Erchen Chang

0:03 Hello everyone and good evening good morning or good afternoon depending on where you're joining us from my name is matt alagaya and I'm the editor-in-chief of it's nice that.

0:10 And I'm delighted to welcome you all to this the march edition of nicer tuesdays online now first off I just wanted to say a massive thank you really to all of you for signing up for today's event it's going to be a very special one as well as we're continuing with our new format for nicer tuesdays in 2021 now if you haven't been to one of these events in the past couple of months we've made a few changes nicer tuesdays will still be held monthly on the last tuesday of the month that much will stay the same but what's different is that this year each event is gonna have its own theme and will be joined by two speakers each month talking to them in more depth discussing their work in detail and giving you folks at home more of a chance to ask your own questions tonight's theme is a really juicy one branding for the food industry and I'm delighted to say that we're going to be joined by two people who have crafted brand identities that are packed with personality and playfulness in a moment we'll be joined by ur chen chang co-founder and head chef of bao a small london restaurant chain known and loved just as much for its fun illustration-led identity as for its legendary steamed buns after that we're going to be speaking to rafa abreu global head of design at restaurant brands international the parent company of burger king rafa is going to be talking us through the recent rebrand for burger king which he oversaw and which I'm sure lots of you have seen it caused something of a stir in design circles earlier this year all right thanks very much for bearing with me I'm excited to say it's now time to meet our first guest now I'm sure the londoners in our audience will already be familiar with bao but for everyone else a quick bit of background that was a restaurant that opened in a car park in 2012 and has since won fans across the city with numerous locations its branding has always played a key part in its success a particular favorite being the iconic lonely man logo a simple line drawing of a man eagerly scoffing a baoban here to talk us through the visual side of the company this evening is ur chen chang who launched the restaurant with her husband and has led its visual identity and its clever use of illustration ever since yeah we're delighted to have erchen with us so without further ado jen if you could turn your your mic camera on that'd be great we can say hello hello yeah hi and they're all ready hear me how are you doing I'm ready it's great fantastic I was on a different tab you were there already yeah yeah yeah cool right well listen I'm gonna hand over to you now. And it's your chance to kind of explain to to the audience who you are and your work I'll be back in about 10 minutes though to ask some questions so for everyone watching remember please think about questions you want to ask archen and pop them in the chat for us to see okay it's over to you though cool so hi let's see can you see my first slide cool so I'm urchin I'm the creative director and founder of bao here you can see me in my fantasy world feasting on lobster drinking getting my nails done I study at the slate and this is where I met my husband shing and I founded bao with shang and his sister whiting you can eat their fictional world in the next slide that's coming yes there you go that's them.

3:41 So we started in a shed in east london back in 2013 next slide please yeah you can see the bell bar depicted here by dog john miller we commissioned him to do the night series for bao the series illustrates a world where men are drinking and eating in the glow of the night and since then we have grew five restaurants spreading across london next slide please restaurants are inspired by different asian eateries for example bao soho is inspired by taiwanese shelter houses borough inspired by late night grill joints and our latest opening cafe bows inspired by the kisa tents bao is more than just a place to eat and when you sit in our restaurant you're sitting in a story a story that has been designed to detail and these illustrations are done by marcelo comenero next slide please so for the talk today I want to talk about about logo the lonely man a curvy man who's hunchback looking sad and joining bao and does not want to share I want to talk about how this logo came about as it's important to see where it came from the inspiration which leads to leads us to the bell branding today next slide so I'm going to jump back to 2012 where the original lonely man was created this is the original lonely man drawing in in oversized suit sitting on a lonely staircase under a single cheese plant and he was pondering life trapping his thoughts and the drawing is a part of a performative installation piece next please I'm not quite sure why I can't use the clicker yeah.

5:37 So here here.

5:40 This is the performative installation where four to five men were dressed in oversized suits all came from different places ended up all drifted to the same riverbed which is the middle piece looking sad searching for meaning of life and the character was inspired by many figures from films particularly the celery men in asia melodramatic macho men in b movies what I wanted to achieve here is a sense of underlying humor a picturesque scenery with a river in this case the river rug on the on the riverbed where all men came here to cry but got overcrowded and I think battle shares the same narrative a sense of melancholy without being sad but rather humorous I I think there's always a part of us that is lonely and we are united by the sheer loneliness next so here you can see the evolution of the bow logo from the lonely man who slowly filled the oversized suit grew a little double chin and instead just the hand under his chin there's a bow in his hand and over the year he lost his legs and then got refined a little bit.

6:50 And then lost his arm and then that became our logo today next and part of this piece of artwork there's a rule book that came with it called rules to be a lonely man in the book there's there are details and instructions on emotions poses what to wear how to grow beer to a man look next and here's two examples of the inner pages so it says always look into something.

7:22 But actually you're looking into nothing because you should be thinking that nobody in the world understand you so you drift away by gazing afar sesame beer grow your beer for a week do not leave it too long the length of the hair should be the size of a sesame.

