Project Type: Brand and Menu refresh & Photography Campaign
Client: Tao - Los Angeles (TAO GROUP HOSPITALITY)
Year: 2025
The process began with freehand sketches on paper, later refined digitally to preserve the irregularities and rhythm of the original lines. The intention was to create artwork that felt human, imperfect, and alive, in contrast with the polished precision of the typographic system.
These illustrations became a key storytelling layer, integrated across mediums: painted as large wall murals in the lounge, embossed on menus, printed on coasters, and used subtly in digital backgrounds.
Rather than functioning as decorative elements, they act as visual signatures — poetic interruptions that remind guests of the brand’s artistic soul and its connection to the sea as muse.
Picasso, Matisse, and the post-war French avant-garde. These continuous drawings reinterpret marine iconography — female profiles, oysters, waves — as abstract expressions of sensuality and flow.
Casual Funk
Le Velvet faced a tough business challenge: how do you open an easy-going, West Coast meets Mediterranean concept on a gritty Bushwick block without looking silly? The answer is in the details and the balance. The creative direction for Palmetto maintains and celebrates the patina of New York while drawing inspiration from art, design, and music from Léon to Lisbon, Madrid to Marrakech.