The Commune Social
Tapas · Dessert · Bar
Within an established house.
The Commune Social — a Jason Atherton restaurant in Shanghai's Jing'An district, with interiors by Neri&Hu — operates on an established brand identity. Narudol was commissioned to extend that identity into specific surfaces: a placemat menu and an Easter event poster, supported by food photography and retouching.
Coherent, never repeated.
The brief was short, and built on trust — stay well within the brand, but never repeat it. Coherence without fatigue: fidelity that still reads alive.
The menu becomes the table.
The menu was set as a placemat — a single landscape sheet that doubles as the table surface. Dishes arrive on top of it; the menu becomes part of the setting, not an object handed over and taken back. The format suits a room built for sharing: informal in posture, exact in detail.
The brand's fixed signals were held without negotiation — the house blue, the engraved mark, the SOCIaL wordmark, the dotted rule, the bilingual setting. Movement entered only where it earned a place: a brunch seal for the occasion, and a quiet row of QR codes for Wi-Fi, digital menu, and Weibo — utility folded in without disturbing the composure of the page.
For Easter, the register loosened. The weekend runs at midday, framed for families, so the poster was allowed to read younger — a repeated hare, a lighter rhythm. The shift stayed accountable: a new subject drawn in the brand's existing engraving, printed on kraft whose texture quotes the raw, reclaimed surfaces of the room. The blue and the wordmark held, so the warmth never left the brand.
In support of the image.
On the photography, the role was support — assisting on set, retouching in post. The images carry the house standard: warm, close, plated between casual and exact.