The Post Wine & Tapas Bar

Zanzibar was a popular port and trade location visited by foreign traders for hundreds of years. This meant that all sorts of technology arrived early there.

The first color television station in sub-Saharan Africa was in Zanzibar. By 1906, Stone Town had electric street lights, long before London.

Zanzibar also had early access to photography equipment in the 1800s. Vintage postcards were a wonderful source of inspiration for the brand. I also used pieces of authentic old Zanzibari letters and stamps throughout the design.

I designed the postcards to have several uses. They serve as advertisements both on and off-island. Because the location is so difficult to find, I used an archival street view image and incorporated directions into the design.

A newspaper-style menu adds to the brand experience. I used the cover space to tell the history of the building and of tapas. The Post is the first tapas restaurant in Zanzibar, so most local clients had never heard of them.

The menu also works as an advertisement. Stone Town is full of on-foot tourists seeking places to eat. Piles of The Post “newspaper” can be found in tourist information hubs, strewn around town, and even on other restaurants tables. Customers are also encouraged to leave with a menu as souvenirs or to use as a takeaway menu.

With over 70 wines, some of which are available by the glass, it was a challenge to come up with a way to display them clearly. Descriptions were carefully edited to balance the sentence length. Infographics and columns were strategically used so that the customer could clearly understand the menu at-a-glance.