Bar Le Côte

Bar Le Côte is a seafood tavern in Los Olivos, California. Inspired by the daily catch of the Central Coast and the modern cuisine of Europe’s seaside capitals, the team prepares thoughtful dishes in the casual, social atmosphere of the restaurant. The vibrant, green interior and custom banquettes were fabricated by Helvey Design Studio, and paintings of cowboys by Jon Flaming hang on the walls. The restaurant is a Companion Hospitality property, co-owned by executive chef Brad Mathews, along with Daisy and Greg Ryan, the duo behind Bell’s.

We started working on Bar Le Côte as the interior of the restaurant was coming together. Inspired by the tiles and bench shapes Helvey Design Studio was producing, we landed on a wordmark built from geometric, Art Deco letterforms, stacked together like a set of blocks. The logo also references poster lettering and architectural lettering from the European port cities that were top of mind as Brad, Daisy, and Greg developed the restaurant’s ethos and recipes.

The need for an alternate, more functional wordmark resulted in an all-caps display typeface that is used for headings and short bits of text. To round out the identity, Reed Bradley illustrated the exterior of the restaurant, and we added an italic wordmark for lunch menus. We designed two monograms for use on apparel—an elegant and calligraphic lockup and an ode to Elvis’s Taking Care of Business, lightning bolt included.

Bar Le Côte also uses our typeface Mara des Bois on menus and the website, and we created a color palette of greens and blues that echoes the space and the sea. Over the years, we’ve designed a handful of labels for collaborations with local wineries, many of them continuing the exploration of Art Deco letterforms at the heart of this identity.

Sign Painting: Aaron Cribbs
Illustration: Reed Bradley