Thinking Collective
All work

02 · Restaurant & chef school

Sushi Dojo

A sushi restaurant and the chef school that shares its roof. One crest, one calligraphic wordmark, and a sub-brand architecture that lets the Academy speak with the authority of a credential without ever leaving the house it came from.

Client
Sushi Dojo, Boca Raton, FL
Sector
Hospitality & education
Engagement
Identity sprint + campaign build
Scope
Identity, sub-brand, print, environmental, uniform, motion
The Sushi Dojo pamphlet held open in the low, warm light of the restaurant's bar interior.
AI In-situ visualisation. The printed pamphlet, checked against the room it would actually be read in.

The brief

Three businesses, one roof.

Sushi Dojo is a restaurant in Boca Raton. Sushi Academy trains professional chefs. Sushi Chef School teaches everyone else. All three run out of the same building under the same founder, and all three arrived at once.

The asset list was long. A crest and wordmark able to sit on a dinner menu and on a graduation certificate. A sub-brand system so each school could be told apart from the restaurant and from the other school. Menus, pamphlets, banners, window decals, chef coats, T-shirts, stamps, and the artwork for a wall-mounted knife case.

Two more lines followed once the identity was settled: a retail experience for the knives sold on site, and a premium take-out offer. Every piece of it was designed here.

The mark

A logo that holds tradition, with innovation.

The crest is constructed and the wordmark is not. Setting them together is the whole idea: one part carries the lineage, the other carries the hand.

The full Sushi Dojo lockup: the kamon crest above brushed Japanese calligraphy reading 寿司道場, with SUSHI DOJO and BOCA RATON, FL set beneath in serif capitals.
Organic Primary lockup · crest, calligraphy, locality line
The Sushi Dojo crest: a five-petal kamon flower centred inside two interlocking rotated square frames.
The crest

Constructed vector. Rotated squares on a grid around a five petal kamon, symmetrical enough to reduce to a 12mm inked seal.

The calligraphy

寿司道場, brushed by hand. It repeats none of the crest's geometry. It is placed as artwork and never retyped or redrawn.

The locality line

Boca Raton, FL sits inside the primary lockup rather than in a footer, so the claim is stated up front on a menu, a window and a certificate alike.

Sub-brand architecture

How the three marks relate.

Three businesses need three marks that read as related without being interchangeable. The system separates them by how far each one sits from the restaurant.

Sushi Dojo holds the primary crest and the brushed wordmark. Sushi Academy uses the same calligraphy cut with a diagonal rule, so it reads as the same house in a different register. Sushi Chef School sits furthest out, on a fish form monogram with its own palette, pattern and badge set, because it sells to a general audience rather than to working chefs.

The Sushi Academy lockup: brushed calligraphy cut by a diagonal rule, with SUSHI ACADEMY and BOCA RATON, FL set beside it in serif capitals.
OrganicSushi Academy · house calligraphy, cut with a diagonal rule
Four Sushi Chef School lockups: two circular badges in navy and coral around a fish-form S monogram, plus horizontal and stacked wordmark versions.
OrganicSushi Chef School · badge, horizontal and stacked lockups
A page from the Sushi Academy brand buildout deck showing the typographic system: serif wordmark, the line Discipline. Technique. Respect. in bold sans capitals, and body copy specimens.
Organic Typographic system. The serif wordmark carries the formality of an earned credential; bold sans headlines deliver instruction with no ornament.

Brand buildout

The system, page by page.

The Chef School system was documented so it can be applied without us in the room. Pattern, print, signage, apparel and campaign layouts, each with the rules for using them.

Pattern system page: the navy and coral repeating fish pattern shown as a background, with notes on using it across shirts, packaging and social posts.
OrganicPattern system
Print applications page: Sushi Chef School business cards on warm cream stock, with specification notes on paper weight and blind embossing.
OrganicPrint applications
Signage page: framed poster and A-frame pavement sign using the fish pattern, alongside layout structure and imagery guidelines.
OrganicSignage and wayfinding
Apparel page: navy caps and a navy tee carrying a coral and cream back graphic of waves, sushi and the fish monogram.
OrganicApparel and merchandise
Campaigns page: three social layouts reading Grand Opening, Classes Starting Soon and All Ages Welcome, in navy, coral and cream.
Organic Campaign layouts for grand openings, class sign-ups and community events.

Print

Where the identity earns its keep.

A menu is read at arm's length in low light by someone deciding how much to spend. It's the least forgiving surface a hospitality brand owns, and the first place a weak system shows.

