Tag: brand identity
Naming, concept and brand identity for NUK Cafe in Phnom Penh
A VERY SAVVY team approached Design Kompany through a mutual friend and that opened the door to a fun project that tapped all of our best creative offerings. Naming, concepting, and brand identity design. That was exactly what they didn’t know they wanted, but appreciated, at the end, in the manner of clients preceding them. ‘NUK’ came about as a name idea after a series of serious conversations, and a visit to the site, which was then under construction.
Client: NUK Cafe
Work: Concept, Naming, Brand identity + consulting on interior design
Location: Phnom Penh
Year: 2014
Naming, concepting, and brand identity design. ‘NUK’ came about as a name idea after a series of serious conversations, and a visit to the architectural site. A section towards the back of the first floor seemed well-suited to holing up with a great paperback. That’s how we found our way to the name ‘NUK,’ a play on ‘nook, but minus the visually awkward double ‘o.’
Fewer letters—heck, even just an ‘N’—made for a versatile motif that one could just take in as a total image (that’s what a logo mark is, more than ever, just an impression, not a ‘word’ to be read—who has time to think?). As soon as we presented the name idea to our clients, three people got on cell phones and called friends in Vietnam, Thailand, and even further afield via Line and WhatsApp. ‘How does that sound? Does it mean anything bad? No? Good.’ Nuk fit. Snug.
Many times designers will do what you tell them to do. But you two would not. You would say, ‘No. That’s not a good idea, and we’re not gonna do that.’ That was new. You made us think, and in the end, we got to a stronger design together. Thank you. —Kenneth Hui, NUK Cafe
NUK opened on Street 154, and our clients invited us to sample the ice cream. Last we heard, they’re gearing up to open a second store.
Kiyoshi Inoue: a samurai designer of American corporate identities, from the era of hand-drawn logos
Editor’s note: This post was one of the most popular from our blog 2006-2013, which is no longer in our archives. It’s written by DK co-founder Akira Morita.
I WAS JUST WATCHING an interview footage of Seijun Suzuki, a Japanese film director known for his penchant for wild cinematography, seemingly random, comic, plot-aside and kitschy, colorful sets (seen in titles such as “Tokyo Drifter” and “Branded to Kill”).
Conversations about graphic design
In the interview, Suzuki talks about his good fortune of starting out in the shadows of the giants — Mizoguchi, Ozu, and Kurosawa — with a healthy dose of “we are going to top them, some day!” kind of chutzpah.
I was reminded of a person with similar spirit, someone we met this year that really helped us coming into our own as graphic designers.
His name is Kiyoshi Inoue.
He is a self-taught businessman and a talented designer of corporate identities, whose work featured prominently in American Corporate Identity by Art Direction Book Company, among familiar logos such as Citicorp, DHL, Westin Hotels and Domino’s Pizza. Now retired, Kiyoshi lives with his wife Masako in Los Angeles.
How we met Kiyoshi Inoue
WE MET THE COUPLE through their daughter, who is a friend of us here in Seattle, and when we had an opportunity to travel to LA last October, we made sure to pay a visit for some inspirational stories.
And inspiration we got.
This is what we learned.
Kiyoshi and Masako came to America as young professionals in the 1960s. Masako to learn art, and Kiyoshi to learn advertising at Art Center College of Design “so he could start a school back in Japan.” Talk about visionary!
But Kiyoshi ended up getting a job here, and stayed on to do what he’d come to love: creating corporate identities.
He set up his own shop in 1982 with Masako, who had established herself as a interior designer, and as a team they would brand supermarkets and department stores. In his hay day, clients from Japan, America, Italy and beyond sought him out for his expertise and design skills.
He tells us of those times, laughing: “sometimes, when I get tired of those board meetings where they start to tell me what they think should change, ‘move this line over here’ and whatnot, I’d just get mad and walk out, and someone would run after me, begging me to stay and work with them.”
He understood the big picture: that the brand identity should be about who you are, and how you are different from others.
In his brochure for prospective clients, he states, “a good symbol is not only visually appealing, it makes a statement.”
At the time in the early 80s, Jack Trout and Al Ries’ Positioning (a modern classic on marketing) had just come out, and this fundamental idea of marketing for a pre-selected “audience” was pretty new and novel.
Also novel at the time, which Kiyoshi did not take to too much, was the idea of using computers for design. Apple would come out with the first Macintosh computers in 1984, and this changed the face of the industry for good. In short ten years that followed, Macs and Adobe’s suite of software became the standard de facto of graphic designers everywhere.
