Our client is a traditional manufacturer of NORI (seaweed) in North East Japan, who has struggled with the long declining category trend, and with damage from the tsunami that swept away their factories.The client wanted us to design new packaging that can reinforce its appeal to the modern urban audience.

We decided to apply design thinking to the product itself, instead of focusing exclusively on packaging, Laser cutters are used to carve designs into our NORI - classic patterns from Japanese history called ‘Monyo’ which signify growth, beauty, luck, and so on. Themes we thought that could uplift people in the disastrous year.By combining authentic tradition with modern technology, we created an entirely new type of NORI, never seen before - one that conveys our hopes for the future, as well as our respect for the past.

Design Nori generated viral WOM on Twitter, firstly among key influencers in the design-conscious community, and then the general urban audience. It is one of the most tweeted nori brands in this low-involvement category where people rarely recall a brand name.Backed up with its popularity among the design-conscious audience, Design Nori has been invited to an exhibition on the Japanese monyo (classic patterns) at the National Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto, plus 2 other famous museums in Tokyo and Mie Prefecture, starting from April 6th.The camapign not only helped refresh the static category image, but remarkably boosted our client’s profile nationwide.