Kobo Café - Brand Identity Case Study

Kobo - Miami Beach

Logotype design & visual identity

Kobo is a gourmet sandwich bar situated within the Hotel Greystone on Collins Avenue, Miami Beach.
Focused on high-end japanese sandwiches made with Kobe beef, the typical japanese Sando, Kobo aims to provide a refined quick fix.

I was tasked with creating an easily recognizable identity for Kobo, for their bags and boxes will be travelling all around South Beach and Collins Avenue.

The creation process was a bit different this time and very straightforward.
First because I had already worked on many other projects of the Hotel Greystone thus knew very well what my clients wanted.
Secondly because I had a very clear idea in mind from the start.

Here were my keywords:

• japanese, food, our main themes
• meat, beef, kobe
• sandwich, "sando", salad
• box (specific packaging)
• bite, snack, quick, also take-out
• gourmet, refined, high-end, exceptional product (kobe)
• importance of a striking and explicit design as it will travel around Miami Beach in the hands of customers

What made it all click was probably when my client told me the sandos and salads would be served in boxes.
I had already extensively thought about the specific visual "rhythm" of japanese sandos:

This regularity and pattern also made me think of japanese zen gardens with their neatly raked gravel fields - typical japanese refinement and elegance through simplicity, geometry and order.

A reasonable graphic translation of all this would be:
Two light pieces, one dark piece, two light pieces, one dark piece, and so on, especially when the sandos are aligned, as is the case in a box, for example, like this:

The box concept also brings to light the highly geometrical nature of the sando. Parallel and perpendicular straight lines.
To finish with the box element, when one thinks about Japan and boxes, it's hard not to bring up the typical bento box (its arranging considered an art in itself) with its original wooden case and small compartments:

Finally, I always kept fully conscious that Kobo is a four-letter word and this reduced number of characters reminded me of the Japanese Hanko, that omnipresent red stamp appearing everywhere from business documents to artistic paintings.
I also looked into what the various kanjis and hiragana-derived characters would look like with words relating to Kobo, like beef, cow, Kobe, sandwich etc.
There's a very geometrical and "boxy" quality to some of those specific letters, with a lot of parallel and perpendicular straight lines that tie in nicely with our underlying theme.

I emulated the hanko shape on the global level (overall shape and volume) of the logo, and on a lower level of detail, tried to make our roman letters create the illusion of visually alluding to japanese characters.
I also wanted to retain a strong geometrical system to stay in the realm of the "box" and the visual rhythm of the sandos.
The system is fully modular and we can adjust the lock-ups from squarely stacked (the main form) to horizontal, to a more japanese-like verticality.
In the main version, I chose to encase the letters in an additional outline. On top of the obvious "box" allegory, it also brings elegance (injection of enclosed zen gardens and traditional wooden bento boxes) and allows the mark to access an aesthetic often used by high status brands (like in perfumery for example).

We settled on a deep red, right between juicy beef and the red if the Japanese flag.
The only other colors are white (the other Japanese flag color), which remains very minimal, and black, for additional text purposes.

Primary Font: Montserrat

To ensure continuity, we also chose Montserrat, same as for the Hotel Greystone as the primary font due to its versatility and historical resonance.

Secondary Font: Custom

I developed a custom font based on the Kobo letters, to be used sparingly across the packaging.

In situ applications of the branding on various mediums and situations.