Komorebi Lemon Mochi (木漏れ日レモンもち) is a brand of packaged Japanese mochi rice cakes. The brand's target audience is adults from ages 22 and up, including parents with children, people who are interested in traditional Japanese products, gift givers and collectors. This project provides Komorebi with a brand system and a package prototype for product distribution.
Komorebi’s package design mission is to create an environmentally-friendly and engaging experience for its customers. Unlike its competitors, Komorebi targets sophisticated adults who can afford a higher-end product. Structured as a knock-down package, Komorebi is sustainable and convenient.
木 (ko), 漏れ (more), and 日 (bi). The first is the kanji for “tree,” 漏れ is the stem of the verb もれる, which means to leak out or come through, and 日 is the kanji character for day or sunlight. String everything together and you get the usual rough translation of komorebi: “to the sunlight shining through the trees.” With the green and gold/yellow color palette, the brand wants to accentuate the luxurious side of the product, while keeping it consistent to the natural quality of the mochi cakes. The typography is elegant but still accessible and functional. Mango Display is used as a main display typeface, where the beautiful ligatures correspond to Toppan Bunkyu Mincho as the Japanese Kanji typeface. With IBM Plex Sans, the body copy feels modern and minimal, easy to read at a small scale and doesn’t take the attention from the other typefaces.
Komorebi Lemon Mochi comes in a 4”x4” box with a tab lock on the top
lid and crash lock on the bottom. Every aspect of this package is knock down, meaning they can all be folded
flat. This way, the package is environmentally friendly and is able to tell a story during every step of the
unfold.
The package opens up into two 3.5” high carriers that users can take out using the forks on the top. Each of
the carriers consists of 2 small boxes inside, and each box 2 mochi cakes.
