Dine Brands / Applebee’s

Applebee’s has over 1,500 restaurants in the U.S. The Applebees brand is proud of the fact that they are a “neighborhood favorite”, and that each restaurant tries to do something to personalize their interior. They came to us to revamp and create graphics that the entire restaurant chain could utilize. The Applebees corporation wanted a way to customize the graphics, but also make the artwork consistent from one location to the next. One tradition from the past was to use photographs of locals and also neighborhood sports teams to make people feel at home. This created extensive usage problems, in addition to the imagery becoming immediately dated and also polarizing. We suggested using highly stylized illustration to solve the problem. It was a hit with the client. To solve the problem of customized artwork, we suggested creating base art that would have brand and regional cues, but still be editable enough to swap out a portion of the imagery with specific local information and imagery. We created a variety of editable artwork that works well on several different types of substrates: from wood to large scale vinyl murals. The artwork we created artwork that would work well on anything from printed posters to large scale vinyl or wood murals. The artwork we created is used to enhance the entrance of the restaurant, the waiting areas and the bar.