Takenaka

Since Vancouver already has a lot of Japanese meals, We have gotten to make something different from existing market images.

Their image was "A little luxury sushi-restaurant transform as food truck". Thanks to all the menu quite look not just delicious but artistic, I thought it'd be able to catch young generation foodie's eyes. Hence, I created brief persona as 20-30s foodie, and develop the mood board with "Instagrammable" as a key factor.

▲Created Moodoboard on Pintererst (these pictures are part of it)

The key takeaway was building a brand atmosphere based on existing logos.

1. The design for the food truck

Since all the touchpoints will intersect with the food truck, I considered the following key factors.

• Instagrammable - enjoyable capturing not just a food photo but together with a food truck
• Iconic - Has accuracy as "Takenaka's food truck"

I set the key color as Japanese indigo blue and considered traditional patterns in Japanese potteries such as Hasami-Yaki, Ko-imari, and Kutani-Yaki as well. I created indigo-color-based design to introduce these patterns and colors as an authentic Japanese tradition.

👇 Ideation process for food truck

This is the final output for the food truck based on the ideation.

2. Generate Key Visuals

I applied eye-catching Japanese patterns with hexagons, which is a symbol of fortune as a tradition in Japan on their food truck, like a Japanese Fusuma(sliding screen) or partitions, together with the Japanese navy.

Improve brand experience with design

Although I'm mainly helping with visual design, I can define myself as a brand-experience designer in this project, because I'm assisting employees to manage websites, or sometimes maintaining touchpoints by offering new suggestions to make more smooth flows for users. The figure below is explaining what I am doing during the whole experience in Takenaka.

Design thumbnails for Instagram marketing

The client was focusing on Instagram for social media marketing. Therefore, I created graphic design for Instagram post thumbnails to introduce their events and campaigns.

To design these thumbnails, I created graphics based on the discussion with the marketing team and client.

Example of thumbnails for Instagram

Composed posts for Instagram stories to introduce a website order system for one of their vendors.

Other Graphic Design

I'm contributing to the design by creating the following kinds of materials.

• Menus, sandwich board, and some other equipment for food-truck decoration
• Flyers for wholesalers or potential customers
• Creating and publishing media kit and sell sheet
• Any other stuff which is related to retail or food truck

A part of a media kit

I'm also designing packages for their original frozen products. In curry package as a first product, I tried explaining Takenaka's world which pursues "authenticity", even under the limited budget.

In the 2nd product as "Frozen ikura (marinated salmon caviar)", I designed a package which has luxurious in Takenaka's clean and minimalistic atmosphere by placing salmon upon the traditional wave patterns.

All of these packages are following the guideline for the Canadian food package based on research to avoid violates in Canadian law regarding food hygiene, reflecting the information(ingredients, nutrition, etc) provided by the client.

↗️ Got 10k followers on Instagram within less than a year

Not really many local restaurants that has over 10k followers in Vancouver. Also exceptional to get these numbers within less than a year

↗️ Providing original products to more than 10 companies in Vancouver and BC province

Media kit and sell sheet contributed to helping increase sales scores and find new vendors.

Design-wise, I am always considering how can I share the spirits and stories through the touchpoints. though, I am also considering what is the best decision if I can balance costs and performance. Although I am trying to keep communicating often, sometimes I feel even I might have been able to talk more efficiently, or more effectively. Since this project is in progress under the pandemic, I am still keeping an experiment about what is the most reasonable way to communicate with keeping their and customer's satisfaction.