Branding Overview: Hideaway Pizza, Tulsa OK
Services Provided
I was contracted as principal designer for Hideaway Pizza, Inc. of Tulsa, Oklahoma, from 2010-2025. I worked under 4 different marketing directors as the principal and sole designer for most of that period. Hideaway Pizza was founded in 1957 and quickly grew into a successful chain of restaurants under new ownership in the 1990s. The initial branding reflected the original counterculture, college-friendly restaurant near OSU, and the new ownership was moving more towards a family-friendly, community scene.
BRANDING
- Visual consistency across all materials printed and digital media, advertising, in-house, signage, display w,eb, and social media.
- Modernizing the logo and mascot, “Kahuna.”
- The ‘New’ Hideaway — Developing and maintaining a minimalist palette of fonts and colors.
- ‘Retro’ Hideaway — Cultural references, like the ubiquitous tie-dye adorning Hideaway staff, to the early 1960s when the original Hideaway was founded.
MERCH
- Collector’s Cups are very popular with diners
- T-Shirt Designs: the Van Halen and Metallica-inspired shirts I created have been the most asked-for/popular amongst Hideaway servers and staff
- Miscellaneous one-offs or occasional collector’s items like refrigerator magnets, keychains
SIGNAGE
- Including billboards and custom neon sign design.
- Table and counter displays
- Billboards — always emphasizing the minimalistic branded palette of 3 colors (including the foundational Hideaway Red)
- Building Signage — Early in my experience with Hideaway, when a new restaurant opened, it would get a unique sign design. And we would brainstorm the idea, and I would create to scale the artwork that would in turn go to the sign maker.
- Look of the Signs — The signage references neon signs of the early 1960s, which made for fun, simple, distinctive retro-looking signage. As the company grew, it established more of a replicable template, not only in signage but also in the architecture of newly built restaurants.
MENUS
- Main Menu — Design, illustration, layout. The menu always included cutout photos of every pizza. The collage motif invites staff to submit photos to be collaged into menu covers. This style has been a branding element of the company since its origins in the early 1960s and is retained to this day
- Takeout Menu, Bar Menu, Bar Recipe Cards
- Children’s – Menu — 4 new menus every 2-3 years. I was responsible for all production, including concept, illustration, all content, all game creation, layout, design, and typesetting.
CAMPAIGNS
- Cultural touchstones — Hideaway would often invoke and invite connection to cultural touchstones or milestones, like Bob Ross of the PBS art series, mountain climbing, or the Sasquatch (re-imagined as Kahuna Squatch)
- Campaigns were wrapped into merch like T-Shirts
- Commemorative Cups and Children’s Menus
- Social media video shorts
- In 15 years, there were quite a few one-offs, which are always fun to create and collect. Anything and everything
