Rice Story is a Helsinki-based restaurant built around one of the simplest and most versatile ingredients: rice. The identity explores rice as a blank canvas—something that can take on different flavours, textures and cultural influences depending on how it is prepared. This idea became the foundation for a visual system that feels playful, expressive and constantly changing.

Photography: Aleksi Tikkala
Interiror design by Yatofu creative

Rice as a blank canvas

Client
Rice Story
Studio
Hello Ketty
Creative role
Logo design / Graphic
Rice is familiar, everyday and universal. That familiarity is also what makes it difficult to build a distinctive restaurant identity around it.The challenge was to create a brand that could communicate the versatility of rice while avoiding predictable visual references or overly traditional restaurant aesthetics.The identity needed to feel: young, playful, artisanal and cosy, while still having enough character to stand out in Helsinki’s contemporary food scene.

Rice as a blank canvas

The visual identity becomes a reflection of the food itself: simple at its core, but open to endless interpretation.
Hand holding chopsticks over a bowl of bibimbap with vegetables and rice on a table.
Diagram showing rice starch granules with Waxy, Normal, and Intermediate types compared by amylose content.

Different characters, one story.

An intentionally irregular wordmark gives the identity energy, warmth and individuality. The result is a visual identity that feels artisanal, playful and constantly in motion - just like the food it represents.

Modular by design

A key part of the illustration system is that every composition can be broken into smaller pieces.A bowl, vegetable, glass, character or brushstroke can work independently or be recombined into larger scenes.

That gave the brand a flexible library of assets for: menus, packaging, napkins, tableware, posters, social media and environmental graphics.The original system was intentionally developed so that individual elements could be separated and reused across different applications.
Illustration of a table set with food, drink bottles, bowls, chopsticks, and a flower vase.
Interior wall with yellow panels featuring white sketches of bowls with food, above dark green booth seating.
Minimalist illustration of a person eating with chopsticks and a table set with food and drinks.
Simple pastel illustration of a rabbit holding a bowl of food with chopsticks on a blue background.
Abstract line art of a figure holding a bowl, with red textured accents on dark background, labeled Rice Story.
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