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 Akira 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.
Creating a Japanese restaurant’s brand identity
A Japanese restaurant in Tukwila 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.
Here’s a restaurant menu sample page:
We also created a series of ads to run in local hotel directories, and Japanese-language telephone directories, too. We made a Christmas 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.
This is the business card design. 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. –Design Kompany 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 came out at the end of 2006.
Also check out these Miyabi holiday postcards.
Also see related work:
D+A Studio business cards
Write with Meaning business card design
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