar. Consequently, black was selected as the base palette colour to convey the sophisticated quality of their product with orange providing the vibrant highlight.

The logotype was calm and confident, but it required a marque that was fun and dynamic in contrast. What if Hullabaloo was an animal? The idea of a playful elephant emerged. To take it a step further, inspired once again by Escher, the logo was adapted to allow tessellation – providing a distinct, brand-led pattern device for use across marketing collateral.

Budget was limited with no allowance for expensive food photography. To maintain a clean, consistent and bold look to the dishes a technique employed by sushi restaurants was adopted. Shooting the dishes from above allowed for clean cut-outs to be placed on hyper backdrops of turquoise and magenta to accompany the orange.

For the menu I wanted something that was fun, different and easy to update. Using a fan style allowed for simple updates for new menus, clean layouts and genuine shots of India to be displayed on the reverse of each pane to connect with the heritage and tradition of the cuisine.

To ensure the new branding system was successfully deployed online, I worked with regular collaborator James Seddon at Cotton Creative to develop the website – view the case study.