Sipping Soup & Not-So-Standard Stationary: New Entries from New Talent 2022

Need a new favorite resturant to grab some great food? Have to write a letter and looking for some fancy stationary to write on? The latest entries in our New Talent 2022 competition have you covered with their unique, interesting design work.

If you aren’t familiar with Vietnamese food, Madame Vo‘s is a good place to start. Located in the East Village of New York City, Madame Vo opened in 2017 as one of a handful of contemporary Vietnamese establishments. Its owners, couple Yen Vo and chef Jimmy Ly, were inspired to open Madame Vo thanks to the plentiful Vietnamese food Vo ate when living in Houston, Texas, as well as Ty’s childhood helping his parents run their banh mi shop, Paris Sandwich. SInce opening, Madame Vo has been a great success, to the point the couple opened New York City first Vietnamese BBQ place, Madame Vo BBQ, in 2019.

“Madame Vo Rebranding” (above) is a visual identity rebranding project. Zitong Zhao, the student behind new look, needed to not only redesign the logotype, but also other promotional materials. Zhao used the resteraunt’s food for inspiration, looking to their famous pho, a soup with noodles and bold flavors, for creating the type; with how the letters are composed of thick and thin lines, it looks as if the words are spelled out with noodles. For the bright color palette, Zhao again looked to their colorful foods, using shades of red, orange, and yellow-green. Overall, it’s a satifying new visual identity that suits a great place to eat.

Letter-writing is a dying art, when when you do put pen to paper, you want to be writing on something nice. Angela Núñez Cadenas, a student at the InFocus Film School in Canada, was assigned by her professor Leila Singleton to redesign the logo of an existing museum, then create a stationery system that builds on that new logo’s aesthetic. Cadenas chose to work with MUSA (Museo Subacuático de Arte, or Underwater Museum of Art in English), a unique museum located in Cancún, Mexico. It was created to ease the stress of 800,000 annual visitors on the natural local reef system, redirecting them instead to an underwater exhibition.

Appropriately, Cadenas went with an underwater theme for “Stationery: Underwater Museum of Art / Museo Subacuático de Arte” (above). The new logo suggests an aqurium tank, with the museum’s preferred acronym appearing in the bottom half, as if submerged. The type breathes through the letter U, which recalls a snorkel tube, bubbles and all. Those bubbles are repeated throughout the system, appearing alongside brightly colored aquatic coral vegetation. The theme of submersion is also repeated, most notably inside the envelope, where the phrase, “Welcome to the sea” floats partially above its opening. The majority of the system was designed in no more than two colors – white and teal – but oversized stickers show how the palette can be expanded for full-color applications.

Check out other New Talent entries and submit your own at graphis.com.