This project was created for a Japanese-Brazilian programmer and illustrator, with a particular focus on her coding work. Inspired by her love for Sanrio and pastel aesthetics, the brand identity blends playful charm with a tech-savvy edge. The visual system combines soft colours, kawaii references, and pixel art elements to capture both Yumi's creative personality and her professional focus on programming. The dual use of Romaji and Hiragana in the logo reflects her cultural background while echoing the visual style of anime and early-2000s internet culture.
Moodboard
The moodboard brings together pastel colours, playful imagery, and nostalgic pixel art to capture the project's visual tone. At the centre sits the colour palette, which guided all design choices. Key references include the Pudding.Cool logo (fun, approachable branding), Pixel dango by bnovaesdesigner and Pixel art girl by Oqii for their pixel-based aesthetic, Pink clouds pattern by mothladyco for its dreamy quality, and the Bubblegum font by friskysloths for inspiration in bubbly, rounded typography. The moodboard also included Cute kawaii animals by Yevheniia Charkina, bringing another kawaii touch that inspired the brand's mascot. Together, these images (taken from Freepik, with the exception of The Pudding logo) provided a strong foundation for blending coding and kawaii culture.
Colour Palette
The palette uses soft pastel tones that allude to both Japanese kawaii aesthetics and nostalgic internet palettes, while also keeping a cheerful, approachable mood.
Carnation Pink (#FFAFCC): Playful and sweet, evoking bubblegum and light-heartedness.
Fairy Tale (#FFC8DD): A soft pink that adds warmth and harmony to the palette.
Thistle (#CDB4DB): A muted purple for balance, depth, and a calm, dreamy touch.
Uranian Blue (#BDE0FE): A light blue that serves as the primary brand colour, playful yet soothing.
Light Sky Blue (#A2D2FF): A slightly deeper pastel blue that strengthens contrast while maintaining the airy, delicate feel.
Logos
I created three options of logos for 'Yumi': a wordmark, a mascot, and a lockup that combines the wordmark and the mascot.
Wordmark
The wordmark features the name "Yumi" in Uranian Blue (#BDE0FE). Below it, a smaller version is written in Hiragana, using Carnation Pink (#FFAFCC). Both are rendered in Cherry Bomb One, with small white highlights that create a bubblegum-like, rubbery texture. The dual-language approach represents both Portuguese and Japanese, while also nodding to anime titles that blend Romaji and Japanese scripts.
Mascot
The mascot is Bloobla Caboobla, a pastel-blue pixel art cat with a bubblegum-like, rubbery texture. Designed with a mischievous but cute expression, it wears a cyberpunk-style visor that lights up in a purple-pink sequence resembling a loading bar. The mascot is animated with subtle idle movements — bouncing up and down, wagging its tail, and folding its ears — evoking early 2000s internet virtual pets like Neopets and the Microsoft Agent characters. Bloobla is an alien cat whose bubblegum body can stretch, reshape, inflate, and regenerate, perfectly tying into the brand's playful yet techy personality. The mascot's name is supposed to sound both like a bubblegum brand and an alien language.
Lockup
In the lockup version, the U in "Yumi" is replaced with the mascot's head, which has been subtly reshaped to resemble the letter. This reinforces the mascot's shapeshifting lore while visually integrating brand and character into one cohesive identity.
Typeface and Fonts
The typographic system balances playfulness and readability, pairing a bubbly display font with a more neutral option for body text.
- Cherry Bomb One: Used for the wordmark and recommended for titles. Its hand-drawn, rounded style supports the kawaii aesthetic while connecting to Japanese scripts, making it a natural fit for the project's theme.
- Nunito Sans: Suggested for body text and longer passages, its clean and highly readable sans-serif style complements Cherry Bomb One without overwhelming it, ensuring clarity across digital and print formats.