Creative Graphics

A complete makeover with CorelDRAW® 12Graphics Suite helps Toronto pub growits business"CorelDRAW has been the creative hub
for this makeover, and we couldn’t bemore pleased.”
Oliver Lutkiewicz
Owner
The Yellow Griffin

When business owner
Oliver Lutkiewicz decided
to give his downtown
Toronto pub, the Yellow
Griffin, a makeover with anew menu, new storefront
and new flyers, he didn’t
want to pay a design firma ton of money to do it.
He knew what he wanted,
and decided to design thenew collateral himself.
Armed with an updated
marketing strategy andCorelDRAW Graphics
Suite 12 he was able toquickly design all thepieces and successfullylaunch the new look ofhis pub.

The Yellow Griffin Pub is a bustling restaurant &pub in the Bloor Street West Village in downtown
Toronto. The owner, Oliver Lutkiewicz, works as an
economist in the federal government in Ottawa andruns the family business with his mom, Maria
Lutkiewicz, and seven employees. Oliver travels toToronto every weekend to catch up on what’s goingon, and help out on busy Fridays and Saturdays.
“We’ve operated The Yellow Griffin for about 5years and decided to update the front of thebuilding and all our marketing materials in an
attempt to re-brand the pub with a more upscale
and modern look,” explains Oliver Lutkiewicz.
Before the recent update, The Yellow Griffin Pub
was a well-run restaurant, but not a very focused
operation from a brand perspective. Several
different versions of the logo could be found on thestorefront sign, menus, glasses, and flyers etc. Themarketing messages were created ad hoc for eachpiece, and there was no cohesive marketing plan inplace.
“We needed a tighter marketing strategy to adapt
to the new face of Bloor Street West,” says OliverLutkiewicz. “That’s when we came up with a newconsistent look, a new storefront, a revampedmenu, new staff shirts etc. We also introduced our
new tagline, the best burgers on bloor, with thirtyfive different and innovative burgers on the menu.”“I don’t have a background in graphic design, but I
knew pretty much what kind of look I was goingfor”, says Oliver Lutkiewicz. “The name The Yellow
Griffin is established in the Bloor Street West Village
and I wanted to keep the essential image of a
Griffin in the logo, but I also wanted to create an
updated version of the brand where all the pieces®

spoke with one voice. A unified approach where weused the same fonts, the same colors and the samemodern look and feel.”
As a relative newcomer to digital design software,
Oliver needed a program that was easy enough touse, yet had enough power to let even a novice
create professional-looking designs.
“I picked up a copy of CorelDRAW and started toplay around with it,” he recollects. “I quickly got thebasic concepts of how to add text, shapes andimages, and I put together a flyer for our 80’s nightin no time. I was particularly pleased to notice howeasy it was to add a copy of the logo in thebackground and reduce the opacity to awatermark.”
Every week, Oliver travels between his work inOttawa and the restaurant in Toronto by train. The
benefit of traveling the 450 kilometers each way bytrain quickly became evident, as it gave him overfour hours, twice a week, to work on the newmarketing material on his laptop.
“A key aspect of this project was to update thefront of the restaurant with a new awning and I
came up with an idea in CorelDRAW that worked
really well. I had all the measurements ready andentered the correct size in a new DRAW document.
It couldn’t be easier. I worked with Roberts Awnings& Signs here in Toronto to create the new canvas
awning over the front entrance and the final result
looks great.”
Most sign-makers are prepared to handle native.CDR files in their workflow, so Oliver sent them theoriginal DRAW file, with all text converted to curves
to avoid any potential font issues.

"One of the reasons
this project has beensuccessful is that it’s
so easy to reuse all
the basic materials inCorelDRAW for
different documents"

The new menu was also created from scratch inCorelDRAW. Managing the text layout in acomprehensive menu featuring 35 burgers withdetailed descriptions of the ingredients, two-dozenside orders, desserts and kids items, can be adaunting task. By using the Paragraph Style Editor inCorelDRAW 12, a user can define all aspects of text
properties, such as typeface, size, leading, indent,alignment etc, and save the Style in the Style list. By
simply updating the style guide, all the paragraphs
in the document will be updated automatically. This
makes it easy to see what the menu would look likein a different font without having to update eachparagraph separately.

a resolution independent vector file, which means it
can be used on everything from 2x2-inch coasters to
a 20-foot banner without losing quality.

“In the old days I used to do flyers in Microsoft®
Word and Excel, so the new materials lookabsolutely incredible in comparison. Our new look
has received quite a bit of attention in theneighborhood, and it’s only been two weeks since
we launched.”

One of the most concrete signs that the Yellow
Griffin facelift has had an impact in the Bloor Street
West Village, is that the competition is taking
notice.

According to Oliver, one of the reasons this project
has been successful is that it’s so easy to reuse all
the basic materials in CorelDRAW for differentdocuments. They’ve standardized on certain colors
and fonts for the different pieces, and all materials
look like they’re part of the same family. The logo isBefore®

To find out more about this product or
any other Corel product, please visit
www.corel.com or call 1-800-772-6735.

© 2005 Corel Corporation. All rights reserved. 04/05 JB#328“CorelDRAW has been the creative hub for thismakeover, and we couldn’t be more pleased,” says
Oliver Lutkiewicz.
Does the new menu live up to the tagline the best
burgers on bloor?
“Absolutely. No question about it. I haven’t tried all
thirty-five yet, but yesterday I had a Hickory Stickand I got so excited it took me well over an hour tocalm down. Man, those caramelized onions aredelicious!”“We’re in direct competition with five or six otherpubs in the neighborhood and I noticed that thechefs from the other places were in here four daysin a row last week. I guess they’re trying to figureout what we’ve been up to, and copy our marketingstrategy,” he says and laughs.
Note: The Griffin is a mythological creature with the head and wingsof an eagle, and the body and legs of a lion.

After