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Gogiya

Brand identity for a Korean BBQ restaurant. The brief said family. I went somewhere more specific.

Client
Gogiya (competition entry)
Date
March 2025
Services
Branding
Scope
Brand strategy, illustrated character mark, logo system, typography, packaging, menu card, table etiquette copy

At a glance

The brief
A designerbriefs competition entry. 2,236 likes on the brief. Keywords: social, authentic, friendly, bold. Did not place.
The mark
The grandmother's glasses — just the eyes, peeking. Literal enough to be readable, abstract enough to work as a standalone icon across signage, packaging, and print.
The system
Logo, illustrated character, takeout packaging with table etiquette rules as background copy, menu card, and in-context signage mockups.
Gogiya illuminated restaurant sign mockup showing the grandmother character mark — oversized gold-rimmed glasses emerging from a grey hair cloud — backlit against a dark street.
Close-crop of the Gogiya wordmark with the illustrated grandmother character — blue typography, gold-rimmed glasses, grey hair. Gogiya takeout boxes in electric blue with the character mark and Korean script, set against background copy of Korean dining etiquette rules.

Case study

The brief

A designerbriefs competition for a Korean BBQ restaurant called Gogiya — "Hey meat!" in Korean. The brief wanted something social, authentic, friendly, and bold. 2,236 designers liked it. Most of them probably made something loud and red.

The brief mentioned family. That was the word that mattered.

The insight

Every Korean BBQ brand reaches for the same things: fire, energy, the grill, the group. The brief said family and most entries would have illustrated that as a crowd around a table.

I went to a specific person at that table. The grandmother watching you eat. The one who notices if you pour for yourself before the elders. The one your family still tells stories about. The one you think about every time you hold your knife wrong. She's not in the background of the meal. She's the reason the meal has rules.

The mark

The grandmother is illustrated — but the brand mark is just her glasses. Gold-rimmed, slightly oversized, emerging from a cloud of grey hair. Abstract enough to work as an icon. Specific enough that you know exactly who it is.

The glasses appear across every touchpoint: the logo lockup, the lightbox sign, the takeout packaging, the menu. The character can expand into full illustration when the format calls for it. The mark works on its own when it doesn't.

The system

The takeout boxes run Korean dining etiquette rules as background copy — pour for others before yourself, don't cook all the meat at once, use the serving utensils first. Table rules from the grandmother, printed on every box that leaves the restaurant.

The identity is in electric blue and gold with Korean script paired alongside the Latin wordmark. The system reads as confident and specific — a restaurant with an actual point of view, not just a grill and a group shot.

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