Kura Robatayaki and Saké
Japanese Fine Dining and Sake
Identity Design
Logo Design
Style Guide
Photoshoot
Website Design
Kura is a Japanese Fine Dining restaurant located on Sydney Road in Brunswick, Melbourne, Australia.
Lead by Head Chef Ken Ibuki and backed by industry legend Kelvin Low (of The Elysian), Kura is an ode to the careful craftsmanship and beautiful history of Japanese Robatayaki or 'fireside cooking' . Kura aims to present Robatayaki in it's finest form, serving up beautifully curated, expertly prepared plates of authentic Japanese food, paired with the perfect saké (Japanese rice wine) to enhance the flavours, so that guests can experience Robatayaki at it's zenith.
Yue Yamanaka Design was asked to create a unique calligraphic logo mark, identity design, style guide, social media templates and website. Yue Yamanaka Design also produced a collection of photographs with a custom filter to help them get started on their social media and properly capture the essence of the new restaurant.
Identity
To create the brand identity for Kura, it was crucial for Yue Yamanaka Design to understand the backstory and driving desires behind the creation of this restaurant. Hospitality is an industry where passion takes the first step, and meaning is crucial for a successful endeavour into hospitality.
Yue Yamanaka Design met with Kelvin Low to have an in depth discussion about what he and Ken were trying to achieve with this restaurant, and also what they wanted to avoid based on previous experiences with 'Japanese' restaurants around Melbourne. The main through line that stood out was a desire to present authentic, undeniably Japanese food (or 和食 washoku) in a beautiful, high end but soft environment.
After this discussion we researched three very different kinds of restaurants that shared the same core ethos of serving authentic, carefully prepared food, we then worked with Kura to help them synthesise and craft their own identity using elements that they liked and morphing the ones they didn't.
Yue Yamanaka Design met with Kelvin Low to have an in depth discussion about what he and Ken were trying to achieve with this restaurant, and also what they wanted to avoid based on previous experiences with 'Japanese' restaurants around Melbourne. The main through line that stood out was a desire to present authentic, undeniably Japanese food (or 和食 washoku) in a beautiful, high end but soft environment.
After this discussion we researched three very different kinds of restaurants that shared the same core ethos of serving authentic, carefully prepared food, we then worked with Kura to help them synthesise and craft their own identity using elements that they liked and morphing the ones they didn't.
Logos
Yue Yamanaka Design was asked to create a unique calligraphic logo mark for Kura.
In Japanese Kura means cellar and has two possible Kanji, 倉 or 蔵. Yue Yamanaka Design created multiple versions of both before settling on a Soshō style expression of the 蔵 character. This style and character was chosen to help capture the essence and spirit of fire and Robata style cooking.
This expression was then refined to become more readable to Japanese readers,
This expression was then refined to become more readable to Japanese readers,
while still retaining the movement and flair that the Soshō style of Shodō calligraphy is famous for.
The logo was created in both Horizontal and Vertical versions, the horizontal version being for ease of placement and readability for a western audience, while the vertical version serves as an homage to the traditional right-to-left, top-to-bottom Japanese writing style. Both versions were created in both Japanese and English.
The logo was created in both Horizontal and Vertical versions, the horizontal version being for ease of placement and readability for a western audience, while the vertical version serves as an homage to the traditional right-to-left, top-to-bottom Japanese writing style. Both versions were created in both Japanese and English.
Style Guide
Style Guide
Yue Yamanaka Design also presented Kura with a concise, easy to use Style Guide. Yue Yamanaka's background in hospitality lead to a greater understanding of the challenges faced by restauranteurs, many of which lack the budget or simply the need for a full time designer. As such, often the restaurant manager takes over the more everyday design tasks, like social media, menus or adjustments to the website.
With this in mind, the Style Guide was designed to be as easy to use as possible and straight forward enough for someone with very little design background to work with. This meant including hyperlinks directly to the logo files and steering clear of overly technical language.
Built into the style guide was also a series of Social Media Templates that could be accessed through a link into a Google Slides template. This was done to give them an easy to use, free to run social media content solution.
Photoshoot
Yue Yamanaka Design presented Kura with an opening package of roughly 50 photographs to use on their website, as well as on their social media. Two of these photographs were featured in The Age in an article about the restaurant.
The photos were taken in a four hour session at the restaurant shortly after their soft opening. The camera used was a Canon EOS70D, the DSLR with a mid sized lens was chosen to give the photos a consistent look as well as to create the kind of beautiful, soft lightning that only this kind of camera can create.
Website Design
The other major component of this project was to build a website for Kura. Like the rest of the project, ease of use was paramount so that someone with little to no background in website editing would be able to edit the site when required with ease.
The website was laid out to be consistent with the visual style set out in the Style Guide. The site features large photos (taken by Yue Yamanaka) and minimal text, allowing the pictures to do most of the communication as well as minimising any possible language barriers for potential diners.
The site was built in Squarespace, chosen by the clients on Yue's reccomendation as an easy to use website builder that would allow them to have more control over their own website and the freedom to make changes by themselves when and as they need to.
You can visit the site at https://www.kuramelbourne.com.au/
All content designed by Yue Yamanaka, all rights reserved 2023. ©
