STEAK BITE

Year: 2025

Service: Responsive Logo Design and Visual Identity

Steak Bite was founded by Jamie Austin and Scott Wood, two Doncaster locals with a shared obsession for proper food, done the right way. Their idea was to combine the convenience of street food with restaurant-quality ingredients and preparation. To bring this vision to life, they needed a strong visual identity that matched their quirky character and bold approach to food. The result is a custom, hand-drawn brand built around playful typography, distinctive mascots, and a visual language as bold and full of character as the food itself.

Primary Logo

The Primary Logo is the cornerstone of the Steak Bite brand, serving as its most recognisable mark across all applications. The logotype presents the name STEAK BITE in playful, hand-lettered typography that captures the restaurant’s bold personality. Creative details bring the name to life: the E in STEAK is stylised as a juicy steak cut, while the E in BITE becomes an open mouth with sharp teeth - playfully nodding to the brand’s name and its flavourful promise. The design strikes the perfect balance between fun, memorable, and unmistakably tied to the brand's steakhouse identity.

Mascot Logos

The Steak Mascot Logo is a playful variant of the Steak Bite primary logo. It features the quirky, steak-shaped monster with bold eyes, sharp teeth, and cow horns, paired with the STEAK BITE wordmark. This version adds energy and character, emphasising slightly mischievous side of the brand. The Cow Mascot Logo is another playful variant of the Steak Bite identity. Featuring a bold, stylised cow with the STEAK BITE wordmark integrated into its body, this version reinforces the steakhouse theme. Both mascots are friendly, quirky and eye-catching, ideal for merchandise, signage, social media and casual brand applications.

Responsive Logo Variants

The Responsive Logo System gives Steak Bite the flexibility to adapt its identity across different formats and applications. It includes secondary horizontal and plain-text versions, as well as dedicated mascot and icon options.

The Horizontal Logo can be used alongside the Primary Logo or where space is limited, such as website headers and stationery. The Plain Text Logo works best when paired with a mascot or other graphic elements. The Cow Logo is the preferred option for social media avatars, while the stylised steak-shaped E (taken out from Primary Lockup) provides a simple, recognisable mark for small applications such as favicon and icons.

★★★★★

"I just wanted to drop you a quick email to say thank you again for all the work you did on our branding.

Looking back now, it’s amazing to see how far we’ve come. The branding you created has become such a big part of Steak Bite, and we still get loads of compliments on it. People regularly comment on how professional and different it feels, and that’s exactly what we wanted from day one.

Thanks again for believing in the project from the beginning and helping bring the brand to life. Your work gave us a real identity, and it’s something we’re genuinely proud of every single day."

Jamie Austin, Co-Founder & Operations Director of Steak Bite

Hand-drawn Logo Approach

The Steak Bite identity embraces a bold, handcrafted approach, giving the brand a distinctive and personal character. This playful style reflects the founders’ passion for proper food, their quirky personality, and the unpretentious spirit of the brand. By moving away from polished, conventional steakhouse aesthetics, the hand-drawn elements make Steak Bite feel more approachable, memorable, and full of personality.

Colour Palette & Typography

Steak Bite's colour palette captures the essence of a modern, sophisticated steakhouse. Each shade was picked with care to show off different sides of the brand - bold, inviting, and full of flavour. It’s a mix of deep, smoky tones and eye-catching highlights - think fire on the grill, perfectly aged steaks, and the cozy warmth of your favourite side dishes. This combo of rich colours and clean neutrals strikes the perfect balance: warm, appetising, and just refined enough to stand out.

The typography chosen for Steak Bite uses four distinct typefaces to support the restaurant’s energetic, modern, and professional identity. Sound Bubble Regular, a bold and playful display typeface, is used for all headlines and main branding elements. Orlando Script is used selectively for emphasis and contrast, adding a distinctive touch to key words or highlighted text. Oswald SemiBold, a clean and condensed sans-serif, serves as the subheadline font, ensuring clarity and impact. For body text, Superclarendon, a sturdy and approachable slab serif, brings warmth and readability to longer copy.

Brand Pattern & Icons

The brand pattern features evenly spaced, hand-drawn steaks of various cooking times. The pattern visually captures the essence and personality of Steak Bite, adding texture, depth, and context to brand's communications while reinforcing brand identity across various touchpoints. The pattern is intended to be used for backgrounds, packaging, merch and various promotional materials.

Iconography plays a key role in adding personality and clarity to Steak Bite’s visual identity. A custom set of 10 steak icons ensures consistent, on-brand communication across various applications. Following five icons represent steak "doneness" levels - from rare to well-done - designed in signature brand style for use on menus, signage, and promotional materials. Finally, a set of five Instagram icons to be used primarily as 'story highlights', each representing a key brand category (e.g., Menu, Specials, Events, Behind the Scenes, and Contact). These icons maintain the same visual style, ensuring cohesion across digital platforms.

Brand Guidelines Document

Finally, I created the Steak Bite Brand Guidelines, defining the restaurant’s visual and verbal identity and ensuring consistency across every touchpoint. The guide covers key elements such as logo usage, colour palette, typography, and graphic elements, providing clear direction for both internal and external applications. It helps maintain a cohesive brand presence while capturing Steak Bite’s playful, bold, and modern character.