Lance Lagamayo
Samurice is a takeout-delivery food business concept that sells onigiri or japanese rice balls. They envision their products to remind their customers the taste of authentic and luxurious Japanese cuisine.
I begin my design process by setting a call with Jerome (the client, aka Mr. Samurice!) and get to know him and the brand. After the session, we were able to list the brand's competitors, design vision and brand personality. I created a vision board and conducted market research to realign myself and the client.
Me and my client formed three main adjectives for the brand's personality: premium, authentic and amusing. At first, he wanted to focus on the witty and amusing tone of Samurice but in the end, we decided to head for a more luxurious and premium feel since none of his competitors have done this before. From this, I gotten inspiration from Japanese minimalism and how asian graphic design trends make use of line art.
One thing that caught my attention was when Jerome said that his family owns 2 shiba inus and that he wants to incorporate his dogs and a samurai element into his visual identity (so thats why Samurice). They also told me that they're planning to expand to other products aside from onigiris so the logo should only portray onigiri. Hence, I decided to focus on the shiba inu for the logo design.
Too much colors and contrast might lose its luxury feel. Inspired by the flavors that Samurice, I made sure that they wouldn't be too strong for the eyes. Serif typography, Spectral, was used for a traditional and elegance tone.
For the packaging design, they wanted it to look like a toblerone so I decided to go for lined art to keep the daintiness and minimalist tone of the brand. These later became the graphic elements that will be used for social media.