Ferlito’s Pizzeria Logo Design

Ferlito's has been a staple Italian restaurant in Grosse Pointe Woods for decades. When Chef Josh Mowen decided to open a dedicated carry-out pizzeria in Saint Clair Shores, he needed a brand identity that could stand on its own - without losing the connection to the restaurant families already knew and trusted. We developed a logo system built for day one and designed to scale if franchising enters the picture down the road.

The Challenge

Chef Josh wasn’t starting from scratch – and that actually made this harder. The original Ferlito’s Restaurant had decades of built-in recognition in the community. The new pizzeria would carry the family name but serve a different menu in a different city, with a more casual, grab-and-go feel. He needed the new brand to borrow enough equity from the original that it felt familiar, but carve out enough of its own identity to avoid confusion between the two. And with franchising on the horizon, whatever we built had to hold up well beyond a single location.

The Solution

We’d been working with Josh for years at that point, so we already had a deep understanding of what makes Ferlito’s feel like Ferlito’s. That history gave us a head start most branding projects don’t get. We pulled assets from materials we’d created for the original restaurant and rebuilt them into something new – keeping the signature script that longtime customers would recognize while pairing it with a bolder “PIZZERIA” treatment that shifts the tone toward casual and carry-out-friendly.

The checkered pattern and olive branch details are deliberate nods to classic Italian dining – visual shorthand that says “this place knows what it’s doing” before anyone reads a single word. We kept the palette to black and white so the brand stays clean and versatile across any application, from storefront signage to takeout packaging to social media.

The final deliverable package included the primary logo, a secondary wordmark for tighter spaces, and a full set of social media assets – everything Josh needed to launch the pizzeria with a consistent, professional presence from day one. More importantly, the brand system is modular enough that a second or third location could pick it up and run with it without any reinvention.