A São Paulo Bakery's Identity Draws on Japanese Brazilian Shop Lettering

Lisa Cain looks at Estudio CRU's identity for Mirá, a São Paulo bakery that joins Japanese and Brazilian baking. She grounds it in Brazil's Japanese diaspora, more than two million people and the largest outside Japan, whose families adapted home methods to local ingredients, pickling papaya, watermelon and chayote. The identity sets Nikkei Maru, a typeface inspired by the lettering on immigrant-run shops, restaurants and hotels, against oversized Latin type and earthy colours. Cain's argument is that fusion branding usually lines up two countries' symbols, where this one shows how the traditions actually came together.