I designed a complete brand identity system for a local sushi restaurant that I enjoy and felt connected to my Japanese heritage. I created a new logo, color palette, typography, and visual guidelines using Adobe Illustrator and InDesign.

The Logo

The Process

After reasearching different represenations of "sushi" and "heaven" I started the logo as a nirgi salmon with wings with the red "rising sun" in the background. I knew I wanted red in my logo design because there is a lot of meaning behind the color red in Japanese cutlure. As I refined my logo more, I started incorporating a chopstick illustastion I designed. After experimenting with different sizing of the chopsticks, I landed with a small size similar to the shape of a "v" in the typography.

But soon I ran into a problem with my last few iterations of the logo. The sushi rice was a very light color, which was close to white. This meant I had to redesign the rice element into a different shape and color. On a suggestion, I changed the rice element into a seaweed shape. I made sure to make it geometic so it was coheasive witht he rest of the logo design. I also designed branded assets such as redesigned menu, business card, and coaster.

Logo Iterations

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Final Logo

The Menu

The Process

The orginal menu of Sushi Heaven was very abundant and to create a menu that felt fine dining and that felt it was an elevated experience, I included about half of the menu items. I included each menu item description to the orginal menu, but to keep the layout balanced and maintain the menu's visual asethics, I had to cut one or two words.

To elevate the menu, I inlcuded a watercolor texture to mimic traditonal paper used in Japanese culture or the shoji paper used on screen doors. I also created some chopstick illustrations in the menu to make it more interesting.

Other Assets

The Process

I designed other assets like a business card, business letter, takeout box, and a double sided coaster based on my design of the menu. I designed each piece so it would look cohesive by adding accents of red and the watercolor texture. Additonally, I created a knockout version of the logo for the coaster.