I’ve always enjoyed freelancing in addition to being a full-time designer. Freelancing allows me to explore creative territory that a technology company might not venture into. My coworker felt the same way, and so we started Kaiju to take on those clients who wanted adventurous brands and motion experiences.

GOAL: CREATE A BADASS, NONCONFORMIST BRAND FOR OUR FREELANCE VIDEO WORK

Because we have full-time jobs, Kaiju affords us the luxury of pursuing only the clients we truly want to work with. With this in mind, we set out to create a nonconformist identity that didn’t play by the rules. For the uninitiated, the Japanese word kaiju refers to any of the giant Japanese monsters that feature in a variety of media, but primarily film (think Godzilla and Mothra, but also things like Pacific Rim and Colossal). The term kaiju refers to both the monsters themselves as well as the movie genre in which those monsters feature.

Creating the visual identity for it has been a treat. Inspired by the starkness of Japanese movie titles like Akira, Battle Royale, and Shin Godzilla, I set out to craft something distinctive with red, white, and black. I used the kanji for kaiju (怪獣) as the basis of the logo, with a knockout image of a fictional kaiju (as if they’re not all fictional) hidden in the characters.

I’ve also designed a few auxiliary pieces. Among them: a Chinese seal using the 怪獣 characters, a western-style seal with gold leaf, and business cards.

I also created a style guide to show off how we use our logo and type.

For the video intro, I researched kanji stroke order to produce a realistic clip of how the word 怪獣 would be written. Please check out my analysis of that here. The first Kaiju reel is below.