IDEA: THE KANJI THAT IS MADE OF MORE.

The inspiration came from the art of ‘Shodo’. Writing in Japan originally used a series of pictograms, telling stories with pictures - a tradition of ’Japanese Calligraphy’ dating back 2000 years. Could we then use this already established typography in another way? We worked with a Shodo master and some carefully chosen words. He created bold phrases through rhythmic brush strokes on washi paper to express the values of Guinness. The ‘Shodo’ art allowed us to effortlessly use the typography to reveal the iconic symbol of the white head and black body of the Guinness pint - in the Kanji itself. The carefully chosen words like “precious” “excellence” “thoughtful” “superb” “truth” showed that the centuries old typography had in fact been hiding the iconic shape all along as our careful brush strokes cleverly revealed.

With a 2000-year-old pictorial writing tradition we ‘revealed’ that the iconic white creamy head and black body of a Guinness had always been there at the heart of the local language. ‘THE KANJI THAT IS MADE OF MORE’. It appeared in bar posters imprinting on people’s minds that Guinness should play a part in anyone’s daily consumption.

Our Designs in the end exuded the quality values of the white creamy head and dense black body of a Guinness pint in a way that had not been expressed before in Japan. Our idea was built into the heart of the Japanese language in a culturally relevant and clever everyday way. The impact has yet to be recorded in terms of sales as the campaign only went live in April.