Cazador

Auckland-based studio Seachange has updated the identity of Cazador, a family-run neighbourhood restaurant specializing in wild game.

In 2016, Seachange already designed an award-winning cookbook for Cazador. The font used back then was Zuzana Licko’s Matrix. For the new identity, Seachange followed this lead and again went for a style with triangular serifs, but further bumped up the spikiness.

We created a slightly eccentric, yet classic logotype that alludes to wild game with its antler-esk exaggerated serifs and knife-like chisels. — Seachange

The wordmark is based on Zangezi, a recent reinterpretation of Salem (1901), by Daria Cohen. A preliminary version was released in April 2018 via Future Fonts. Seachange customized some of the letterforms. Most of Zangezi’s already pronounced serifs were further elongated, and the wedge terminals in C and r bent to point inwards. Zangezi is such a wild design, it can easily bear such modifications. However, with the tightened overall spacing including the interlocking d–o–r, the gap created by the za pair now is particularly evident. I wonder if making the bottom of z a bit narrower would have helped here. The other edit I can’t quite get behind is the top terminal of d: The bracketing is not found back in any of the other letters. These are minor quibbles, though – the result is a unique and expressive logo, and the debossed version on the leather-bound menus sure looks mouth-watering.

The custom logotype is paired with Maison Neue (incl. Maison Neue Mono) for print. On the restaurant’s website, Maison Neue’s role is filled by Nimbus Sans.