Hotch Potch
Concept Brand Development
Summary
Ready to warm up with a fiery broth filled with a delicious variety of ingredients? Hotch Potch is a full brand concept for a modern, high quality, and inclusive dining centered around the delicious meal of hot pot.
Featuring a full brand design and development from the ground up, this case study details the process of creating the brand's underlying values and goals, visual identity, website, and mobile app.
Role
Designer and Developer
Tech Stack
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Photoshop
Figma
Prizm Segmentation System
Concept and Brand Identity
Concept and Brand Identity
As a hot pot enthusiast myself, the concept of Hotch Potch came about through curiosity of how one might develop a distinct brand among other popular existing brands. The name "Hotch Potch" is an amalgamation of the words "hot pot" and "hodge podge" and much like the dish it reflects, signifies a mix of the fun, warm, and inviting aspect of the brand.
Hotch Potch is a casual dining restaurant that serves shared and individual meals with popular Asian sides such as bubble tea and fried chicken. The brand's values include fostering connection and curiosity between loved ones through shared meals. Hotch Potch allows people of all ages to utilize the restaurant's literal and figurative warmth and passion for unique food through quality ingredients, customer service, and innovation.
Competitive Analysis
Competitive Analysis
The first step in determining the brand's direction and goals is to conduct a competitive analysis. Understanding the landscape, specifically in the Asian hot pot restaurant domain, is critical in developing a strong value proposition for Hotch Potch.
In this analysis, two existing competitors– Big Way Hot Pot and Haidilao Hot Pot– were assessed on the strengths and weaknesses regarding brand identity, marketing potential, and user experience of brand products. Results gathered from the analysis were used to shape the direction of Hotch Potch's brand identity.
The main value proposition for Hotch Potch is to offer efficient modern technical services through an in-app waitlist and online ordering for a variety of diets to help foster connections between loved ones over quality food.
Customer Persona
Customer Persona
The exemplary customer of Hotch Potch would resemble Adrian Chang, millennial in his late 20's who enjoys seeking local experiences to share with family and friends. Adrian's self-perception as the "go-to guy" by family and friends for new and exciting local experiences motivates him to keep up "knowledgeable" status through continuous exploration.
With an infinite number of possibilities online, Adrian finds frustration in not being able to find desired information quickly (e.g., hours of operation) and spends only seconds per social media post when browsing on his phone.
In order to best serve the demographic that Adrian belongs to, Hotch Potch as a brand must communicate information primarily with visuals, supplemented by other methods (e.g., text) to catch customer attention within seconds. Brand digital assets (e.g., social media posts, website, mobile app) must quickly direct the customer to their desired end goal with the fewest number of clicks/taps (e.g., clear Call To Actions, logical hierarchies).
Colour Palette
#EC390E
#5D5BE8
#FE800B
#202020
#FFF8EE
Colour Palette
The brand colour palette for Hotch Potch is designed to evoke emotions aligning with the brand's key characteristics– Connection, Curiosity, Warmth, Passion, and Quality.
Fire Red is the primary brand colour for Hotch Potch. This colour elicites a sense of warmth and passion and reflects the unique use of fire in hot pot. Fire Red should be used for the largest, most important CTA and the main colour for graphics whenever possible.
Pumpkin Orange and Sweet Blue are secondary brand colours are used to provide emphasis to secondary information and to elicity a warm, intriguing, and modern feel to the overall branding.
Check out the style guide for more details about Hotch Potch brand guidelines.
Typography
Typography
The brand's wordmark logo typography is based on the font “Game Suet” and hand customized to create an interlocking, geometric logo. This represents the personalized nature of hot pot with a mix of ingredients coming together to create a cohesive whole. Game Suet should only be used as a display font for the logo, and should not be used for headings or body copy.
All headings and body copy utilize the font “Jost” which is a highly versatile sans-serif font. At the bowl of certain letters (i.e., the stroke that creates rounded empty space in a letter, such as a, d, or p), the stroke thins slightly, creating subtle uniqueness while still maintaining ease of legibility.
Logo
Logo
Hotch Potch utilizes two types of logos to represent it's visual identity– a wordmark and a graphic logo.
The wordmark plays into the concepts of connection, curiosity, and warmth using the words as building blocks. The graphic logo represents a hot pot but is structured in such a way that the bowl resembles a smile. The red swirl of the fire conveys motion and passion for the brand by drawing the eye around the logo from the outside to the center.
Brand Visuals
Brand Visuals
Hotch Potch's brand pattern is designed to elicit a sense of delight, comfort, and brand recognition from customers. The line art used in the pattern are clean cut with rounded edges, alluding to the precise layout of the logo wordmark to create a cohesive brand identity. Using the brand colours “Tofu” and “Charcoal” ensures that the pattern provides a minimalistic presence so as to intrigue (but avoid overwhelming) customers, particularly if additional visuals are layered on top of the pattern.
This brand pattern may be used on various materials such as business cards, napkins, window overlays, or in social media visuals.
Coming Soon
Hotch Potch UX design, website, and mobile app!
