soft serve · rice cakes · matcha lattes
MOCHI is a Japanese-inspired soft serve and rice cake café bringing everyday sweetness to European cities. The brief: build a brand that feels warm, bouncy, and completely impossible to ignore — from the cup in your hand to the billboard above your head.
The brand draws from Japanese kawaii culture without being childish. MOCHI is for anyone who believes that a small treat can genuinely make the day better — and wants to take a photo of it first.
Every great café has a character. MOCHI's is named Mochi — a squishy, round, perpetually delighted little creature who comes in five flavour personalities. Mochi appears on cups, boxes, social media, and staff aprons. No matter the context, Mochi is always the friendliest thing in the room.
Mochi loves soft serve (obviously), rainy days in a warm café, and making new friends. They have five flavour personalities — each a different colour, shape, and mood. Together they are the MOCHI Crew.
The mascot is intentionally geometric — a perfect circle, two symmetric eyes, blush cheeks at 45°, and a half-arc mouth. Every element is proportionally locked. No matter the scale or medium, Mochi is always recognisable.
The MOCHI wordmark is set in Fredoka — a rounded display typeface with the same soft warmth as the product itself. Lowercase only. The "c" picks up the coral accent, echoing the brand's playfulness without being loud about it.
The wordmark has three approved lockups and strict clear space rules. It is never stretched, outlined, or rotated. The coral "c" is a brand signature — it must always be present in primary uses.
Each brand colour maps to a mascot personality and a product flavour. The cream and navy serve as the brand's calm anchor — everything else is permission to celebrate.
Fredoka holds all display and headline work — it's warm, bouncy, and unmistakably MOCHI. Syne handles labels, navigation, and secondary hierarchy. Instrument Sans is reserved for body copy where readability is essential.
From the soft serve cup to the gift box to the tote bag — every MOCHI touchpoint carries the same warm energy. The mascot appears on everything, always in the flavour that matches the product.
Every touchpoint follows the same visual logic: cream or navy background, Fredoka wordmark, mascot at scale. Below are four key application contexts showing how the identity translates across materials.
The launch campaign, "Tiny Moments," ran across Instagram, outdoor, and in-store. Every image was shot with natural light and soft, airy styling — products in mid-enjoy, never posed. The tone: come as you are, have something sweet, leave a little happier.
Give yourself a tiny moment.
— MOCHI, Tiny Moments Campaign · 2024
MOCHI launched with a single Amsterdam location and a social-first campaign. Within three months the waitlist for the gift box had grown to 1,200 people, and two more locations were confirmed for Rotterdam and Berlin.
