HOT CHI NAMING AND VISUAL IDENTITY



Client: Hot Chi
Studio: Span
Design Direction: Nick Adam
Design: Nick Adam, Avery Branen
Scope: Identity Design, Lettering
Hot Chi is a Chicago-style, Nashville-inspired, hot chicken in Chicago’s Chatham neighborhood. Life-long South-siders Amer, Mutaz, and Kinan have long had a passion to feed communities. When Chatham lost what was widely considered the best fried chicken franchise in Chicago, the brothers decided to step up

Span created the name Hot Chi, a play on their specialty, hot chicken, while at the same time embracing Chicago’s nick-name Chi-Town. Hot Chi is simple, memorable, and screams Chicago-style hot chicken.

Made up of two 3-letter words, the name itself is a graphic strategy making the two terms perfectly stackable. This enabled Nick Adam’s custom lettering to be drawn with equal widths, so the ‘O’ can center and get lit up. Our visual approach transformed the typographic to iconographic. We created a mascot to emphasize a fun and approachable personality. The mascot is often seen eating an ice cream cone, a direct rendering of the restaurant’s offerings — Chicken and Cones.


LET’S WORK TOGETHER

REACH OUT: NICK@SPAN.STUDIO


This website incudes the curriculum vitae and a portfolio of projects Nick Adam lead, directed, and/or designed.
Much of the work was collaboratively designed in the internationally-awarded design studios of Span, Thrist, and Firebelly.
Some of these projects are personal explorations and some can be found in the permentant collection of museusms.


︎ ENJOY THE DAY ︎ COPYRIGHT 2022 NICK ADAM ︎