Incanto is a new Italian restaurant and wine bar in the Noe Valley area of San Francisco. One of the inspirations for the restaurant was the writing of Dante, and one of his most famous characters is Beatrice.  She’s often represented by a star, so I created a star that looks like an antique woodcut, and type that looks like handwriting of the period. See the site.

The new redesign is crisper and combines both precision, warmth, and handmade appeal that reflects the restaurant itself. It’s meant to highlight the idea of man-made art. It features a handmade Italian marbled paper background, then an inner background of natural parchment overlaid with the star logo.

The original site design (below) was an effective way to introduce and promote the new restaurant. The site design allows for more text on the home page and throughout the site, to allow Mark Pastore, the restaurant’s owner, to keep his regular patrons updated with the restaurant’s many special events.

For the site, I created a background of handmade paper, aged it, then added more type in the same style as the logo. If you look closely you’ll see that the ink appears to trail off in each word, as it would if it was written with ink.

The overall effect was warm, soft, and about as handmade and traditional as you can get on the web.

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