T O K I O
Art direction and identity design
for a sushi restaurant & cocktail bar in Budapest
for a sushi restaurant & cocktail bar in Budapest
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Tokio is not only one of the best sushi restaurants of Budapest, it becomes a hip and fancy cocktail bar at night with excellent djs. You can enjoy a delicious ramen, miso, tiger-crayfish tempura for a great business lunch or you can have a cocktail with wasabi or jasmine after work.
The interior design was made by Viktor Csap, who focused on showing three different faces of Tokyo. He named them "business", "fashion" and “the alley". The business scene is very elegant, he used copper, mirror, walnut and leather in an architectural context. The fashion scene is like a shopping street, with bent neon tubes, geometrical 3d wall decoration and a huge robotic element covering a pillar. For the alley scene Viktor chose concrete, graffiti, and metal panels.
The bent neon signs are based on the handwriting of one of the owners. The main wall is an imaginary detail of the Shibuya District of Tokyo, painted by Nikon One and his crew. On the other wall a big iconic robot appears like a huge guardian of the restaurant. The signs of the toilets are made of enamel in the biggest enamel factory of Hungary.
The logo is based on the japanese sign of Tokyo City. A small play with the letters made the typography more authentic but still readable. The key visual element of the restaurant is the robot, holding sushi and chopsticks in its hands. We can find it in the menu and on the manually spray painted flyers as well.
The menus were made by a traditional book binder, we used mirror-surfaced cardboard, emboss and neon colored silk ribbons. On the first pages the guests can find a sushi guide, a "how-to" of eating sushi and a couple of info pages. The business cards are made of this type of cardboard as well. The wallet for the bills was handcrafted by the designers of Mrs. Herskin.
P photography by Balázs Glódi, Eszter Laki
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