7:38 So the book is a set of rules on lonely main character which we still follow for the bowman how his emotion character narrations are built and we use it as a guideline for everything we do next slide please so when we started we always had a vision of creating this bowel world.

7:57 That's beyond restaurants we imagine what sort of restaurants he loved to do and what's his way of relaxation was his guilty pleasure bringing the lonely man to life in this parallel world that we're growing next and this is a drawing that we did back in 2014 when we opened bao soho we had always visualized how our restaurant exists in a world and what really excited us in is the sense of like world building everything that exists in the bio world has different stories and layers I don't know if any of you have seen the 20th century boys is a japanese comic book series and in there. There was a prophecy drawn by a bunch of kids many years later the fictional evil figure then in the comp in the prophecy then became like took over the world in reality and I guess this is our version of manifesting the lonely men into reality next please so an example of how this world building informs everything we do is how we build our people culture everything everyone that who joins bao is their journey the starting of their journey of the lonely man and slb on the top left is the school of bao which is the programs of talks workshops field trips and also stands for the tears of lonely men the very essence and to show you some other examples next slide please are the about money that we currently give out for the new starters there's money to spend in the restaurants you can see the baumann getting older with the staff every year that they've been with us also just so you know we're changing the amount so you can't you you can't print that out and use the money with us so next slide and these are some of the illustrations of a couple of our staff without old bauman that we print onto a t-shirt for them I want to share these with you because the illustration and all these things that we've done are the interfacing communications and you can see how we build the layers of bowel world into everything we do next please so for the rest of the talk I will go into our way of design how they connect to the rulebook and how I have developed the character of the bauman so first as you can see here are our weeping sake the sake made with the tears of the bowmen I've always loved the idea of men's tear the scarcity of it the waves of emotion behind depicted in popular culture and in my artwork men came to the riverbed to cry there and there were I don't know if you saw there were tear drop teapots on the riverbed and we collect their tear and they become the sake that you drink in the restaurants next slide please so here's the work in progress drawing of different weeping men that got drafted the way I work I usually go into all kinds of different characters and then I collect their emotions and then end it back up in in the form of a bowman I like the idea that each character can only give so much tear and then made up a certain percentage of the tiers for each sake so for example the guy with the curly hair the bottom left he he he he created 15 tier sake next so the next this drawing you see is a dark vehicle midnight beer and in my mind I could picture the batman gazing into the star in the middle in the midnight hour and with a beer keeping him company and part of this specific narration is a less sad more you know he really enjoy his own lonesomeness in the darkness next slide please so the usage of the glowing gold here is like the moonlight shining down him.

12:01 And then we have caught him unaware a special moment captured next slide so the third example I have is is a hotman source I I want to show you the process of how this character is built this is a hustle that we do in the restaurants and then we decided to launch on our online shop recently so next slide please in the next in the beginning I imagine the hot man should be like a handsome version of the of the bow man but very quickly I felt it was not quite relatable and then went on and draw like men got burned by chili and really really hot and then thought oh our hot sauce is quite sweet tangy and addictive not so crazy spicy like the drawings I've done here if you can go to the next slide and then.

12:50 And then and then the next one these are the drafts so these are kind of you know all gone mad and our sauce isn't like that.

12:59 And then and then slide which is the horse that we finished with the characters of the bowmen are neurons and you can catch a glimpse of his different sides with different expressions and there's an underlying humor throughout in some cases it's more obvious than others next slide please so here's some posters that I've designed for about borrow before we open balboaro the aesthetics and interiors of our first two restaurants were quite paired back barbaro is inspired by the late night grill joints in taiwan and japan and what brings it to life are those rough around the edges posters and this is kind of the first the beginning of where we inject more color into our aesthetics and you can see more tongue and cheeks in the design such as about a day where you know you become stronger the more bowel you eat or about day and then you escape to a paradise somewhere else and then or the the last one is a classic baohai which is a cocktail that we have in balboa where there's a lemon towel built up and you'll get you know knocked out by the lemon towel next slide so the picture here is you can see how these posters lived in balboa and next please so so last but not least brands that stand from bao one on the left is a character called susie it's a pop-up we did and that got inspired by the cantonese takeaway we we often joke about how susie is actually batman and drag or obama in a wig and on the on the right is the delivery brand that we started at the beginning of the pandemic last year it is a brand born out of era the focus of the brand shift from bow to rice hence call rice arrow is a pixelated version of the baumann and in some other branding running or running man inspired by mario where we imagined him running around town delivering food from houses to houses cool next please so thank you I hope I've given you a good insight into the bowel branding a little taste and reveal some secrets thanks so much and that was amazing yeah I love that final is it butter the man's covered in I'm not sure actually I was gonna say whoever whoever can guess what is right the first person our gift whatever that is to you okay that's a good deal I like it I guess yeah we've had loads of questions come through from the audience which is amazing I had one to start with which is really just I mean it's difficult I don't want to kind of yeah make people think the wrong thing because I don't want anyone to be under any illusions the food is not sublime because it absolutely is but how much of our success do you put down to the branding how much success is on the branding you mean yeah.

