Bon Appétit is where food and culture meet. The award-winning No. 1 food lifestyle brand covers food through the lens of cooking, fashion, travel, technology, design, and home. Every year thousands of restaurants open in America—and Bon Appétit’s editors scour the country in search of their Hot Ten: an annual list of the best new restaurants. The Hot Ten is a treasured feature by Bon Appétit and is historically accompanied by events and parties celebrating the nominees for that year.

For the 2017 Hot Ten Campaign, my creative team at Condé Nast was tasked with evolving the visual identity for the annual feature to market the release of the Hot Ten Issue and any events connected to it. Our objective was to capture a bold and fluid design system that would translate effectively to marketing touchpoints such as sponsored social media campaigns, emails, print spreads, and website features.

Based on our brief, what resulted from the 2017 Hot Ten Campaign was a playful system that captured the unique quality of each restaurant through quirky type with custom animated letterforms, bold color stories coordinating with geo-specific restaurant highlights, and the usage of high-contrast food and lifestyle photography capturing each city’s highlighted establishment. 



This system was used and translated across all marketing touchpoints and acted as a delightful moment for readers to experience in tandem with the annually awaited feature.