San Francisco based agency Manual has some very impressive work on their website, great examples of good branding work. In this case I'd like to refer to their work with Wo Hing General Store, a new restaurant that wanted to include its chinese heritage with a modern design. The results are pretty cool, they've managed to take something so concrete and overly used (a bowl of ramens for a chinese restaurant?) and mixed it up with other details that evoke the traditional chinese street food carts.
The restaurant’s name pays homage to a small grocery store that Phan’s uncle and father owned in Vietnam after fleeing China in the 1960s. Phan intentionally wanted to avoid any visual reference to a general store, but asked that Chinese characters be incorporated into the identity.
The logo plays with the delicate nature of noodles, a main staple on the restaurant’s menu. We also noticed a similarity to the structure of tubular neon signs that are often associated with Chinese street food.
As for the results, I would've never guessed that a bowl of noodles would look so artistic! So take a look to the amazing work from the folks at Manual.
