What market insights drove the creative inspiration behind the concept?

Strawberry mochi, a soft glutinous rice cake typically built around a whole strawberry and sweet filling, is a familiar dessert and gift product in Korea. However, it is often visually associated with local shops, handmade cues, and short-term seasonal gifting.

For Yonbek 1227, the opportunity was to preserve that sense of craft while creating a brand language that could work in a more premium retail and gift context.

The recipe was completed after 1,227 attempts. Rather than treating this as a background anecdote, the rebrand made it central to the identity. The number 1227 became a proof of craft, repetition, and refinement.

The key insight came from the product story itself: the recipe was completed after 1,227 attempts. Rather than treating this as a background anecdote, the rebrand made it central to the identity. The number 1227 became a proof of craft, repetition, and refinement.

At the same time, the brand’s name and heritage gave the identity a deeper cultural base. Yonbek takes its name from Yeonbaek, a region tied in the brand story to ideas of abundance.

That abundance is expressed through the Three Whites — rice, salt, and cotton — three materials historically associated with value, livelihood, and daily life.

The creative direction was to carry that heritage forward without reproducing traditional forms literally. Instead, Duedance rebuilt references from Hangul, lotus forms, Korean folk painting, and traditional patterns into a modern, flexible identity system.

How did the work evolve creatively?

The previous identity used a hand-brushed mortar and pestle mark under the name Yonbek Strawberry Mochi. It carried a traditional and local-shop quality, but the brand needed a more ownable and scalable identity as it moved toward premium gifting, pop-up retail, and a broader audience.

The rebrand resolved the name into Yonbek 1227: one name, one heritage story, and one system. Rather than creating a single fixed logo, Duedance developed an extended signature system. The wordmark can stand alone as Yonbek or lock up with 1227, and it can work in both horizontal and vertical arrangements.

The concept also runs into the letterforms. The “E” is drawn as 三, the Chinese character for three, connecting back to the Three Whites and to layered Korean readings associated with 연: 延, 緣, and 蓮.

The Korean logo was built as custom lettering, carrying the same soft curves from the Latin mark into Hangul so the two scripts read as one system.

From there, the identity expanded into lotus-based graphics, illustrations inspired by minhwa, a Korean folk painting tradition known for symbolic and decorative imagery, flavor colors, packaging structures, pop-up materials, uniforms, and the ice mochi box line.

Tell us about some of the creative challenges putting the work together for launch.

One of the main challenges was making sure the identity could work at very different scales. A single wrapped mochi needed to carry the brand on its own, while the same system also had to work across gift boxes, premium packaging, pop-up environments, staff uniforms, printed materials, and product lines built for a broader market.

The individual mochi band was especially important. It could not simply be decorative; it needed to hold the Yonbek 1227 signature, the flavor name, the flavor number, and the identity of the product in a small physical format. Duedance explored many sketches, lengths, and cut shapes by hand before landing on a sleeve form derived from a lotus petal.

Another challenge was balancing heritage and modernity. The project uses Hangul, lotus forms, Korean folk painting, and traditional patterns, but the goal was not to reproduce old visual language. The system had to feel rooted in Korean culture while still functioning as a clean, premium, and expandable identity for contemporary retail.

The launch also included a pop-up at Lotte Department Store in Busan, Korea, one of the country’s major department-store retail channels, from May 3 to May 14. This required the identity to extend beyond packaging into printed materials, stamps, leaflets, and staff presentation.

How does this build upon or shift the brand’s existing visual and narrative language?

The project shifts the brand from Yonbek Strawberry Mochi, a more traditional and local expression, into Yonbek 1227, a premium identity system with a clearer story and broader range of use.

The previous visual language leaned on direct traditional cues: a hand-brushed mark, mortar and pestle imagery, and a local-shop feeling. The new identity keeps the idea of craft, but expresses it through a more controlled and contemporary system. The 1,227 attempts behind the recipe became the central narrative, turning the number into a brand asset rather than a hidden detail.

The Latin and Korean lettering were designed to work together, the lotus became a central graphic motif, and the flavor colors created a practical structure for product variation.

Visually, the project moves from a single logo into a flexible signature system. The Latin and Korean lettering were designed to work together, the lotus became a central graphic motif, and the flavor colors created a practical structure for product variation. Korean folk painting and traditional patterns were reinterpreted as a modern graphic language rather than used as historical decoration.

This allowed the brand to move across individual packaging, gift boxes, premium boxes, ice mochi packaging, pop-up materials, stamp-tour assets, and uniforms while staying recognizably Yonbek.

What were the results in terms of KPIs?

While this was a brand identity and packaging project rather than a paid media campaign, the client reported a clear early commercial lift following the rebrand and new packaging rollout.

According to Yonbek, the pop-up generated approximately four times the brand’s usual pop-up revenue, along with higher customer traffic. Beyond sales performance, the identity was applied across individual mochi packaging, clear-lidded gift boxes, a premium 9-piece box, ice mochi boxes, pop-up store materials, stamp-tour assets, and staff uniforms, showing that the system could extend consistently across both product and retail touchpoints.

The project was also selected for Behance’s Packaging category gallery, giving it additional visibility within the design community.

All images provided by Duedance.