Alla lettera

VenueTurin, Italy

ClientAmici Miei

Year2013

Concept

Located in Turin’s central Piazza Bodoni, the restaurant begged for a “typographic” name. “Alla lettera” is a homage to the world of type design, to the shape of words. But in Italian “alla lettera” also means doing something fair and square, with high quality and tradition in mind. The perfect name for a place where cuisine meets graphic design: two worlds with similar dynamics, where the encounter of senses and needs is brought to life.
After all, in a time when publishing abuses food culture to sell books, why shouldn’t a pizza restaurant use an editorial concept to connote its spaces?

Development

The theme for the restaurant stems from the similarity between pizza and books: typography is used in every physical and graphical form, creating custom elements or reusing pre-existing ones. Allowing for great composition variety, the theme translates into customized individual rooms, created by professionals that lamatilde invited to take part in every aspect of the project.
Alla lettera’s logotype was set in Bodoni, but its trademark introduces the design theme by using Os from different font families to represent the business’s main product: pizza, which is always similar but never exactly the same because it is made by hand. The menu was designed like a newspaper, while staff’s uniforms by Antonio Rizza were inspired by those worn by printers in the age of movable type – sleeve covers included.