Valdo Gatti
Valdo Gatti already had a logo by the time this project started, but the space itself hadn't been built yet. What didn't exist was everything else, the concept, the tone, the way the brand would actually feel once someone walked through the door.
The concept itself wasn't up for reinvention, it just needed a design system honest enough to match it. Everything about how Valdo Gatti makes a pizza takes patience: organic flour with nothing genetically altered in it, a starter grown and fed by hand rather than bought, a two-day rise before anyone touches the dough again. By the time a pizzaiolo finally stretches it into shape, most of the work is already done, slowly, out of sight. Nothing about that deserved to be rushed by the branding either. So the strategy became simple: don't decorate honesty, just get out of its way.
The work split naturally into what the brand actually needed, touchpoint by touchpoint.
Organic, slow-fermented sourdough deserved a menu that didn't oversell it, clean typography, printed simply, letting the ingredients do the talking rather than the design. It's built as a placemat, already on the table before guests sit down, so the choice is easy the moment they arrive, no separate card to hand out, no waiting, the menu simply is the table. Once that same restraint existed on paper, it carried straight into how the food itself was captured, the wood oven, hands tearing into a slice, a board of prosciutto, nothing staged, all of it shot the way the kitchen actually works.
A luminous outdoor sign built to stand out on the street, following the same straightforward logic as the building's own architecture, no ornament, no unnecessary flourish, just legible and confident. Inside, "pizza artigianale, naturale, italiana" stated plainly on the wall, copy considered enough to sound like the restaurant talking, not shouting at people passing by, the same restraint carried all the way down to the smallest detail: stamped t-shirts that make the people serving the pizza feel like part of the brand rather than just wearing black.