16:10 I think obviously food is one you know humongous part of it.

16:13 But I think is very I think it's equal amount really because because the amount of like thoughts that we put into everything that we do in the space in the menu design and and how the story connects everything so your experience in the restaurant or or take away is all kind of really connected and makes it extra gone the extra maya for to making it special in my opinion yeah when you were going through your talk there were lots of words in there lots of emotions that people might not necessarily associate with branding I think like melancholy was one of the words used which is really interesting because it's not typically something that people talk about in branding but do you think people need to lean into that a bit more need to use those slightly negative maybe like ironic emotions a bit more in branding I think that's I think that's what people love about it too though even though they may not be able to pick it out that it's melancholy but then they they can feel the loneliness of this bowman and quite a lot of people like I find it quite crazy like so many people I met all told me they're the lonely man and and I'm like no you're not but then I guess in a way that you all are so then.

17:26 So then.

17:29 I think these kind of what you said about like sarcastic it's already running through some you know other people's branding but particularly in our case it's definitely quite strong the dark humor yeah definitely help down. So it's brilliant yeah yeah definitely there's a lot of questions coming through so betty has asked what made you decide to distill your creative practice into the output of a restaurant which is interesting I mean you presumably could have gone into illustration or art.

17:56 But yeah you've decided to kind of channel your your creativity into a restaurant why so when so after we grade I graduated we we all went back to taiwan to travel well I went back home. And I took shenan waiting to taiwan to travel and then.

18:13 And then we we the three of us love eating but we also love like designing or art or art making and then.

18:21 So then we kind of just thought like we want to use all our skills together and create something. And I think food is one the biggest part that all connect us and that hence we want to do bow like we we went basically went into a mountain and then try the softest spout ever in the north east of taiwan and then.

18:39 And then we're just like oh my god we have to come back and make it. And then and then.

18:44 That's what we did and then we use everything that we already know to go along with it.

18:50 And in terms of like the continuation of the artwork into into bao I think it was quite natural like to use that as a narration because I'm not quite sure how to explain it it was always I always see like so many restaurants amazing restaurants I go to I always feel I'm walking into a set or like a performance and and I feel like restaurants are perfect place to express that we we did a restaurant well we did pop a restaurant and freeze for the past two to three years and and some of my friends who came in to freeze because everything is set up with the tent and everything.

19:31 And then it really feels like you walk into a set which is amazing I love it so good that's absolutely the experience that you get as eating in your restaurant so I'm sure everyone who's been there will appreciate that one final question from lydia we probably need to move on after this but lydia asks how do you kind of transition your illustrative style with the other illustrators you work with so that your brand stays consistent how do you choose illustrators what are the guiding principles that you've established so really interesting about kind of yeah commissioning other other illustrators and keeping the kind of style and the atmosphere the same yeah.

20:11 So we I love dog dog's work and love marcelo's work.

20:14 And then the way that we kind of stomp somewhere across their work is quite organic but then.

20:22 I think both of them have a very clean aesthetic but both are very different in in their case and I think before working with them we already kind of knew quite strongly what kind of direction we want to go for like they that specific self the knights knight series is the one that we want to create and the architecturalness of it that he can create is something perhaps my 2d work doesn't you know contribute to that.

20:47 And I and then the pixelated work as well it's like the whole digi the whole digital platform of like how do we depict this world of online delivery and I think that worked really well like together at the same at the same platform interesting we have maybe chance just one one more question maybe time for I'll squeeze it in a question from emmy how do you get the bow teams to be your brand ambassadors and talk about your brand almost as well as as you do I guess a bit of a question for more of a business question really than a than a I guess a design one but it's still interesting yeah it is it is interesting we talked about about ambassadors quite a bit before I think so we do this we do these like welcome mornings and then.

21:35 I think we're trying to like channel more creativities and stories into when people are with us so like one example is if you're with us for two years you you get your logo you you get your icon drawn by us.

21:49 So in the team like we recently used team for our platform and then start you see faces popping up. And I feel like that was kind of like the perfect way of united everyone with a icon drawn in the same style as the lonely man I think there's many small things that we do though like I showed in the school of bao the whole program of life journey and one one of the things that we we did was so for example your three year anniversary is going on at paris to go going to paris on a lonely trip where we design which restaurant you're gonna go to and then you'll come back in in the same day and I think having those different experiences for our staff slowly will become as passionate as I am to the branding amazing I hope that answers emmy's question I'm sure it does but I'm afraid we're gonna have to leave it there we could definitely talk about bowel for forever but thank you so much it's been it's been great having you joining us this evening thank you so much thank you and yeah