Striking Interiors,
Standout Branding,
Hospitality Strategy.
Jack Dakin specializes in hospitality projects, leading the creation and construction of interior design, integrated branding, and overall design strategy. Dakin offers extensive expertise in interiors, branding, strategy, construction, real estate, culture and creative direction.
Each space is an opportunity to create uncommon and lasting experiences. This demands an intensely multifaceted design spirit that ensures every project speaks singularly. In collaboration with dynamic developers, designers and artists from across the country, Dakin creates memorable hospitality brands and environments, each infused with a unique voice.
Nice to meet you.
INTERIORS
Dakin leads a process of proactive synthesis, giving rise to truly distinctive and commercially successful hospitality ventures. Every project presents unique challenges. Each requires a discerning approach, intuition and integrity, and plenty of conversation. Decorative elements, flow of space, target clientele, cuisine style, kitchen requirements, and individual tastes of investors and operators — good design balances a myriad of factors while achieving a coherent result.
BRANDING
Brands become covetable via elegant ideas rooted within a firm understanding of the overarching concept, the offering to consumers, and the client’s business objectives. Optimal branding creates instant credibility, signals your character, and starts the work of shaping the public’s perceptions. Dakin employs a modern and considered aesthetic, definining standout visual lexicons that work across brand identities, collateral, graphic elements, digital, and physical environments.
PROFILE / JACK DAKIN
Jack Dakin has worked as a graphic and interior designer for 17 years. He spent over a decade in New York City learning his craft, working with such hospitality visionaries as Serge Becker and Sean Macpherson, and at the renowned firm Rockwell Group. In this latter role, he was a lead designer and honed his skill set in the hospitality design sector.
Launching a solo practice in 2009 Jack was tapped to design and develop numerous projects across the country; these included Sylvain Restaurant in New Orleans; Freddy Smalls Bar in Los Angeles; and The Park Restaurant in Dallas. Over the next several years Jack continued creating memorable projects, often in collaboration with architect Silvia Zofio. Together Dakin and Zofio hatched a string of successful launches, ranging in scope and scale from large hotels (The Cosmopolitan Tribeca) to intimate restaurants (All’onda) to a luxury rehabilitation center (Mountainside) and an ice cream parlor (Morgensterns).
In 2014 Jack returned to his native San Francisco where he spent time working as a Project and Senior Designer at BAMO and Avro|Ko respectively. In both of these roles, Jack was tasked with focusing on large-scale hospitality projects. Throughout this breadth of work Dakin came to understand the need for taking an extremely multi-disciplinary approach to hospitality design. In 2016 he established his own independent design practice.
The key to a successful project is a strong dialogue between the restaurateur/ hotelier / developer, and the design team. This is accomplished by working from start to finish on concepts – involving a wide range of tasks from scouting locations, to selecting flatware, to solving water pressure problems, to naming and branding. From his experience, Jack Dakin addresses this business as an intensely multifaceted one, requiring numerous components to work in unison for a project to truly thrive and to be profitable in the long term.
Today, Jack Dakin offers expertise in interior and communications design.
Jack Dakin holds a BFA in Communications Design from Parsons School of Design.
SERVICES
EXPERIENCE & INTERIOR DESIGN
Concept and Ideation
Interior Design and Space Planning
Design Development Documentation
FF&E Selection and Documentation
Custom Finishes, Furniture and Fixtures
Guest Experience Design
Landmarks and Preservation
Temporary Environments
IDENTITY & GRAPHIC DESIGN
Visual Identity
Collateral Design
Art Direction
Signage & Wayfinding
Web, Tablet, and Mobile Design
Packaging Design
BRAND STRATEGY & DEVELOPMENT
Research and Immersion
Placemaking
Brand Naming
Programming Consultation
Hospitality Experience Consulting
Market Positioning
Brand Launch & Rollout Planning
PRESS
If the food doesn’t transport you somewhere, the Japanese and Italian infused décor certainly will; nautically inspired, aged metal details stand out from paint-washed brick walls, while walnut boards and hexagonal tiles add a sensual, yet abstract touch.
In the French Quarter, there are palaces and dives within which to imbibe, sometimes right on top of each other. Sylvain splits the difference; the interior spins pre-World War II Americana together with a classic Quarter sensibility…
…bars with serious cocktail programs have sprouted up throughout the city, but the Franklin remains a standard-bearer on Philly’s drinks scene. There may be a wait, but it’s worth it…
The place has a great sociable vibe and an understated, time-worn look. The designer paid attention to small details: the pattern of the penny tiles on the floor, the classic barstools, the ribbed metal lampshades that hang like silver moons over a row of roomy booths that hold six or more.
…exactly the kind of pub that locals adore and eager tourists welcome. The decor (an old American flag and green, leather barstools) and lush courtyard grove are lovingly worn…
