Brand - Tiliani — Alex Sweet Design

Tiliani

2024

Branding, web, logo, photography
Client: tiliani restaurant

A few friends of mine were opening up a restaurant in Dearborn, Michigan using their now decade of experience in the fine-dining industry. I was lucky enough to help them out with a few basic design assets as they got started. The food at Tiliani is truly phenomenal. The menu rotates according to what is seasonally available, and they manage to very successfully stick to a local, responsible method of sourcing ingredients. Things like the olive oil come directly from the founder’s grandfather’s farm in Lebanon, while most every-day ingredients come from agreements with local farmers. It’s impressive the amount they’re able to tell you about the honey, the flour, the pepper, etc.

Although the food is broadly termed “Italian,” the term feels completely arbitrary when you the plates arrive at your table. To lean on an equally arbitrary term, this is “artisan” food, and the meals are truly unexpected. Interestingly, the cooks have decided to produce a menu that is 100% Halal certified, an approach that makes more sense when you situate the restaurant in the heart of the largest Muslim diaspora in the United States (Dearborn, MI).

Brand details are simple, with a high contrast lightweight wedge-serif logotype drawn up bespoke in Glyphs. We teamed up with another of our friends for the food illustrations. Beyond the logo, the meat of the project was the menu design, with 4-5 in active use on any given night. We figured out a handoff strategy so the Tiliani team could make their own updates, which given their exigency and high standards ends up being every single day. Lastly, a light splash page was created on Squarespace as a placeholder. The page has since been taken over by well meaning chefs and so I will not post the link to it here.

Alex Sweet

Hello@alexsweet.design
Instagram
Typography Site

Site index
Scroll to top