A Brand Experience for UChicago's newest restaurant: Truth Be Told
- Services
- Identity & Visual Systems
- Naming
- Environments
- Service Design
By way of a name and visual identity system, we blended the warmth and energy of an English countryside tavern with the contemplative nature of a prestigious academic institution for Study Hotel's newest food and beverage destination on UChicago's campus. Specifically, we embraced what makes gathering and enjoying a satisfying meal all the more interesting—candid conversation.
Truth Be Told signifies intelligence, vulnerability, and candidness. It's an interjection—an expression used when someone reveals a fact or opinion they might otherwise hold back. It embodies the idea of this place being "a crucible for confronting ideas," as articulated by UChicago Chancellor Robert Zimmer and invites conversation and exchange. It also pays homage to the undoubted irreverence of conventional tavern names.
The Manifesto
You could argue that it started before human-like ways of thinking emerged. The quest for verity—it started before the spoken word and the written word, long before conventional exchange. Our collective quest for the truth, for seeking out some discernible rationale for all things, is something written deep in our cells. A potent element of what makes us, us.
But that doesn't mean the search for a finite definition of the truth hasn't severely challenged some the greatest thinkers known to humankind. Still, after hundreds of thousands of years, "truth" refuses to be pinned down. A driver of contemporary discourse—how do we define the thing?
Could we ever possibly agree on a single definition of truth? And regardless of whether or not we could—how do we actively employ our individual understanding of "truth" as we operate in the world? In our academic endeavors? Is it always absolute or is it a simply a figment of our individual perspectives?
Quite frankly, we think the truth is grey. It's forever human, forever fluid. But it is living.
"The truth" could be a hearty meal shared with the best of friends over a pint and good lore. It could be a book, fiction or nonfiction alike, that takes you somewhere new. I's conversation. It's body language. It's a gestural mark made by someone professing something that may have wanted to keep to themselves but felt so compelled to write down and share.
Truth, in all of its forms, is an interjection. A disruption of clarity that cuts through the noise of life. It's you, reading this letter from us all at The Study, in this place. Thinking and eating and drinking and enriching your experience with brand new memories. And to that, we say "cheers."
