Shanghai agency Related Department brands a Chinese foodservice born of Covid-19

The brand's identity and packaging designs were created by Related Department, an independent graphic design practise founded in Shanghai in 2017. These designs were then implemented by the junzi team.

The design stage wasn't easy, since it came at the time when the pandemic had just hit. Among the many challenges were dealing with the materiality of things that were hard to touch, and having to compromise on their ideal choices of various suppliers due to problems with things like internal logistics.

As such, what had originally been planned as an IRL launch became an online soft launch; an even the focus of the business changed in the wake of Covid-19: rather than opening a new space, the existing one was renovated to cater to takeout and delivery. Scarlett Xin Meng, founder and creative director at Related Department, describes the process as having gone through "a few twists and turns due to the pandemic."

The designs use a bold red and white colour palette as a nod to the Chinese food, we imagine since we're told that the brand "celebrates the most beloved Chinese takeout dishes" as well as "all-American favourites such as Kung Pao Chicken and Mapo Tofu as well as new and inventive dishes such as Shake Shake Shrimp."

These colours are accented with a fresh-feeling, bright shade of turquoise. Cute, simple icons such as a smiley face and a lucky cat holding a plate of steaming hot food make sweet punctuation points in the design; while the team chose to use the font-family Adieu by Good Type Foundry.

The brand design, too, had to change in order to squarely centre on the delivery and e-commerce-based business. The online menu was designed to be mobile-ready and easy to navigate; while all Nice Day delivery bags were designed to have an "integrity seal" which protects them from accidentally ripping open on their way to people's doors. In another nod to post-Covid consumer habits, the junzi team is also planning to launch a Nice Day e-commerce site selling its signature lucky cat, stickers and other merch.