dapao foods is the latest entry into Singapore’s teeming food service industry, offering a unique brand proposition: dapao celebrates the flavours of Singapore, and cooks from scratch using local ingredients, innovating traditional recipes to be healthier and easier to takeaway. dapao engaged Chemistry to bring its brand to life and to ensure that it would stand out from the rest of the crowd.

Part of the logo development process involved identifying competitors in order to set a direction for the look and feel for dapao while creating differentiation and distinction. The developed logo’s fresh colour palette is inspired by wholesome vegetables and fruits. A series of connected circles makes up a colourful ‘cloud’  and serves as a unique holding device for the brand name, allowing it to sit comfortably in a variety of applications.

Creative director Wil Kolen explains, “The name ‘dapao’ offered a great opportunity to create a simple typographic image, taking advantage of the rounded elements of the individual letters and reversing them onto a colourful circle-based backdrop. The image is strongly related to food – not in a traditional way – but with a young and fresh appeal”.

To ensure that the brand identity allows for flexibility and growth into new areas outside of the food service, various brand extensions and secondary colour palettes were developed for possible future implementations. As a bold statement to what dapao is all about, its tagline: 'slow food, fast' is combined with the logo to complete the brand identity in various configurations.

As an extension of the brand, the website design infuses daopao’s in-store ‘fun foodie’ personality and integrates clear navigation with easy readability. In addition to the outlet itself, the website serves as an important touchpoint for a variety of people, including customers, potential employees and the media. Every detail of the website – from photographs to the unique and ownable design elements – consistently reflect the brand.