Public Brand Image Design for Zibo Barbecue

Zibo is a time-honored cultural city of Shandong Province, China. Earlier in March 2023, the topic “college students flock to Zibo and eat barbecue there” jumped to the headlines of major online social media. The great hits of this topic caused a sensation across the nation that attracts more and more visitors to Zibo and eat barbecue there. In the wake of this phenomenal social event of 2023, local government appointed us to design a full set of intellectual property images for Zibo Barbecue in the hope of building and enhancing the brand recognition of Zibo Barbecue. This design program contains a brand logo and three brand image characters. Qi, an ancient script dated back to over 2000 years ago, appears on the top of the logo. Zibo has been considered historically important as it was the capital of the affluent and powerful Qi State during the Warring States period. The ancient script Qi contained as a part of the logo is expected to show the long and splendid history of Zibo, and to reveal the distinctive character of Zibo as a famous historic and cultural city. The noticeable flame element and the red background color are intended to bring out the unique attributes of the barbecue event and make the logo more appealing. The curved element below the text is used to show Zibo's hospitality as a habitable place which in turn makes the logo more identifiable and impressive. Three brand images are named as Bro Wrapper, Bro Scallion, Bro Meat Skewer as they are closely related to Zibo’s barbecue. How Zibo Barbecue is served differs from some other parts of China as meat skewers are often served with wrappers and scallions. With the unique characteristics of Zibo Barbecue extracted, wrappers, scallions and meat skewers are cartoonized and associated as the brand images, in order to reveal the charm and characteristics of Zibo Barbecue in a figurative way.