Visually communicating certain ideas is a simple matter—for example, a type of business, or a particular product. However, ideas and tastes are a little more complicated to portray in a logo design. Many of the concepts that a logo designer is charged with communicating fall into this category—abstract, intangible, and difficult to communicate. However, an experienced logo design professional knows how to use colors, shapes, and other elements to show almost any type of feeling or idea. The following logo designs take on a rather difficult food concept – spiciness – and portray it well in a visual image.
Seoul Food Logo
A red chili pepper is all it takes to communicate heat to most of us! Here we see this vegetable, which is rarely considered a friendly object, formed into a spiral showing movement. This is all neatly packaged into a friendly circle that will make this Korean fusion restaurant seem a little more accessible to people unfamiliar with the style of cuisine. Clean, earthy greens offset the heat of the red color, while ultramodern writing gives a contemporary food logo. A tagline below promises that food from this restaurant will feed your ‘Seoul’ in addition to singing your palate.
The Spice Store Logo
This is one logo design that must walk a fine line, showcasing the flavor and heat of their spices while remaining friendly and accessible. The color scheme is the first hint at heat, but in warm colors that aren’t too intimidating. A friendly circle makes up the main image, while jagged edges give a homegrown feeling. The writing is in a rather standard font — again, the brand seems to be avoiding an overly exotic appearance—with a tagline below for those who are unfamiliar with the business.
Nacho Macho Logo
One thing that we all associate with nachos is a chip, and this chip is conveniently shaped into a triangle, giving a feeling of strength. The chip itself is a rather strong figure, with a fierce facial expression and a mustache formed from jalapeno peppers. Bold, upper case letters compliment the bold feeling. The warm, bold colors will remind most people of Mexican-American cuisine. In general, it is hard not to get the feeling that this restaurant offers spicy food, which is exactly the point of the restaurant logo.
Vito’s Kitchen Logo
Italian food is notoriously full of spice and bold colors, so an Italian logo design is perfect for this Italian restaurant. A marinara red makes up the background, while gold noodly lines make up the writing and the oval that enclose them. Red and yellow are colors associated with restaurants and food related business, so this is an appropriate color palette in a variety of ways. The writing is swirled and fluid to add an artisan feeling that will invite patrons to give a plate of Vito’s spicy pasta a try.
Macho Grill Spicy Logo
What could connote spiciness and heat more than actual flames? This spicy logo uses this device as well as a bold, “orangey” flame red. The ‘macho’ part of the name is represented by a square-jawed male figure wearing a hat and smoking a cigar. The name is written in brown, as black would have been too harsh, and in bold letters that add to the machismo and general heat of the image.
Spicy Horse Logo
There is no subtlety here—this spice logo design practically assaults you with its spiciness and heat. First, there is the color—a bright, bold, chili pepper red. The image of a horse with a terrified facial expression breathing flames further emphasizes the sentiment. Pointed elements, including sharp rays surrounding the image, add to a feeling of danger. The writing is also jagged, in upper case letters that seem to warn against the heat of this food. This logo design may be as spicy as it can get.
The Mayan Logo
This restaurant offers a more subtle, sophisticated sense of space, with a deep paprika red M against a classy black background. The M is formed to resemble a Mayan pyramid with steps up the side, tying into the name. The use of pyramid shapes adds a feeling of strength that, together with the color, gives an expectation of heat and exotic spice. However, the simplicity of the design keeps this spicy image from seeming cheap or generic.
Magma Hot Sauce Logo
This spicy logo design has a sense of heat and playful fun that come from a bright juvenile orange color combined with a bubbly image borrowed from lava lamps. This lava lamp image is reminiscent of warmth—the lamps must be hot enough to melt wax in order to function—but it also ties into the name. Ditto for orange—not only is it associated with youth, it is representative of flames and heat as well. Few things on this planet are as hot as magma, so the message is that this sauce is not for the faint of heart.
Basa Modern Vietnamese Logo
This logo design may have the subtlest implication of heat we have seen so far, but it is nonetheless there. The name of the restaurant is written in friendly rounded lower case letters that pop against a sophisticated black background. Information about the restaurant is written below in upper case wording that adds a serious feeling. A red wave above the wording appears to be hand painted, hinting at foreign spice and handmade quality.
Spicy Leaves Indian Cuisine Logo
Few people associate cool green leaves logos with spiciness, but some leaves indeed carry heat and flavor that can be used in cooking. This restaurant decided to use these leaves as a name and a logo image, but that created the problem of creating a sense of heat from an object that most people associate with coolness. The answer, in this case, was to put the green leaf against a bold red background and add wording in a scrawled font. We can guess even without reading the wording that these leaves carry some heat, making this a very effective logo design.