Graphic Design: Hanoi
Passion project
April 2023
Vietnam offers a wide variety of food and dishes but it can be daunting to explore the flavours when navigating with a language barrier. This personal project aims to provide a quick guide to some of the common local dishes to help traveler navigate the streets of Hanoi confidently, on a full belly.
The problem
“Pho is the quintessential Vietnamese dish.”
Vietnam is a culturally rich country that offers a wide variety of food and dishes. However, most travelers are likely most familiar with the popular dishes of Pho and spring rolls. Without an understanding of Vietnamese, travelers can struggle to navigate and appreciate the vast food scene that Vietnam has to offer. Existing recommendations come in the form of a long webpage or quick short videos that can be difficult to refer to for a traveler on the go. Other cultural differences can also pose barriers that keep a traveler from feeling safe and adopting an open mind, which are key to exploring and appreciating new cultures.
The idea
A mobile-friendly introductory food guide with cultural tips can help travelers explore new flavours confidently. The guide will include:
Menu cheat sheet
Visual explainer of dishes
Google Maps list
Scope and constraints
The recommendations are geographically limited to Hanoi.
The recommendations must be tried first-hand.
The recommendations must also be popular with locals, not only tourists.
The price of each dish must not be over 100đ (~ $5.50 SGD / $4 USD).
The research phase is limited to 1 month, and the deliverables be completed 2 weeks after.
My dietary preferences haha
Roles and goals
Researcher
Compile a list of dishes commonly found in the streets of Hanoi and enjoyed by locals
Try as many dishes as possible, accounting for time, budget, and comfort level 😛
Note simple cultural tips that can help a traveler navigate confidently
Designer
To consolidate all learnings into consumable and mobile-friendly designs
The research
Compiling a list
To start, I did a simple Google search to pull up recommendations by foodies who have gone before me and compiled them in a list with a brief description of what it is. Then, I looked up places on Google Maps that had high ratings in Vietnamese to find spots popular among locals too, and saved them to a Google Maps List.
Learning Vietnamese
Next, I decided to learn some basic Vietnamese words for numbers and food so that I can understand menus and communicate portions sizes and prices!
Visual research
I wanted to capture what the streets and daily life of Hanoi looks like so I went on a long walk to snap images of the common street and of the beautiful Hoan Kiem Lake.
The design system
Colors
The walls of larger buildings are commonly painted in a muted, mustard yellow with signs of age, decay, and dust, lending a rustic and vintage look. Deep red is often used in contrast to yellow. This color combination could be influenced by the colors on the national flag.
Layout
One of the most fascinating things about Vietnam's streets is the juxtaposition of rigid, columnar buildings. These include fancy hotels built right next to old residential blocks, and modern cafes inserted between local food shops. At the same time, I love the random spritz of life you see around every corner in the form of lanterns, paintings on electrical boxes, and overgrown plants. I aimed to capture this random organization in the design through the use of a column grid interspersed with pen illustrations.
Typography
When observing the architecture style in Vietnam, it typically falls into two categories: basic blocky or vintage/classy. This contrast could be captured through the use of strong, sharp texts paired with an italic serif font.
Planning and Sketches
As I looked through my list of items, I felt incredibly overwhelmed and unsure of how to approach the designs. Normally, I focus on getting the text content to 90% before laying it out. However, given the sheer amount of content to squeeze into mobile-friendly designs, I decided to start by exploring how to use the space and organize the information before finalizing the copy.
My first step was to group the dishes by carb type: Bún (rice noodles), Com (rice), Bahn (Baguette), and Cuon (Rolls). Next, I grouped the remaining dishes according to occurrence - Hotpots are usually found with grills, and Bahn Xeo shops usually sell Nem Lui too. Of course, Pho and its derivatives deserved a page of their own.
Then, I laid out the components into a basic 3-column grid: Image (dark grey), name of the dish, short description, and an explanation. Space was also allocated to cultural tips (light grey). I made sure that none of the layouts were repeated to capture the chaotic organization.
Results
Feedback and reception
“This guide is very useful because it quickly informs the reader the main things. I would definitely refer to it.”
- Shipper | Food and Traveler
Gratitude and acknowledgements
My partner
Thank you for letting me drag you around Hanoi on this food adventure and being so supportive of this little passion project of mine. Thank you for your suggestions and feedback, and I hope we can do this again!
Tools and skills
Layout and design - Adobe Illustrator
Illustration - Procreate
Planning and project management - Notion