A tall Sushi Dojo banner: the kamon crest in gold on a deep green ground, with the crest repeated as a large watermark behind it.
OrganicBanner · crest in gold on green
The Sushi Dojo pamphlet artwork, laid out across two pages.
OrganicPamphlet · artwork
Sushi Dojo panel artwork: a silver bluefin tuna on black, overlaid with the brushed 寿司道場 calligraphy in outline and the crest at lower left.
OrganicTuna panel · calligraphy in outline over the fish
Seven Sushi Dojo stamp lockups: the crest, the SUSHI DOJO wordmark and the kanji, drawn square, horizontal and vertical.
Organic Stamp suite, seven lockups. The crest, the wordmark and the kanji in square, horizontal and vertical formats, so one of them fits a takeaway box, a receipt, or a student's completed workbook.

Worn & environmental

The parts a customer walks past, or is served by.

Uniform, glass and wall. These are the applications that decide whether a brand feels resident or applied, and they're the ones most identity projects leave to whoever prints them.

The final Sushi Dojo chef coat design, showing crest placement and embroidery specification.
OrganicChef coat · final production artwork
The Sushi Dojo window decal artwork, built for a single-colour cut on glass.
OrganicWindow decal · single-colour cut
AIDisplay wall · motion

The website

The identity, online.

sushidojoboca.com was designed and built here. The same crest, calligraphy and serif wordmark, carried onto a screen without redrawing any of it.

The Sushi Dojo website: the lit knife display wall behind a dark scrim, with the crest and wordmark in the header, the line OMAKASE, RETAIL, EDUCATION, the name set large in serif, a gold Reserve a Seat button, an Uber Eats coming soon pill, and the address and phone number beneath.
Organic Designed and built as a single page. Everything a visitor needs sits in one view.
Structure One page, no template
Carries Crest, calligraphy, wordmark
In one view Offer, booking, address, phone

Websites are part of what we make. If the identity already exists, we put it online. If it does not, we build both, so the site is not a separate design that happens to carry your logo.

Visit sushidojoboca.com

Campaign & motion

Boarded, lit, and moved.

Two six-frame boards set the knife campaign before anything was rendered, a product reveal and an unboxing. Then the display case was taken into motion.

The Sushi Dojo knife campaign storyboard, six frames showing the product reveal sequence.
AIKnife campaign · six-frame board
The Sushi Dojo knife unboxing storyboard, six frames following the package being opened.
AIUnboxing · six-frame board
AIKnife display case · motion
A two-up comparison: on the left a chef in the black Sushi Academy coat slicing tuna; on the right a student in the cream Sushi Chef School apron filleting a salmon.
AIUniform in use. The Academy coat and the Chef School apron, shot as a pair for recruitment and sell-in.

Asset ledger

What was drawn, and what was generated.

This project sits heavily on the organic side. Almost everything Sushi Dojo puts in a customer's hands is production artwork: vector, printed, cut or embroidered. Generative work carried the campaign around it.

Organic, hand-built 15 deliverables

  • Kamon crest · constructed vector
  • Calligraphic 寿司道場 wordmark treatment
  • Primary lockup with locality line
  • Sushi Academy sub-brand system
  • Sushi Chef School monogram, pattern and badge system
  • Chef School buildout pages · pattern, print, signage, apparel, campaigns
  • Website design and build · sushidojoboca.com
  • Typographic system · serif, sans and body roles
  • Brand buildout deck · ten pages
  • Menu design and layout · nine pages
  • Pamphlet, banner suite and tuna panel artwork
  • Stamp suite · seven lockups
  • Chef panel · vector illustration for menu and collateral
  • Chef coat, T-shirt and wall art artwork
  • Window decal and knife display case panels

AI, generative production 4 deliverables

  • Uniform and counter photography
  • Knife campaign storyboard · six frames
  • Knife unboxing storyboard · six frames
  • Display case motion and in-situ mockups

What the organic work bought

Quality type
Deliberate. Every piece here has to survive a physical process: a vinyl cutter, an embroidery head, a press. Only true vector artwork with real production specification does that without a phone call.
  • A crest that reduces to a 12mm inked seal and enlarges to an 80-inch banner from the same file.
  • Single-colour decal and embroidery artwork that vendors ran without amendment.
  • A sub-brand architecture that lets the Academy issue credentials in the family voice.
  • Menu artwork the kitchen can update seasonally without the layout drifting.

What the generative work bought

Quality type
Volumetric. Campaign, atmosphere and motion for a single-location restaurant, at a cost that would otherwise have put all three out of reach.
  • Two full campaign boards approved before any production spend was committed.
  • Print pieces checked in the actual room before going to press.
  • Academy recruitment imagery without booking students or a shoot day.
  • Motion for social · a format a single-site restaurant rarely gets to own.

Where we drew the line. Nothing a customer physically receives was generated. The crest on the coat, the seal on the box, the decal on the glass and the type on the menu are all drawn artwork with production specification behind them, because a vinyl cutter, an embroidery head and a press need real paths, not an image of one.