From the archives
More clover references
5 August, 2008: Here are a bunch of pictures of clovers I’ve collected over the past several months. Read More
From the archives
Environmental influences
5 August, 2008: Moving away from graphic references to designing the space, here are some thoughts I’ve had about the feelings I’m looking to evoke. I’m really excited about the truck design, because I think a ton of this will come through thanks to John and Jinhee and everyone else helping make it happen. You should expect to see more… Read More
From the archives
Egg and eggplant nutritionals
22 April, 2010: At long last. I remembered to take a picture of one of you with the egg and eggplant sandwich. Now I can post the nutritionals. Sorry it took so long. Not as though we sell a couple hundred of these each day or anything… The egg and eggplant is a middle eastern sandwich. As with most of… Read More
From the archives
Texture
5 August, 2008: My ideas for texture flow from the aspirations for the brand. Like nature, textures found in Clover should reveal a history. Note the process marks on the potato print. You can see where the ink lay down in the printing process. Note the patterns of the Clover flower and leaves. They are ordered, but not perfectly ordered.… Read More
From the archives
Color palettes
5 August, 2008: I don’t know which if any of these we’ll end up using, but these are my first take at defining Clover’s colors. I spent too much time looking through aisles of stores, looking through magazines, etc. before I realized that the proper place for Clover’s inspiration to come from is nature. And there are some fantastic references… Read More
From the archives
Clover sound lab
5 August, 2008: During one of my early conversations with Erik Joule he asked: “what will Clover sound like?” I thought it was a great question and spent a bunch of time thinking it through. For a while I was thinking country/bluegrass-influenced contemporary music (I was liking some country and the latest Black Keys album at the time). And while… Read More
From the archives
Aspirations and fears for the Clover Brand
5 August, 2008: I scribbled down my goals for the brand a few months ago. Here they are: Long-term aspiration: Clover comes to define a lifestyle centered around a new cuisine and positive conscientious relationship to food Make Clover first place that comes to mind when people think of light/healthy/conscientious/organic food Allow consideration more broadly (e.g., squeeze into their minds… Read More
From the archives
Cutting a perfect 1″ radius round end on plywood
4 October, 2008: We’ve been puzzling about how to cut the radius on the ends of the plywood. I came up with this simple jig shown above. Basically I just put a stop on the bottom of a plywood board, left a bit of room, and ran it against the sander until it was just short of the sander band.… Read More
From the archives
Why the name “Clover”?
3 August, 2008: Alex Kazaks gets credit for the name. Asa (my sister) made a puppet for Clementine, a horse, and had named the puppet Clover. Alex said, hey, how about that for a name for the restaurant. We all liked it, I tested it, and here we are. Why did we like it? Here are my top reasons: Speaks… Read More
From the archives
Puddle of sunlight
2 August, 2008: (painting is by Vilhelm Hammershoi, a danish painter from the early 1900s) So this is where the visual identity for Clover begins: a puddle of sunlight. A place you want to move towards/ sit under. When people think of it they want to take a deep breath through their nose, the creases around their eyes relax a… Read More
From the archives
Visual identity introduction
1 August, 2008: This tag (visual identity) is dedicated to the evolution of Clover’s visual identity. We could call this “brand,” but I really think it’s more accurately about the visual manifestation of the brand. If we’re successful, the clover brand will be defined by the product, personal interactions with staff, and a philosophy as much as by the concrete visual… Read More