ALVE ARAF

Heisenburg

Services
  • Art Direction
  • Brand Identity
  • Visual System
Year
2025
A woman holds a Heisenburg burger against a green background beside the white geometric wordmark and yellow burger-form character.

Built to stay recognizable when everything around it changes.

Heisenburg was founded by five friends and entered a crowded fast-food category. The identity needed to work across physical and digital touchpoints, including signage, menus, uniforms, packaging, social media, promotional communication and outdoor media.

We focused on a small set of recognizable cues that could remain consistent as formats changed, rather than reinventing the brand for every application.

The challenge

Fast-food communication is crowded with product photography, promotional messages and familiar visual conventions. Heisenburg needed a clear identity without exaggerating its difference from the category.

A new brand can look distinctive in one execution and still lose recognition when the format changes. The challenge was to build an identity that could survive across storefronts, menus, uniforms, packaging, social communication and outdoor media.

Observation
People encounter restaurant brands through separate, repeated touchpoints rather than studying the complete identity system at once.
Hypothesis
If the same small set of distinctive visual cues survives across those encounters, familiarity and recognition should become easier to build.
Design response
We reduced the identity to a narrow visual vocabulary that could repeat across changing applications without requiring identical layouts.
Heisenburg wordmark construction diagram showing its geometric letter structure and integrated burger-form character.

Building recognition

We made the name the primary recognition device.

The custom geometric wordmark carries the brand's personality instead of depending on a detached generic icon.

The burger-form character interrupts the rhythm of the lettering while remaining integrated with the wordmark. The letter g contains a subtle reference to the five founders behind the brand.

Heisenburg visual language board showing the green, yellow and black palette, burger-form character, starburst and vertical-line devices.

A small set of repeatable cues

The visual system deliberately uses a limited vocabulary:

  • Custom geometric wordmark
  • Burger-form character
  • Green
  • Yellow
  • Black
  • Starburst device
  • Vertical-line device
  • Direct food photography

The layouts could change while the recognition cues stayed consistent. This gave promotional communication room to adapt without requiring the brand to look identical everywhere.

Animated Heisenburg wordmark and burger-form character.

A brand system only matters if it survives outside the identity presentation.

We applied the same visual structures across business cards, uniforms, packaging, menus, social media and environmental communication.

Heisenburg green business cards arranged across black metal bars, showing the geometric wordmark and yellow starburst.
Heisenburg green staff apron with the white wordmark beside the yellow burger-form character in a black starburst.
Heisenburg application collage showing storefront signage, burger photography, green packaging and a branded shirt.
Several hands share a burger beneath the white Heisenburg wordmark and yellow vertical-line device.
Heisenburg menu board on a green background showing the wordmark, food categories and item pricing.

Same cues. More freedom.

Promotional communication needed more visual energy than the core identity. We used starbursts, larger typography and direct food photography so individual executions could change while the palette and recurring graphic devices maintained continuity.

Four Heisenburg social campaign designs using green, yellow, black, food photography, starbursts and direct headlines.
Large Heisenburg outdoor billboard spanning a city wall with burger, packaging, drink and fries imagery in the green and yellow system.

One identity, recognizable across every scale.

Credits

Emran Hasan