A Barcelona native with a renowned Japanese restaurant in Singapore, Chef Pepe Moncayo’s first Washington, DC, restaurant combines Spanish techniques with Japanese flavor profiles. An ambitious concept in a large footprint, Cranes must appeal to a range of visitors, from the avid food lovers to the tourists, the political set to the office happy hour crowd, the theater-goers to the night-on-the-towners. Our strategy was to create a world-class, yet not exclusive, and inventive, yet approachable identity. We drew connections between the two cultures without obvious tropes, vertical typography alludes to Japanese writing while only appearing in English, circles relate to the rising sun of Japan and the polka dotted dresses of flamenco dancers, shapes and slivers of forms reference Japanese pottery repair and Spanish mosaic tiles. The greys in the palette complement the interior while the crimson pops in the space keeping things energetic without getting too serious.