Tasked with designing a restaurant brand, my team took all of these factors into consideration and we made it our goal to combine the concept of learning about minority cultures in America with a dining experience in a fun and educative way for kids who are stuck at home in quarantine. With Ki-dish, we wanted kids to have a stronger idea about these cultures aside from simply knowing how the food of the given culture tastes good.
The year 2020 had inevitably became a challenge in every way for all of us around the world. The impact of COVID-19 has left us struggling to find means of normalcy within our work, our personal lives, and even in the food we eat. Additionally, restaurants, especially local minority owned businesses, are grappling with the new reality of having little to no in-person dining.
Branding
Packaging
Web Design
Elements
Year
2020
Instructor
Nathan Young
Faced with the challenge to design a solution for the food industry during the Covid-19 pandemic, my team and I decided to address the issues confronting kids in quarantine.
Ki-dish: Branding for Kids in Quarantine
WHY KI-DISH?
Style Guide
When considering a color palette, I wanted something fun and bright, which is why a rainbow theme appealed to me because it could bring energy and entertainment into my design. I wanted to have the classic yellow smiley face and the blue trim of the plate to associate with the blue in China porcelain and shaped the rest of my colors around those. I also ended up giving my logo an offset black outline to create definition and mimic the style of a child's coloring book.
I wanted to showcase the main themes of our company idea through my logo, eating good food and educating kids. Finding similarities between the shape of a smiley face and a dinner plate, I found a perfect mesh of yum and fun. I wanted my logo to mimic the classic stance of a child waiting for food, eager to eat.
In order to communicate the visual variety that this brand will entail, we decided to each feature a different culture of our choosing within America for our Ki-dish branding. I picked Japanese culture because they have a huge influence on American culture, that not many people know about.
Japan has a vibrant past full of arts, traditions, rituals that could inspire my designs for the extension of my brand. I wanted to make the Japan feature fun and light-hearted like the rest of my brand, while also keeping the identity recognizable. I chose to highlight Kai Japanese Cuisine in Philadelphia as the restaurant that would be promoted as a part of the company's mission.
We generated a list of names that could work for our team. We decided to go with “Ki-dish”. A combination of “Kid” and “Dish”, but also implying that this program is “kiddish”, in other words, kid-friendly.
From this point of the project, we started developing our individual brands and got our hands on to designing all the deliverables for our own versions of Ki-dish.
Since my brand was high-lighting Japan as its menu of the month, I decided to make the company branding and the “Japan branding” separate. By giving the menu stylistic changes in color palette, pattern, and logo variation, it would give the customer a clear indicator of a new menu change each month. I also created a distinct fan-shaped wave pattern that would be associated with my menu as well as specific Japanese food icons.
WEB DESIGN
KI-DISH: JAPAN
The website for Ki-dish would be the main way for customers to engage with the products and services we provide, the layout and design would be an essential component of communication. I wanted my homepage to flow from topic to topic effortlessly, combining colors and patterns as you scroll, while still keeping the branding consistent. A structured ordering system and informational guide to our deliverables was a crucial piece to the user experience, as well as keeping our information candid for parents' peace of mind.
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I realized that having the tabs in a row along the top made the menu sections more distinct and created an easier user-flow, like you would see on tabs in a files folder. The icons and patterns used on my menu page then continued to inspire my packaging.
Hover over image to play
PACKAGING
I wanted the Japanese-associated deliverables I created to cross over into my packaging design, so keeping the same color palette and illustrations felt natural. Japanese food has more specific packaging requirements than other cuisines.
I wanted the packaging to feel cohesive, and noticeably branded. I also wanted to keep the same youthful design, as seen on my website, by adding details such as fun facts and engaging text on my packaging.
For my activity booklet, I designed and illustrated seven spreads that depict educational facts about Japanese culture. Each page has a different theme so children are able to learn about all aspects of Japan.
A featured component of this booklet is the origami pages and instructions. Squares of paper are attached to the booklet in order for the children to practice their origami skills, and learn more about the history of origami in Japan.
WHY KI-DISH?
RESEARCH PROCESS
DESIGN PROCESS
WEB DESIGN
PACKAGING
Read more about the research and process behind this project in my case study