CUCTÁC: VIETNAMESE CHICKEN JERKY
"Cuctac" is a brand established by a team of Vietnamese-American young people who wants to introduce to the US people a Vietnamese snack - chicken jerky with kaffir lime leaves (khô gà lá chanh). It is a Vietnamese-style chicken jerky with dehydrated garlic, chili, and kaffir lime leaves. Since it is made from fresh chicken, it contains nutritious minerals in addition to vitamins A, B1, B2, C, E, Amino acids, Calcium, phosphorus, and iron,... it also contains high content of beneficial fatty acids and albumin. The supplement of these rare minerals is extremely good, especially for children and dieters. Since it has a tasteful savory and sweet seasoning with a mild chili flavor, it is a perfect snack to replenish energy and prevent hunger without making you too full. On the other hand, it is also very convenient for people to bring and use it anywhere at any time because it can be stored for a long time at room temperature.
Knowing the properties of this product, I have researched and proposed audiences of the brand which are children, teenagers, young adults, and especially Asian customers (in which Vietnamese is a high potential customer). I also determined the brand's competitors which are U.S beef jerky brands (because they do not have any chicken jerky products for humans in the U.S market):
People's Choice Beef Jerky Old Fashioned Original.
Oberto Thin Style Original Beef Jerky.
Think Jerky Free Range Sriracha Honey Turkey Jerky.
Country Archer Original Beef Jerky.
Wild Zora Meat & Veggie Bars.
Perky Jerky Turkey Original.
Jack Link's Original Beef Jerky.
Besides that is some of Vietnamese brands:
Khô Gà Lá Chanh Bếp Nhà
HeoMi Food
Khô Gà Xé Dotachi
Khô Gà Cay Bà Nâu
Khô Gà Như Lan
Gà Bóc Bóc
Rụm
Next steps, I first came up with the name "Viet Taste" and drew on 25 thumbnails, which mostly used the initials "V" and "T" to do some monograms. However, after doing a brand matrix, I decided to change the brand name to "Cuctac" (k-tac) after a Vietnamese folk "Con gà cục tác lá Chanh"; is the sound made by the chicken. This folk song conveys the experience of our ancestors about the spice used with chicken - lime, in Vietnamese traditional chicken dishes are usually served with sliced lemon leaves and a dipping sauce made from salt, pepper, and lime juice.
As I changed the brand name, I had to go back and redo another 50 thumbnails. In this 50 thumbnails version, I use the initial "C" and "T" but then eliminated just the initials "C" and later is combining the letter "C" and illustrations of chicken. Next, I choose three thumbnails that I think work best for the brands, they all are combinations of the letter "C" with the illustration of a chicken's figure. The reason why I chose it is that I wanted to stay on the trend when most jerky brands have the illustration of chicken and beef on their brand name, as well as using the image to easily describe the product to the audience. On the other hand, these three designs are quite simple to get customers to remember and recognize, as I can easily use the thumbnails to make the alternative version of the logo.
The final chosen logo was chosen based on most of the class's favorite versions. The highlight of the logo is the image of a chicken combined with the motifs of a rooster’s head, the letter c (body), and the letter u (wing). Besides that, there is an illustration of a lime leaf that acts as a sharp (sắc; /) diacritic mark above the stylized letter “a.” The font used for this logo is Arial Rounded MT Bold- Regular, considered to have the same weight and roundness as the chicken illustration. The chosen typography for the brand’s Heading, subheading, and body is Source Han Sans TW family. It is considered to be modern, eligible, and especially can display Vietnamese special diacritics. I did add a little different detail that instead of using the "letter" of this font, I use an upside-down "v" letter to replace the "a." This curved logo is dynamic and energetic, suitable for children and young customers to look at. Lastly, I decided that the brand will focus on using yellow and red (the two colors of Vietnam’s national flag), secondary colors are green color which represents Vietnam’s army uniform, and white. Another reason is these are also the color of the snack’s main ingredients and spices: Yellow - chicken breast, Red - Bird’s eye chili, Green - Kaffir lime leaf, and Garlic. Last but not least, I finalized my logo design based on the comments of the final critique, which are fixing the roughness, scaling down the letters, and making it more comprehensive.
Cuctac's target audience is young people, the important thing about the product is its convenience, suitable for young people to use any time, anywhere. I choose using a resealable pouch for Cuctac's product packaging because of its mobility, lightweight, and convenience to preserve the snack. The next step is choosing three flavors, the first flavor I chose is the signature Vietnamese chicken jerky flavor - Kaffir lime leaf, it goes with the Kaffir Lime Leaf Green from the brand's color palette. The next two flavors I get inspired part from the brand's color pallet, apart from reaching the real flavor they are having from the market. The second flavor is extra spicy flavor, for people who love a hot kick spicy snack (usually Asian people love extra spicy food), this flavor easily goes with the Birds Eye Chili Red of the brand's color. The third one is Garlic Butter Flavor, I came up with this flavor while seeing a lot of garlic and butter flavor in the US's market snacks, another reason is that Asian people also love using garlic for seasoning their food, this flavor goes with the Chicken Breast Yellow from the brand's color pallet.
The following step is to design the labels for the packaging. While sketching 50 thumbnails for the labels, I took a lot of references from real-life packaging of both Vietnamese chicken jerky brands, US beef jerky brands, and other snack pouch packaging. However, when choosing the best 3 sketches, I chose the 3 ones that I think will be easier for me to design 3 flavors of packaging but still be consistent with the rest.
My final decision is to have an illustration of the flavor as a pattern in the packaging background. I keep a white background because it is the best color to support the brand logo, title, as well as illustrations (I also adjusted the logo a little bit - making the chicken design more rounded, after reading the comments on project 1). The illustration from the drafts was really dense and kind of competing with other elements, hence I then lower the opacity depending on the flavors' color. In the draft, the green and red colors of the illustration were considered to be too "Christmas," especially the red of the "extra spicy flavor" is too much. I followed the solution given in the critiques to use orange replacing the red in "Extra spicy flavor" packaging and chose another lighter green for the "kaffir lime leaf flavor" design. Another important thing I received after the critiques is that I have to fix my "Vietnamese Chicken Jerky" and the flavor titles because it was too competitive with the logo. I then changed the both fonts of the title and the flavor to make it more cohesive but not too complete with the brand logo.
The font chosen for "Vietnamese chicken jerky" is "Droog Heavy" as it is fun and bold and rounded, suit with the young, dynamic concept of the brand. The font chosen for the flavor title is "CoconPro- Regular" as it is also rounded, simple, and goes well with other design elements on the packaging. In my final design labels, I decided to warp the titles with simpler curves along an invisible line between the illustration and the logo/title part, it also embraces and creates space for the logo to shine. Another important element of the front side is a big chicken takeout from the logo, this part is used to emphasize the transparent/revealing part of the products. Furthermore, I added the tagline "ka-ka-ka tak" said by the chicken to help the audience know how to pronounce the brand name. On the back side, I included nutrition facts, a piece of brand information, and a suggestion on how the customers can use the products. I had to switch the circle part to the rounded rectangular to avoid too much dead space and add some texts to support the illustration. Adding final touches, I decided to include a "cut here" line, bar code, and QR code for further information.
