Logostarter Brief

I have been challenged to choose a project from Kickstarter.com that interests me, and create a logo/brand for said project. Kickstarter has a large amount of ridiculous ideas, so finding one that was both interesting and realistic was time consuming. I have decided to brand a restaurant called 'Nomad', located in Vancouver BC, Canada. The concept is based around fresh local ingredients, some of which are even foraged, enforcing the idea of sustainability etc, which Vancouver is known for; aspiring to be the greenest city in the world by 2020. It also has the 4th highest quality to living in the world, so designs must reflect quality and try to stay away from certain cliches.

My research started by looking into the company and what it wants to project about itself- sustainability, local produce, healthy menus and interesting food/cocktails. I viewed the location on google maps and noticed that it is right next to a busy dual carriage way, so having a shop front identity which is attention grabbing to motorists is important.

I also looked into the name itself, 'Nomad', the definition of which is 'A member of a people that travels from plane to plane to find fresh pasture for its animals, and has no permanent home. From this, ideas for imagery began to emerge, such as livestock, caravans, yurts/tents etc.
I need to decide whether i will use a style that reflects this, with rustic typefaces or historical serifs etc, or go down a more juxtaposing style using modern typefaces and clean cut imagery which reflects more on the city of Vancouver than the ideals of the restaurant.

This is the current logo for Nomad. I hate this logo for a number of reasons. The first being the distressed typeface. It has no connations of food or nomadic themes and looks painfully unprofessional. Next is the imagery which is way too complicated and cliche. I dislike the way it's placement elevates the rest of the text and makes it annoying to read.

Another restaurant called Nomad can be found in Shepard's Bush, and uses this logo, which is arguably even worse. the painfully uncreative imagery with the ugly typeface make for a typeface which is far too complicated, uses strange dimensions and won't work well in black and white.

Logo Inspiration-

I've been looking on blogs to find ideas and inspiration, mainly on From up North and Pinterest.

The problem is making the logo memorable. This means finding an equilibrium between creative and impactful. It should also look as unique as possible. An image logo I think would be a bad idea, as a restaurant isn't something you visit enough for an image to be remembered unless it's a chain restaurant. This means I should focus on the word Nomad and try to form a logo based around that.