Gruff was appointed to design the fit-out and shop-front for Brickfields, a cocktail bar in London. The client owned a successful family-friendly restaurant and was looking to expand and establish a new bar nearby with a more intimate and sophisticated feel and a late licence - a venue which, before Brickfields, didn’t really exist in the area. Gruff were excited to take on the task of reconfiguring and refurbishing both the interior and exterior as well as developing a brand for Brickfields, in particular focusing on the design and fabrication of the bar. As designers and fabricators, Gruff worked with the client to develop a unique branding for the bar. We were keen to subtly reference the industrial history of the area from which the name Brickfields came whilst refraining from using visible bricks in the design itself. The brick ‘frog’ [an indentation in one or more of the bed surfaces of the brick] became the main inspiration for the branding and barfront design. The client wanted the bar itself to become a bespoke feature. The bar references traditional leather quilted bars by repeating the indent of the ‘frog’ along the wooden panelled front. We designed and fabricated the bar in-house using our workshop facilities to mill and stain the panels and cast the concrete corner plinth. The ‘frog’ became a repeated graphic which pervaded into other elements of our branding design such as the bevelled Brickfields font, cast bronze bag hooks, embossed food + drinks menus and tip trays.