Red Robin is an American casual dining restaurant chain founded in 1969 in Seattle. Today, the company is headquartered in Greenwood Village, Colorado. To date, more than 500 Red Robin restaurants have opened in both the United States and Canada. The chain’s restaurants specialize in gourmet burgers and pay great attention to the quality of the products used.
Meaning and history
Red Robin was founded in 1969 in Seattle, Washington by a man named Gerry Kingen. The unusual name of the chain is a tribute to its roots. The fact is that the first Red Robin restaurant was opened on the site of an establishment bought by Gerry called Sam’s Tavern and owned by Samuel Caston, who sang in an amateur quartet and loved the song “When the Red, Red Robin.”
Since then, more than half a century has passed and from one humble restaurant, Red Robin has grown into an entire chain, with more than 500 locations not only in the United States but also in Canada. Red Robin is a restaurant that mainly specializes in delicious burgers and sandwiches. And their mainstay is bottomless French fries, fries in unlimited quantities.
The menu of Red Robin restaurants is very diverse, and in addition to the line of burgers, here you can find grilled dishes, all kinds of appetizers, as well as a wide range of desserts.
At Red Robin, they focus primarily on the quality of service, ingredients, and burger making. They also love their visitors, especially their children. There are always tablets on every table in the Red Robin restaurant chain to entertain the younger guests while they are waiting for their orders.
In terms of visual identity, Red Robin is a warm and friendly brand, that has always stuck to the same color scheme for its logos, despite repeated redesigns. And this color palette of a graphical representation of the company’s name.
1969 – 1984
The original Red Robin logo, designed in 1969, has stayed with the company for the first 15 years of its history. It was a solid red geometric banner with triangular cut-outs on the right, where the bold white lettering was written in the uppercase of a stable serif font, and accompanied by a black tagline set across a long white ribbon with rounded ends.
1984 – 1997
The redesign of 1984 introduced a completely different concept for the logo of the chain. It was a roundel with an image of the new company’s mascot, a bird named Red, drawn in the center. The emblem featured a wide yellow frame, where the name of the brand was written in bold red capitals around the perimeter.
1997 – 2009
Another version of the Red Robin logo was created in 1997 and it was significantly different from previous versions. It was a bold serif lettering in bright red, written in two diagonal levels against a white background with a slanted and stretched yellow oval on it. The inscription was strengthened by the black ribbons with the white additional lettering on them.
2009 – 2015
In 2009 all elements of the Red Robin logo were refined and emboldened, with the red inscription gaining black shadowing, two black ribbons turning into one, and the white additional lettering shortened and rewritten in thinner lines but with a more modern sans-serif typeface, which looked professional and progressive.
2015 – Today
The redesign of 2015 has significantly changed Red Robin’s visual identity. The new concept is based on smooth custom lettering, set in the title case characters of a bright red color against a plain white background and accompanied by a dark red swoosh on top. The composition is completed by a bold yellow tagline written at the bottom of the badge in the narrowed capitals of a strong geometric sans-serif typeface.
Font and color
The bold and smooth lettering from the primary logo of the Red Robin Brand is set in a custom sans-serif typeface with softened bars and slightly italicized shapes of the playful characters.
As for the color palette of the Red Robin visual identity, it is based on two shades of red and an intense hue of yellow, the king, and joyful colors which evoke a sense of happiness and friendliness, showing the main values of the chain.