Some projects arrive with their story already written into the walls. Riverview House, a 1936 art deco landmark on Sandy Bay Road, Hobart, had spent decades as 'Jet Fuel', a beloved independent service station with heritage-listed architecture and hand-painted signage that locals still referenced by name. When our clients, experienced hospitality operators behind the successful Sandy Bay café 'Bear With Me', took over the lease to open 'In Good Company', we knew the brief was as much about the building as it was about the brand.

We had previously developed the brand identity for 'Bear With Me', so we understood our client's instinct for quietly quirky naming and their ability to build venues with genuine community warmth. 'In Good Company' was their third venture, and the stakes felt higher. This was a site people already loved.

The brand identity we developed draws from the French café tradition, reinterpreted through a playful and contemporary lens. An illustration system built from everyday objects, moka pots, dripping kettles, lone chairs, rendered in silhouette with deliberate hand-made looseness, gives the brand its personality. Warm, a little unpredictable, never trying too hard. The brief, distilled to its essence: make you smile, just a little bit.

The environmental design and signage system extends that identity into the built environment with the same care. A large vertical lightbox reinstated on an existing pole references its historic predecessor. A second lightbox marks the restaurant entrance with illustration rather than text. Painted typography, applied directly to brick by a traditional sign painter, sits on the walls as though it has always been there. The heritage-listed 'Jet Service Station' lightbox was retained deliberately, still faded, still legible, in quiet conversation with everything new around it.

The result is a brand identity and signage system that holds its history visibly. 'In Good Company' opened to immediate community warmth and strong word of mouth, settling into its art deco home as though it was always meant to be there.