The word “shawarma” comes from the Turkish word “çevirme” which means “turning”, and there’s nothing more iconic about the dish than that vertical oversized skewer on which a cone-shaped pile of meat continuously rotates. There was no question that this element – the “seekh” as we call it in Arabic – had to be retained from Shawarmer’s existing identity when the Saudi fast food chain looked to us for a rebranding. But it also had to be transformed. Integrating the calligraphy in the emblem celebrates the Arabic, enriches the symbol both in terms of meaning and form, and allows for the bilingual name to legibly manifest alongside. The identity as a whole is injected with a playfulness that fits the popularity of the dish: an explosion of icons, colors and patterns, and a slightly superfluous use of display typography. After all, if there’s a place to be unapologetically excessive, this is it.