Durum & Brass is a one room pasta shop behind a laundromat on Shrewsbury Street in Worcester, Massachusetts, run by Teodora Russo, who spent eleven years on the line in restaurant kitchens before she bought a used extruder at an auction. She mixes durum semolina with cold water and nothing else, pushes it through brass dies that leave the surface rough so sauce holds, and dries every batch on wooden racks for forty eight hours at low heat instead of four hours at high heat.
Who this theme is for
A small food maker selling one pantry staple that looks like the supermarket version until you get close: dried pasta, rice, polenta, beans, flour. The buyers are home cooks who have read that die cut pasta with a rough surface holds sauce better and want to see the proof, so the page opens on a heap of casarecce on a floured board, comes in close on the rough, chalky surface the brass die leaves, then shows the dough leaving the die in the shop. The Bold Modern layout gives the heap a full width photo and a heavy sans serif heading, which suits a product that sells on texture rather than on a story about a grandmother.
What was decided in the brief
The style is Bold Modern on its second variant. The primary is a clear cobalt blue close to the glazed tile counter in the photos and the accent is a warm orange close to a pan of tomato sauce, so the buy button reads against the gold of the pasta instead of disappearing into it. The brand facts lead with the two ingredients because that is what a cook checks on the back of any bag, then the die, then the drying time, because the forty eight hours is the reason the price is higher than a supermarket box.