INTERVIEW
The Aisle
A fictional bar & restaurant created by David Huang
David joined Grand Matter in 2023 as part of this year's Future Makers roster. Often working from observation to inform his illustrations, he's now taken this one step further and imagined his very own concept bar & restaurant, The Aisle.
Influenced by his love for packaging, typopgraphic signage and the satisfying visual categorisation within a supermarket, David has designed this fictional venue with a strong ethos in mind, illustrating everything from the food and drinks menus through to marketing materials and campaign animations, all working together to create a distinct look & feel.
We spoke to him about the idea behind the concept, painting an evocative picture of who eats and drinks at The Aisle, and what spurred him on to create this self-initiated project.
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When you look around, you’ll see people dressed up from a night banquet, or people in their sweatshirts from a cinema next door. Some of them are gossiping with friends, some are enjoying their meal alone.
– David Huang
How would you describe the fictional world you've created, who do you imagine spends time there?
Imagine a bar tucked into the corner of an actual supermarket, with vibrant cushioned chairs and patterned countertops. The guests are plenty, and they come and go in the night like trolleys within narrow aisles. When you look around, you’ll see people dressed up from a night banquet, or people in their sweatshirts from a cinema next door. Some of them are gossiping with their friends, but some are just enjoying their meal alone.
Just a distance away, you can observe actual shoppers strolling, browsing and pushing along their metal trolleys along the laminated floors…
In the air, there are sounds of chit-chats, laughters, and martini glasses clinking. If you listen even closer, you can hear the string instruments playing out of an old speaker, strewn within the beeping sounds from the checkout scanners from afar.
Here, if you're feeling adventurous– you can order a kimchi martini, which is zesty and funky with a kick. Or, if you're feeling grand and festive– order the chopped steak, which is served on a TV dinner plate like you would see in the old Americana ads. Not in the mood for anything heavy? How about some terrifically cured olives?
Here, No matter who you are, you will be transformed to your favorite aisle, whether that’d be produce, tea, or meat.
Tell us about your inspiration and influences, what made you want to create this supermarket themed restaurant?
I started out as an illustrator mostly focusing on editorial and web illustrations. For the longest time, I thought that was what I was limited to, but recently, I started working on more advertising and branding jobs, and have been elated to see the power illustration has– richness and depth it can bring into different spaces, disciplines, and contexts; be it a record shop with all illustrated covers, a museum with illustrated brochures, or a taxi with an illustrated body, the possibilities are truly limitless.
I thought of doing all these things, but for this project I really wanted to focus on what I personally love, which is the hospitality industry. I truly believe that more restaurants should collaborate with illustrators. When good food is compounded with powerful visual identities and illustrations, they are transforming the dining experience into a multi-faceted adventure. Kind of like if you compare a '3D film' to a '4D film', the guests won’t be there to just enjoy the taste of the food, but rather, they’ll be wholly transformed into another space with exponentially more stories to tell.
For this, I created a supermarket themed bar and restaurant. Why, you ask?
I find the supermarket to be another fascinating space that I find relaxing– I love the way everything is laid out, by colors, categories, and price. I love seeing the different novelties, products and packaging. Visually, you are hit with so many colors and shapes. But also in the visual lexicon of American supermarkets, especially in the 1950’s, there is so much visual beauty I find in it– from the color scheme, the sign letterings, to the uniforms of the workers, it’s eye-catching and vibrant, with so much inspiration to be taken from.
I decided then it was going to be a supermarket themed restaurant/bar because I wanted to make a menu. As I say this, I’m imagining people holding, pointing and spilling drinks all over it! But that aside, this would be an establishment I would love to go myself, if it had existed in real life.
Credit
Were there any challenges, or anything you learned about your practice while working on it?
Yes, more than I thought actually. I’m very used to creating one stand-alone illustration, and a lot of challenges in this project come from creating multiple illustrations that must be tied to a unified system. While I was making and adding on each piece, I really had to consider how each illustration looked against one another and whether or not they all 'spoke the same language'. I also had to see how each element could be displayed in real life, whether that’d be a menu, a t-shirt, or a tote-bag, they all follow a different format. In the end, I had to learn to balance the see-saw of using many different formats, yet also keeping them within the same world.
Another challenge was lettering. I’ve been taking a pretty intensive type design course for the past year, and that has taught me a good amount about type and lettering, but I still have so much to learn. In this project, I decided to hand-letter the menu like a sign painter would, instead of typing it out, but it took forever, and I had to learn it as I lettered each character.
Can you talk us through your working process from start to finished piece?
I started out mainly with just a few spot illustrations (the ones you see on the tote bags), and the drawing of the imagined space (on the grey newsprint, below), from there I started building more assets relating to them.
It would've been really challenging to have everything all fleshed out at once, so this was a more solid approach for me. The project itself took a lot of patience. I’m generally a very fast drawer, and while I usually love to see and share my finished products as soon as possible, with the scale of this project, I couldn’t really say I was done until I had every single element fleshed out in the project.
About David Huang
David's illustrations feature figures, places and objects with use of bold colour and type. Having grown up in Taipei and San Francisco, David is particularly interested in exploring his identity as an immigrant through his illustration. Clients include The New York Times, Chobani, Quartz and Culture Trip.
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