Logo Design – Branding – Web Design
About Thai Bao: Thai Bao is a mom-and-pop shop serving authentic, freshly made Vietnamese cuisine on the Regis University campus on Northern Federal Blvd. They first opened their business in 2003 and have served the local community delicious Viet cuisine ever since. Their USP is that they offer the most authentic, freshly made Vietnamese cuisine in Colorado.
Overview: Designing a set of branding elements, including a logo, taglines, a new social media strategy, and a touchpoint for a local business using 7 StoryBrand Principles.
Goal: We were asked to create a new brand or rebrand an existing small business for this project. The new brand guidelines and designs reflect their personalities, values, and goals.
Challenge: The rule is to follow 7 Storyband principles and create a thorough brand guideline for a small business with no brand identity. The most challenging part for me is defining the problem and finding the business’s Unique Selling Point (UPS).
Problem: Thai Bao has no social media or online presence, making it difficult for customers to find them and learn about their restaurant.
Target Audience: Thai Bao’s primary audience is Regis students, mostly white or Hispanic, primarily from Colorado and California, aged 18-35; 2/3 of them are female, pursuing a medical career. Being students, they are usually low-income or using allowance from their parents. The other target audience group is the local community around the Northwest Denver Metro area, primarily white and Hispanic customers. Their third primary audience is Vietnamese living around the room who do not want to travel down South to get good Vietnamese food. Thai Bao also has a lot of take-out orders, which are most of their daily business.
Logo & Tagline
Thai Bao’s new logo contains illustrations of the two owners in their traditional Vietnamese outfits to represent where they are from. Their happy expression invites customers to visit their restaurant and experience authentic Viet cuisine. The logo emphasizes the mom-and-pop small business concept and lets the customers know who they are and who runs everything at the shop. Their portrait has a friendly approach to again emphasizing the family-oriented characteristic of the place. When customers come here, they can feel treated like family members.
Their new tagline, “Freshly Delicious,” emphasizes the freshness of the food customers can get here. The restaurant sources its food daily to maintain its high quality and freshness. The tagline is simple yet tells customers they will get freshly made delicious food if they come here.
Typeface & Color Theme
The typeface chosen for their logo and website first needs to be able to support the Vietnamese alphabet because language is something that differentiates them apart from other Asian cultures and cuisine. We also want the customers to get more familiar with the Vietnamese language. Secondly, we chose a display typeface to represent the business because we want their brand to appear more friendly, fun, casual, unique, and eye-catching to the younger target audience (Carter, 2018).
The colors used for this logo are orange, yellow, and brown. They are warm and earthy colors representing their personalities which are friendliness, welcoming, and down-to-earth. These colors also represent the warm weather of Vietnam. Orange and yellow are also some of the most popular colors used to describe food, and they “are colors that make people feel hungry” (Lisa, 2016).
Social Media
Thai Bao has no existing social media presence besides a Facebook page they used during the pandemic, which has not been active since. Since their target audience is Regis college students from 18 to 35 years old, Instagram and Facebook are good platforms that would attract their attention.
Creating a new Instagram page and continuing posting on Facebook will help remind current customers about their business and possibly reach out to new prospective customers. We put all the business contact information on the bio. We use the “Order Online Now” call of action on the Instagram account and link directly to the website. To encourage interactions, we will post Instagram stories a few times daily to remind customers about the business.
Website
Since they have many take-out customers and do not have a website yet, designing a website for them is essential. Right now, customers can only order by phone, which is not the most convenient way for either the customers or the restaurant; that is why we decided to design a new website so they can offer online ordering. A website is also essential for their business to reach new customers through the Google search engine. Customers can check their menu online and get all the necessary information before going there. In the future, if there is a need to expand Thai Bao, we will also design an app to make it easier to customers to order on their phones. Students and everyone like using their phones more often, so we will focus on developing the app to be very user-friendly. After all, Thai Bao already has a lot of take-out order demand, and making an app is the next right step.
We use the same colors as their logo for their website to maintain the brand identity. We decided to use the banana tree silhouette throughout the website to give the customers an image of the brand because the banana tree is a native and popular plant in Vietnam and is related to Vietnamese cuisine. The Vietnamese use bananas and banana tree products for many different things. The fruit, the blossom, and the stalks are used to make delicious dishes, and the leaf is used to wrap various types of food, cakes, dumplings, and decoration (COV Team, 2021).
Mimi Nguyen's Design 