A new mark for a house from 1524.
One of the best-known restaurants in Skåne, in a Malmö landmark, carrying the same gold engraving since 1980. We gave the house a monogram, gave each of its two restaurants a voice of its own, rebuilt the website in two languages, and shot everything ourselves.
- Website
- kockskahuset.se
- Client
- Kockska Huset, Årstiderna and JÄRN
- Practice
- Studio Surface
- Scope
- Identity, website, print, photography, campaigns
- Replaced
- An identity in use since 1980
A house that has stood since 1524 does not need a logo that explains it. It needs one line that feels like it was always there.
Studio Surface, on the briefForty-five years of one logo, and two restaurants under one roof.
Kockska Huset is a Malmö institution: a merchant's house from 1524 on Stortorget, home to Årstiderna, the classic restaurant, and JÄRN, the steakhouse. The identity had served since 1980 and carried an engraving of the building and two names in gold. It no longer matched the food, the rooms or the people walking through the door.
The brief was to give the house something that would last another forty years: a mark that works on a door, a menu and a phone screen, a way for the two restaurants to speak in their own voices without pulling the house apart, and a website that finally made booking, menus and events simple in Swedish and English.
What it did for the house.
One house, three names, cut from the same cloth.
The kh monogram belongs to the building. Årstiderna is serifed and upright, the older voice. JÄRN is hard-edged and set in oxblood, the steakhouse. Every photograph was taken by the studio in the real rooms, with the real food and the real fire.
kh monogram
Årstiderna
JÄRN
Gift cards
The people of the houseEverything the house shows the world.
Brand system
The kh monogram and two restaurant wordmarks, with typography, colour and rules for how they share a room, a menu and a page.
Website
kockskahuset.se in Swedish and English. Custom navigation, seasonal menus, events and private dining, reservations, live weather for Malmö.
Menus and print
Seasonal menus such as the autumn goose dinner, gift cards with the four seasons, stationery and event collateral, set in the house typefaces.
Photography
Rooms, tables and food photographed by the studio. No stock imagery anywhere on the site or in print.
Seasonal campaigns
Goose dinner, summer courtyard, Christmas: planned around the restaurant's own calendar and carried across web, print and social.
Standing partnership
The studio remains Kockska Huset's creative and technical partner through the seasons that follow.
The tools behind it.
Squarespace
Site platform
Weglot
Swedish and English
JavaScript
Custom navigation and menus
Figma
Front-end design
Lightroom
Photography
InDesign
Menus and print
Who made it.
Studio Surface works as one team across design and engineering, with specialist contractors brought in when a project needs them.
Amin Gabbani
Creative direction, identity, web, photography
Ala Suboh
Delivery and campaigns
