Student Spotlight: Poh Shu Yan

Poh Shu Yan is currently pursuing a BFA in Visual Communication in the School of Art, Design and Media, NTU, Singapore. This is a project she did for a fictional café:

"Kohiya is a new Japanese café opening in Singapore. The target audience is young working adults aged 25-30 who like the Japanese culture of simplicity, modernity, and creativity. Teatime food and beverages are presented to this busy group of people as a new lifestyle experience.

All branding activities, from logo to packaging, are inspired by the Japanese traditional language – the Hiragana – and common colors and motifs used in Japanese designs.

The brand 'Kohiya' literally means “Coffee House” in Japanese. 'Kohi' means 'coffee' and 'ya' means 'house'. The Hiragana character 'ya' is made the central character of the logo. This character is brought to life by deriving characters, such as the giraffe mascot, from this logo. The circle around the character encompasses Zen ideology, which focuses on simplicity in life. It also houses the character 'ya' within it, hence adding weight to the meaning 'house', and bringing to mind the word 'home', into which customers are always welcome.

The strong and vivid use of red, white and grey in the series of packaging for different functions formulates a visual identity that is unified and presents itself distinctively different from competitors in the industry."

More after the jump.