A Vietnamese studio rebrands pet-food inspired by the wagging tails and pointy ears of our furry friends

Saigon-based branding studio M–N Associates, led by Duy Nguyễn and Lan Mai, helped bring the joy of our four-legged friends to the rebranding of PetChoy, a Vietnamese pet food company. “The custom TypeType trailers in Vietnamese with pet detailed diacritical marks was our main focus during this project: the font helps to highlight and deliver amusing messages,” says Duy Nguyễn – the creative director on the project along with Anh Nguyễn – helping the brand stand out among others on shelves. “Also, the process of creating real stock imagery for the brand like paws and food dishes was really interesting and elevated their authenticity as well as creating the right connection with consumers.”

The inspiration for the atmosphere of the branding came from wanting to trigger the concept of serving pets as well as a restaurant might serve their owners. The new branding was changed to target a Gen Z audience, with lifestyle and communication at the forefront of this generation’s concerns. So the visual system had to reflect these.

Nguyễn worked with designers Quân Nguyễn and Anh Phạm​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ to define the cat and dog oriented product line; the team designed minimal cat and dog characters and brought them subtly into the negative space of the letter “a”. Whilst the colour palette is inspired by core ingredient colors: seafood, meat, chickens, and vegetables. “The new packaging,” Nguyễn says, “and typographic layout emphasises PetChoy’s main product line and becomes a new visual language for them.”

With Haravan, M–N Associates also built a complete custom template for the online store, “making this become an easy shopping experience for pet owners, especially during the lockdown.” Other than the pandemic, Nguyễn and his team’s main creative challenge was focusing on Gen Z insight, a typographic-oriented packaging system, whilst showing the pet on the front of the product’s packaging. “And creating a custom typeface in the Vietnam market is something completely new and difficult to get, and the new direction depends mostly on that typeface,” the creative director continues.