Spaghetti Western Brand Design
Branding Design
For Spaghetti Western, an Italian-Texan catering company, I created a full brand identity grounded in playful illustration, bold linework, and a vibrant color system inspired by both Italian cuisine and classic Texas culture. The brand needed to feel warm, approachable, and a little quirky — something that captured their “Italian comfort food with Texas charm” personality. I developed a cohesive visual language that balanced this duality and made the brand instantly recognizable.
I designed a complete logo suite featuring multiple lockups for flexible use across print, packaging, and digital applications. The primary orange logo became the cornerstone of the identity, supported by secondary logo variations for horizontal spaces and limited-height placements. To support the brand’s storytelling, I created a custom illustration style centered around detailed linework and dynamic shading. These illustrations highlight iconic Italian dishes and ingredients, while the accompanying icon set brings visual consistency to menus, social posts, events, and behind-the-scenes content.
To round out the brand, I curated a photography direction combining bright, appetizing food imagery with vintage black-and-white Italian-American dining scenes to reinforce the nostalgic, old-school restaurant vibe. The resulting brand system gave Spaghetti Western a distinct yet flexible identity that reflects their unique fusion concept — bold, flavorful, and full of personality.
01 The Old Design
01 The Old Design
01 Original Logo & Brand Inspiration
Before we began working together, Spaghetti Western shared the logo they had originally created in Canva. Their vision was clear: they wanted to blend classic Italian cuisine with a Texan twist — a nod to their heritage as Italian Americans living in Texas. Their food is a genuine fusion of both cultures, and together we decided that the strongest way to stand out in a saturated Italian-food market was to lean into that Texan personality and make it a defining part of the brand.
They also emphasized that they didn’t want the brand to feel overly modern or “startup-y.” They weren’t venture-backed tech founders — they were three friends from Austin starting an Italian catering concept from scratch. The brand needed to feel warm, nostalgic, and approachable, almost like a 60-year-old neighborhood deli that’s been run by the same family for generations. That direction led us toward groovy, curved typography, bold color choices, and eccentric hand-drawn illustrations that capture both the playfulness and tradition behind their concept.
Their original logo had the right spirit — it just needed refinement and a more cohesive visual system to bring their story to life.
02 The Redesign
02 The Redesign
02 The Redesign
The redesign was genuinely such a joy to create — it let me tap into my playful side and build a visual world that felt bold, quirky, and unmistakably Spaghetti Western. To help distinguish the brand from other Italian concepts, we shifted away from the typical Italian red and chose a vibrant orange as the primary brand color. It’s close enough to red to feel familiar and nostalgic, yet bright and unexpected enough to help the brand break through a crowded market. For the primary logo, I used two different typefaces to represent the fusion of cultures, while connecting the “S” and “W” to bring a sense of unity and flow.
The founders wanted symbolic meaning in the logo, and after several iterations, we landed on a clever visual: the shape of Italy paired with a cowboy spur — a playful nod to Italy’s boot silhouette and Texas’s western roots. From there, I developed a complete logo suite with secondary marks, merchandise layouts, Instagram templates, a full color system, typography standards, and photography direction. One of my favorite elements to design was the merch illustration set, especially the custom bandana — it perfectly embodies the brand’s fun, food-loving, Tex-Italian personality.