Kiyoshi was an old-school designer with rulers, pen and paper—all his drawings are painstakingly rendered by hand, including the custom typefaces he’d design for his clients—and as such, a project would sometimes take a year to complete.
He decided, rather than try and compete in the increasingly rapid-paced, crowded field of desk-top-publishing, to close his shop and enjoy his retirement.
‘A good symbol makes a statement’
WHEN WE MET UP in October, we couldn’t resist showing him our work and telling him what we were trying to do. We were anxious to hear what they thought, and very excited for the opportunity, but it was one of the most nerve-racking experience we had to date, too.
Here they were, a seasoned, celebrated masters of design, and we were showing them our work as if it was worth something! But Masako and Kiyoshi couldn’t be more encouraging.
“You guys are doing what we were doing years ago, and already you are doing great work!” Masako mused. Kiyoshi raved about our “attention to the details, the deep thinking behind each idea expressed.”
It was a milestone for Design Kompany, a turn whereupon we no longer needed justification or qualification for ourselves as designers.
As a Japanese immigrant, I also can’t help but to feel certain affinity, even kinship, and the notion that we are carrying some kind of torch being passed down generations of side-stepping, enterprising renegades.
It’s a very un-Japanese tradition, at least in a stereotypical way, but I now know that there’s lineage among my people! –Bicycle
Comments from original post…
- Wow what an amazing story, it made me feel so good to read it and is so amazing that you had the opportunity to meet this man, that you think so highly of. I think it is always so amazing to know ones culture and heritage, where you come from I think that is something that is really very important in life.
- Wow what an amazing story, it made me feel so good to read it and is so amazing that you had the opportunity to meet this man, that you think so highly of. I think it is always so amazing to know ones culture and heritage, where you come from I think that is something that is really very important in life.
- I really liked the article. To teach yourself is really impressive,especially when you become great at what you do and everybody wants you to work with them. Great story.
One Fish, Blue Fish for Miyabi Japanese Restaurant
HERE’S THE NEW logo and color scheme for Japanese restaurant Miyabi.
Most of the people who hire Design Kompany work in professional services. So it’s always a treat when someone comes along who just likes our process, and wants to try it out. Miyabi came to us because they really wanted to establish themselves as a family-friendly Japanese restaurant. (Most of their customers were people visiting the just-next-door Toys R Us.) It was important to nail the brand message first: “Fun, delicious, and quirky.”
Handy, too, that AM is a native speaker of Japanese. (I’m medium. I’ve passed for Japanese once or twice in telephone calls. Always a hoot.)
Here’s the original post.
A Japanese restaurant asks DK for a logo, menu, and business card design.
Creating a Japanese restaurant’s brand identity
A JAPANESE RESTAURANT IN the TUKWILA, WA area asked us to design a new brand identity when they realized they wanted a change. They’d been in business for a while, but wanted a new image.
Still, Miyabi wasn’t 100% sure what story it wanted to tell through the rebrand and design for the new look.
In addition to a menu, we also created a series of ads to run in local hotel directories, and Japanese-language telephone directories, too. We made a winter holiday postcard with this design, too, which was a lot of fun!
Original post
Here’s the new brand Design Kompany made for the Japanese restaurant Miyabi.
Design Kompany came up with the total brand image: a custom typeface for ‘Miyabi,’ custom illustrations, the color palette, and the typefaces to pair with the new logo.
At first the owners of this Tukwila restaurant thought they might like a sleek, Japanese bistro look that would be upscale and posh.
But after talking with Design Kompany, it became clear that “young people looking for a fancy date spot” just isn’t Miyabi’s target audience.
Families come here. Local regulars. And business folks who happen to be in the area, which is near Sea-Tac airport.
“After going through [the questionnaire] with you guys,” Miyabi co-owner Hisako Shirakura said, “we realized we want a look that says ‘we’re fun.’
“We want people to know they can come here and have a nice time. And… we want to surprise them.”
“Quirky, in other words? A little… off-center?”
“Exactly!”
So we brought to the team Design Kompany illustrator Aaron Barker. “I was really enthusiastic about working with Design Kompany on a sushi restaurant’s logo,” he says. Aaron drew the fish and created the font for “Miyabi”.
I tried many ‘style’ concepts, from sketchy pencil to crisp vector graphics, abstracted letterforms to kawaii, or ‘Japanese cute.’ I’ve spent a lot of time around fish my whole life, visiting aquariums, commercial fishing… And in high school I even took a workshop with the famous fish illustrator Ray Troll. –DK illustrator Aaron Barker.
Keep an eye out for more from this up and coming artist, who sometimes signs his drawings “Aaron Bee.”
New business cards for Miyabi came out at the end of 2006.