-- 2021
Social Media | Time-Based Media | Branding
STEAMY'S LATE NIGHT DIM SUM
Steamy's Dim Sum is a conceptual late night Chinese restaurant served from the window of Gainesville in an area with bars and other eateries. Steamy's serves all their personal dishes for under 5 dollars. The visual identity for Steamy's parallels my own feelings relating to eating dim sum: a bustling restaurant, dim sum carts zig zagging between closely knit tables, and fiery chile oil that I may be slightly too addicted to. This feeling and energy relates to the zany and goofy visuals I leveraged in the Steamy's brand.
DESIGN CHALLENGE
Create a visual system for Steamy's, then create restaurant collateral and social content, including menus, merchandise, and environment design.
Mockup Created with FreePik
PROPOSED LOCATION
Gainesville, Florida features a block called Midtown. This area features popular bars and late-night food spaces, but also features 2 pizza joints. I believe one of these spaces could be replaced by late night Chinese food. A classic comfort food: dumplings, noodles, and rice that could potentially be served from the window at midtown. This would not only open the eyes of UF students to new cuisines, but also could quench their drunk cravings.
MENU COMPOSITION
The menu layout is printed on a folded 8.5x11” piece of paper. This way, printing costs could be minimized, and people could take their menus home for reference. The left side features the dim sum dishes available, each outfitted with accompanying descriptions. The right side of the menu includes the larger noodle and rice dishes available along with saucey additions. Finally, the center fold features beer on draught available at the space.
MERCHANDISE
The goofy character design of our sweet soup dumpling, Steamy, is at the core of the visual language used by the restaurant. This silly and fun energy is one that I wanted to capture in the merchandise. I also hoped to appeal to young people’s interest in vintage graphic tees and merchandise. These outputs were meant to serve the greater visual whole of Steamy’s and provide for a larger brand.
SOCIALS
This branding message of fun and lightheartedness was expanded into social media outputs as well. I hoped to mix vector posts and illustrations with process dumpling making imagery. The mainly red and white color palette was expanded into a mint sage, light pink, and lavender purple to add more breadth to the social media feed as a whole.
