A table with personality.

The visual decision

A vivid restaurant poster in tomato and butter yellow. Big, rounded type provides the confidence; real platters and bread provide the appetite. The original illustrated logo and folk strip belong to Desaga and give the page a recognizable visual vocabulary.

The opening is a single composed table scene. Food is shown generously, then a bread chapter changes the pace. A deep garden green marks the choice between a Cluj meal and a Topa outing.

These are proposed web colors, developed from the red, yellow and green in the existing illustrated identity. They are not a claim about an existing official brand palette.

The face mosaic brings the illustration’s brighter blue, green, yellow and white into one chapter. The field arrangement uses those source colors while the original contours remain red.

Type with an appetite

Bricolage Grotesque brings an expressive, rounded rhythm to short Romanian headlines. Hanken Grotesk keeps navigation and practical details calm and clear. Both are served locally under their SIL Open Font Licenses.

Every Bricolage treatment now renders in lowercase, including menu choices, venue headings and dynamic dialogs. The headline weight, optical size and width are deliberately tuned. The original Desaga wordmark remains artwork, rather than being replaced with a similar font.

Font sources: Google Fonts / Bricolage Grotesque and Hanken Grotesk.

The illustration becomes a system

The original faces, lettering and folk border are reused as native SVG artwork. The clean wordmark anchors navigation; the faces welcome guests in the menu and at the shared-table invitation. The folk line separates chapters without adding another visual language.

These are extracted pieces of Desaga’s existing artwork, not new approximations. The opening keeps the complete original illustrated logo. Individual elements can scale from a small interface detail to a large brand composition without losing their edge.

The hanging-cloth outline now frames photographs and small illustrations with bowed edges and looped corner ties. The original logo’s table-setting and botanical details now appear as carefully sized illustration panels. The table-setting and botanical panels keep their original colors and move gently as whole compositions. Before the location introduction, three offset rows of the original vector faces fill an entire mosaic chapter with no space above or below. Blue, green, yellow and white from the artwork fill the original face-shaped planes. Each row starts with a short story and its own photograph: shared food, bread from the Hida bakery, and time with family or friends. The text panels leave toward alternating sides as the photos move; the middle row travels in the opposite direction. The red contours and colored fields stay fixed. A compact exit link remains over the mosaic. The earlier polygon background shapes have been removed. These are layout crops of existing artwork, not redrawn illustrations or newly extracted vector masters.

Explore the reusable Desaga artwork ↗

A page that follows your appetite

1. The table opens. The platter photograph widens as the visitor scrolls, while the food moves inside its frame. The page keeps ordinary vertical navigation.
2. The posters assemble. Headline lines rise at slightly different speeds, following scroll progress. Every word keeps the same typeface and weight; the movement comes from the composition.
3. The folk line travels. Desaga’s original illustrated border moves sideways with the page. Reverse the scroll and it reverses too.
4. Food has depth. The large platter settles into place, the zacuscă photograph opens, and the bread composition gently turns above a counter-moving “PITĂ.” The footer wordmark rises to finish the sequence.

GSAP and ScrollTrigger control these sequences. Lenis smooths wheel movement on desktop; phones retain native scrolling with shorter animation travel. One bounded mosaic chapter holds the faces still while its three photographs move left, right and left. The opening story panels slide aside to reveal more of the artwork. A thin line shows progress, and “Găsește-ți locul” moves directly to the restaurant choices. The chapter releases naturally at the end. The hold is shorter on narrow screens and removed when motion is paused or reduced. Short landscape windows keep an ordinary scrolling story layout.

The controls feel tactile. Buttons fill with the brand colors as their arrows travel; a press gives a short physical response. Text links redraw their underlines, and food photographs gently enlarge inside their existing frames. These effects respond to a mouse, reverse naturally on exit and do not turn decorative images into false links.

Hovering a mosaic row reveals a large lowercase poftă, pită or împreună, with a brief upward entrance and a gentle photograph zoom. The opening copy clears behind the word. Each row links to its food, bakery or gathering chapter; keyboard focus reveals the same word immediately, and touch follows the link directly.

The three stories use proposed Romanian copy informed by Desaga’s own Hida bakery and Ardeal food story and Topa family and friends story, rechecked on 8 September 2026. The wording is adapted for this design, not quoted.

Changing restaurant copy has a short directional wipe: the heading, description, address, hours and booking label follow the selected location together. Copy and destinations update immediately, with no delayed booking state.

The footer provides a motion pause. The operating system’s reduced-motion preference restores the still composition. Information and actions remain visible, and menu, venue choice and booking handoffs remain available.

References that informed the direction

Mister Pio is the most relevant lesson: the physical restaurant identity can become a complete digital world. Desaga uses its own illustrated faces, ceramics and food, with its own color and type.

Tripletta informed the confidence of a restaurant group’s identity. Suzaku is a reference for giving food preparation its own visual chapter.

These are design references, not evidence of better conversion. No reference-site imagery, branding or commercial claims are used in the prototype. The full reference audit is in the project research folder.

What can be reviewed now

• A complete animated homepage direction for desktop and phone, with menu, venue choice, reservation handoff and private-table enquiry states.
• Menu links point to the restaurant’s existing July 2026 Cluj and Topa PDFs. No fictional prices or dietary claims are added.
• IaLoc remains the reservation provider: Cluj 4191, Topa Mică 4475. More than 15 guests can use the existing telephone route.
• The “Serile Euphoria” link leads to the Euphoria concept’s music chapter, where the historical LiveTickets destination is retained. Desaga’s old event articles are not presented as an upcoming programme.
• The private-event form is explicitly demonstrative: it sends and stores nothing. No reservation, purchase or message was made while creating the design.

This is a design prototype for sign-off. Final location pages, editorial content, content management, translation, live forms, production performance work and end-to-end provider integration are still separate implementation work.

Published address, hours and food stories were checked in the project’s Desaga audit. The client should confirm those practical details before the final copy is approved. Source photographs and artwork are from the existing client websites and have been copied into this review package for the client design study.