The idea of home shapes Base Design’s identity for Ray’s Waterfront — The Brand Identity – Home of the Greatest in Graphic & Brand Design

Ray’s Waterfront is a family-run restaurant and bar on the Small Boat Harbor on Resurrection Bay, in Seward, Alaska – a town of fewer than 3,000 people. Ray Simutis, a former New York taxi driver turned commercial fisherman, and Leslie Simutis, a trained cook, opened it in 1988, Ray working the bar and Leslie the kitchen. After both passed, the restaurant passed to their daughters, Anna and Janina.

In the years after 1988, the restaurant accumulated several signs, typefaces and illustrations, spread over menus, printed materials, hats and sweatshirts. “The Ray’s building, food and people were well known for being warm, welcoming and classic. There hadn’t really ever been a brand created, though,” explains Owner & Operator Anna Nozaki. She approached Base Design’s Melbourne studio for an identity that would highlight the history and spirit of Ray’s, spanning the logo, signage, menus, website and merchandise. The studio started from a neon tube sign in a window box, which reads ‘Ray’s Waterfront Bar & Grill’ and has a simple halibut illustration on it. It “was the only consistent branding that remained intact since opening,” she notes. An old hat was the only other thing left with the original lettering on it.

“It was important that the brand look classic and not ‘cool,’” Nozaki details. “It needed to be humble and historic. I wanted the fact that this long-standing restaurant was started and continually operated by local families to be apparent immediately before even setting foot inside.”

“The idea of home holds everything together,” explains Base Design’s Partner & Creative Director Caroline Cox. “Walking into Ray’s feels like being in a home. Homes can be messy and noisy. A home accumulates photographs, patterns, keepsakes and objects over time, each with a connection to the people who live there. That became a way of thinking about Ray’s as both an individual and an institution.”

Base Design redrew the logotype from the window box sign’s lettering, which was thin and loose, with a large looping ‘R,’ a slant and a sweep on the ‘y.’ Those thin lines became a fuller, more confident mark, with heavier, more defined letters, deliberate curves, sharper terminals and closer connections across the word. “The restaurant itself was our reference for knowing how far to go,” Cox notes. “Ray’s is already full of character, and the logo needed to sit comfortably among everything that was there. It needed enough refinement to work across a contemporary identity, while still feeling like the name people had known for years.” A rope version of the mark, drawn with a custom rope brush, came out of the same window box lettering. “It picks up on the maritime references that run through Ray’s, from the harbour setting to the family’s history in commercial fishing,” Cox tells us. “It’s a secondary, more playful expression of the brand. We use it in communications where an extra layer of personality feels right. The primary logotype gives the identity its everyday recognition.”

“We paired Caslon Egyptian for headlines with Affix for body copy,” Cox details. “Caslon Egyptian has roots in early sans serif lettering and the vernacular of buildings, engravings and printed material. It brings a straightforward, slightly unusual character that feels comfortable in Ray’s world. Affix has the utilitarian qualities of typewriter lettering, with warmth and playful details that come through in its italics and alternate characters. Together, they give us a practical hierarchy for the menus and website while holding their own beside the expressive logotype.”

Drawings by illustrator Jake Foreman and photographs from the family's archive appear across menus, interiors and printed ephemera, which includes a matchbook, postcard of local recommendations and coasters. “Jake’s illustrations reinterpret lived memories: Anna’s childhood, family fishing trips, her mother in the kitchen and meals together at the restaurant,” Cox explains. “Patterns such as gingham and nautical stripes bring familiar, domestic textures, while the frames and borders draw on photographic albums and maritime references.”

“The palette came directly from the restaurant and its surroundings,” Cox notes. “Red was already everywhere: the original lights and sconces, the burgundy carpet and the warm mahogany inside. We drew those qualities into a family of bright red, deep red and burgundy.” Red leads the palette, appearing on the menus in borders, patterns and covers, with the lunch and dinner menus set in different red tones. A connection to the Alaskan flag brings in blue, navy and yellow. Blue and navy appear on other pieces, including the dessert menu, and yellow is a smaller accent in the framing. The website uses the same palette, with beige in place of off-white paper. “That distinction is deliberate: in print, the paper stock supplies that colour; digitally, we reproduce it,” Cox explains.

Family photographs from the 80s show a big red ‘Ray’s’ above the front doors, made of dimensional, individual channel letters. The sign glowed and was visible from a distance as people drove into town along the main road. Weather damage brought it down, and burgundy fabric awnings went up in its place. The studio designed a replacement. “After we created our concepts, we searched extensively for a manufacturer who would be able to deliver on the job,” Cox recalls. That search ended with National Sign Corporation in Seattle, and with Tim Zamberlin of the company. “When we first spoke with Tim, he was so knowledgeable we immediately felt comfortable in his hands,” Cox adds. Seward is remote, so getting people and materials there took careful coordination. Installed on an old building with a traditional shingled roof, the signage also had to survive Alaskan weather. “We wanted to preserve traditional sign-making methods and respect the building’s character, with the durability the location demands,” Cox details. The sign that went back up uses the custom Ray’s lettering.

To document Ray’s for the next generation, the studio commissioned photographer Jack Bool to spend time in the restaurant, out on the bay, on the glaciers, around Seward and alongside the people who have given their working lives to the place, the commercial fisheries among them. “We wanted him to experience it before photographing it, leaving room for things a shot list couldn’t anticipate,” Cox notes. “There’s warmth and immediacy in the family archive that we wanted the new photographs to sit comfortably alongside.”

“It's made the locals feel cared for by honouring the past while spiffing it up,” Nozaki concludes of the identity. “The illustrated stories on the coasters are collected by people who knew our parents.”