Pet Choy
M — N Associates• Date added
31 January 2023
Pet Choy, a pet feed manufacturer based in Saigon, Vietnam, aims to provide delicious and nutritious meal plans for cats and dogs. Founded with the belief that pets deserve to be served like their owners, Pet Choy strives to educate and empower the pet-loving community with an accurate and thorough understanding of pet nutrition and health.
Ho Chi Minh City-based creative design firm M — N Associates worked on the rebrand, which has since seen significant growth and gained attention for its outstanding packaging on shelves.
Client
Pet Choy
Year
2021
Creative Director
Duy — N
Anh Nguyễn
Content Director
Quân Nguyễn
Typefaces in Use
M — N Associates adopted a complete transformation for Pet Choy, a local pet food brand in order to compete with international ones in terms of visual and content direction. The goal was to target new customer types such as urbanists and Gen Zs.
The new logo for Pet Choy features a typographic design adapted from the TT Trailers typeface. The design includes characteristic ink traps inspired by happy wagging tails. The design aims to visually represent the happiness of a pet getting Pet Choy for mealtimes through the use of the phrases "pet's choice" and "pet's joy."
In order to differentiate between the cat and dog product lines, M — N Associates designed and incorporated minimal cat and dog characters into the negative space of the letter A.
Additionally, the icon set was designed to be solid and recognisable, making it easy to differentiate between products.
The typeface TT Trailers was chosen by M — N Associates for its great fitted personality through ink traps and funky narrow shaped design.
M — N Associates worked closely with Philadelphia-based type foundry Typetype to develop a custom typeface called TT Trailers Petchoy, which features happy tail-and-ear-inspired Vietnamese diacritical details, bringing more fun, exciting characteristics, and bold statements to the brand to distinguish it from the market.
Pairing with Fragen Italic for sub-headlines, VT323 for menu description, and Nunito for body content, the new font systematic approach elevated the health and flavour strategy for Pet Choy.
The menu receipt for each flavour of Pet Choy was designed to resemble a high-end restaurant ticket, featuring the use of paws to hint at the delicious food desired by pets. The design represents the high-quality, nutritious, and well-prepared meals that Pet Choy provides for every beloved pet.
M — N Associates took a typographic-based approach to Pet Choy's packaging, making "Bữa Ăn Tươi" (which stands for "fresh meals" in Vietnamese) the main element. This strong message helps to define the product and distinguish it from other brands on shelves that use pet images. The paw and cat/dog icon provide information about the product, while the restaurant ticket design on the back gives full details about the meal. The back of the packaging also includes usage instructions, storage instructions, and contact and social media information for the brand.
“The clients were concerned about the packaging being dominated by typography at first. M — N Associates made a demo on the shelf, to show how they were going to stand out in order to convince them of this strategic direction.”
Together with Vietnamese-based website design platform Haravan, M — N Associates built a complete custom template for the online store following Pet Choy’s new branding style, making this an easy shopping experience for pet owners.
“The project was launched during COVID-19 lockdown in Vietnam. Hence, the marketing, shooting, launching, and even trading plans had to be quickly adapted to the new situation. All visual assets were fortunately done before the lockdown, and only minor work such as coding needed to be done after that.”
“The launch happened during a sensitive period when resources, including pet supplies, were limited. All that was left to do was to focus on digital marketing, which helped to successfully garner people’s attention after the launch.”
1 of 23