I mostly work with small, local clients because I’m wholly enamored of their memory-making sense of place and idiosyncratic vernacular design. Russ & Daughters—one of the last appetizing shops in New York—has existed for a hundred years of consecutive “New York minutes.” (*This* take-a-number number. *This* bialy.) The place is steeped in knowledge, procedures, and techniques transmitted straight from one person to another for generations. (It takes months to learn to slice the salmon because it is a type of hands-on craft knowledge that can be learned only by doing.)
The opening of Russ & Daughters Cafe (on the original shop’s hundredth birthday) gave New York City’s distinct local culture a new, thriving place—connected to history amid the city’s rampant homogenization. In the nine years since its opening, the cafe has appeared frequently in TV and film, has hosted music nights organized by Laurie Anderson and John Zorn, and has inspired myriad copycats.
I designed every aspect of the cafe from top (lightboxes) to bottom (wallpaper), as well as refreshing the institution's branding, merchandise, and custom typography.
My approach was instead to use design to clarify the humanistic values and made-by-hand processes underlying their vernacular aesthetic and to resist the homogenizing forces of “professionalization” often wielded by designers rebranding small businesses. Anthony Bourdain wrote of Russ & Daughters that they have “survived the brutal caprices of style and changing tastes.” They're older than even our modern notion of "branding", so there was no way in hell I was handing these people a style guide.
