Make Sandwich

Sandwiches are the first thing we learn to make in the kitchen. With virtually limitless combinations of ingredients, sandwiches truly are the perfect vessel for culinary expression. And while many of us are leading more creative lives, sandwiches had remained the same and no longer fed our creativity. Enter MAKE, a fast casual concept offering creative sandwiches for an equally creative audience. MAKE’s iterative menu inspired an equally energetic identity and resulting retail presence.

In partnership with Aurify Brands, we conceptualized and created MAKE from the ground up to launch, beginning with positioning and product definition ultimately defining its visual language and retail presence in Union Square.

Sous-vide chicken breast with foie gras on toasted brioche. A5 wagyu tri-tip with truffle parmesan pesto on a fresh baguette. Buttery uni with Korean mustard oil spread across a crunchy panino.

The MAKE menu indulges your creativity with the highest quality ingredients. Graphic ‘type sandwiches’ highlight Make’s impactful ingredients, while bright, naturally lit food photography elevates the importance of the humble sandwich while capturing its ingredients’ undeniable quality.

An abstraction of a sandwich, the scalable, iterative brand pattern inspires hands-on creation. MAKE’s collateral is both playful and stylish. Sweatshirts with sandwich emojis celebrate the sandwich as a true creative icon, while business papers and swag sport the brand’s pattern as a worthy creative flag to fly.

MAKE’ website primarily exists to inspire and educate customers with ingredient stories and iterative menu content. Naturally lit, immersive food photography pulls the viewer through the screen, while the sophisticated and contemporary serif typeface, Larish Neue and a curious and distinctive custom cut of the geometric grotesque sans, Haptik, create an elevated type system that stirs the creative juices.

To celebrate the MAKE brand we created a Sandwich Studio. A place that inspires ideation as well as celebrates the world’s creative capital, New York City. The interior design leveraged elevated materials like calcutta marble and satin brass to set quality expectations, while also inspiring messy creativity with brushed concrete floor, glazed tile walls, and minimal decor.

The storefront features a plain-spoken banner of what MAKE is in the business of: SANDWICHES. Supporting it is a channel cut, solid brass blade sign to drive home the quality of product and experience.

We collaborated with illustrator Phil Dean, the Shoreditch Sketcher, to create an array of ninety ‘sandwiches’ anchored by gold letterpress brackets of ‘bread’ pulled from our mark system. These gold brackets sandwich hand-drafted vignettes of New York’s dynamic creative culture and people.