Since 2007 Grill Royal has been a legendary space in which Berlin’s cultural, culinary and art society meet over steak, fine wine and conversation. My role as creative brand direction was to protect that legacy while giving it a future: to translate nearly two decades of reputation into a visual and verbal identity that feels as unmistakable today as it did on day one.
Rather than reinventing Grill Royal, the goal was to sharpen what has always defined the brand into a coherent visual system that could scale across every location: the original restaurant in the heart of Berlin, the more intimate Le Petit Royal space across the city, and the Grill Royal Hamburg franchise.
Central to this redefinition was art directing a comprehensive set of campaign shoots with photographers Franz Grünewald (Grill Royal Berlin & Hamburg) and Letizia Cigliutti (Le Petit Royal Berlin), capturing the food, interiors and atmosphere. The aim was to keep the restaurants instantly visually identifiable whilst reflecting a stronger focus on more regional, sustainable ingredients of exquisite quality. This became the backbone of the new identity – establishing a consistent visual language while still letting each location keep its own character.
This brand identity work also included commissioning new websites from designer Hanni Pannier, giving each restaurant a more dynamic digital presence that matches its real-world atmosphere. I paired this with a new approach to social media, gently adapting how the brand spoke about itself, its cuisine, and its wine list, across every touchpoint.
By making sure the identity could carry the brand through its next chapter without losing what made it special in the first place, the new system was created to be flexible – guidelines that could adapt across locations, formats and channels over time. The result is a brand direction that holds Grill Royal’s history and its future in the same frame: unmistakably itself, but built to keep evolving.