Itsu. Itsu’s logo and typography is minimalist and clean looking. It has bright pink letters on a white background, and a low contrast. The font they used is flux skewed slightly right. In the corner of the first letter there is a small butterfly connoting it’s an all-natural brand. The company consistently keeps the theme of nature throughout their designs emphasising it’s a healthy restaurant. Their products often start out as drawings and sketches made by their founder Julian Metcalfe. Their food containers are modelled on traditional Asian takeaway containers, adopting the font styles, colours patterns and lettering shape. On the website they say their goal is to make their designs and packaging as “easy” as possible to eat from. 

Another font Itsu uses for menu sub-headings and menu items is Futura. Used on their popular slogan “Eat Beautiful” it’s again a low contrast font with a lower thickness compared to their main logo. Because the overall use of thickness in their font is very low, it creates a typographic voice that is lighter and more sophisticated than many other fast-food brands. This plays in with the overall lightness and elegance of Asian writing and characters. It’s clear that the culture of Asian fine art has influenced Itsu’s design choices. 

Yo sushi. The Yo! Logo is a disjointed style of lettering with Mono linear letterforms. The breaks in the letterforms are recognisable from neon signage, road networks and the urban street style of Tokyo’s cityscape. The thickness is high and the contrast is high. It sits on an orange background with just the word Yo in the centre of square border. The logo created by Paul Belford uses a font called Aktiv Grotesk. The company seemingly uses the same Futura font as Itsu for the sub-headings and menu items, however it’s bolder than Itsu’s. Yo sushi takes from traditional Japanese restaurants as inspiration, like ramen houses, bento stores and street food carts. For packaging and restaurant design Belford took inspiration from the illustrative Noren curtains, as said on the BP&O website. 

The company’s typographic voice is aimed to be honest and healthy taken with Asian influence. It being quite modern and unconventional, with the breaks in the lettering you can see it’s aimed to attract younger people. The bright bold orange logo suggests their customers are looking for adventure and to try something new and unordinary. Unlike the brands of Pizza chain’s, Asian takeaways experiment with more unique colours other than red and green.