Kyuu 9
Label design for soy sauce sold in restaurants for a client who wanted to share their culture as well as their sauce.
2017
Goal
After many requests, this imaginary client decides to put their famous soy sauce up for sale in their sushi restaurant. To uphold the quality of their restaurant, they decided to properly package the soy sauce as well, paying extra attention to how they can utilize the glass of the bottle for the package design. They have decided to keep the distribution to only their restaurant however; after all, the soy sauce pairs best with their sushi.
Highlights
Logo and Name
In exploring how to visually simplify sushi, I found that the cross-section can be simplified into the shape a six or a nine. And since sushi was popularized by Japan, my mind went to what those numbers were in Japanese; roku and kyuu respectively. Kyuu in particular sounded a lot like the letter “Q” and that letter could also be incorporated into the image of sushi as well. Thus Kyuu 9 came about, with the logomark helping with the pronunciation of the translation.
Bottle
Many restaurants serve their soy sauce in the same bottle. I’ve occasionally seen a different bottle in some restaurants though, implying that there wasn’t just one shape for the condiment bottle. I didn’t want the customer to feel like they were still in a restaurant when bringing this product home, nor did I want to force them to buy another bottle to pour the soy sauce with. After shopping around, I stumbled across this bottle. Not only did it not look like it was from a restaurant, the view from the top looked like a Q, furthering the brand identity.
Re-usability
Since this soy sauce was meant to be a condiment and not a cooking ingredient, I wanted a nice small bottle that was easy to pour from. Those types of bottles aren’t cheap though, especially since I chose one not mass produced for restaurants. Either I had to give up the bottle or have the soy sauce be priced higher. Or I could encourage customers to reuse the bottles. It would cut down production cost while encouraging more revenue, all while being less wasteful overall. I added an easy to replace tag telling customers about the discount they would get if they chose to refill the bottle instead of buying a new one.
Labels
The label is split into two pieces so that the bottle is still visible and customers will know when they’re running low. The different colors indicate the different types of soy sauce and that color is used to emphasize what differentiates that type of soy sauce from the others. Low sodium soy sauces appear starkly different, making them easily recognizable. There is also a copy of the logomark on top, utilizing the same colors so that no matter where the bottle is stored, it’ll be easy to tell which bottle you’re grabbing. That part of the bottle is also safe from spills, keeping the bottle identifiable even after a few uses. The black background of the label also helps hide most stains.
Challenges
Nutrition and Ingredients
Though I didn’t have to come up with a way to display nutritional facts, it was hard finding the balance of size and legibility for such a small bottle. It was made more difficult since I wanted to keep part of the bottle free of any label.
Logo Colors
Making the background of the label black to hide stains made it difficult to display the logo. I couldn’t just inverse it like other logos since it was supposed to represent sushi, with the strip of seaweed encompassing rice and a filling. Thankfully a thin white stroke made it pop enough while still retaining the mark itself.