Nicepeople is a new brand of bar and dining room located in Huangpu district, Shanghai. Previously a humble cafe, Nicepeople grew out of a need to better connect the surrounding creative community. With over 150 design firms in the local area, Nicepeople has relaunched as a platform for social events, dining, meetings, art launch parties and workshops. It aims to bring creative people together over food and help to boost their business too. The brand actively supports artists by allowing artists’ work to be a central part of the brand toolkit. JWDK not only designed the brand but actively worked with the operation team to position the new brand and help to influence the menu, dishes, store design and staff training.

In this brand design, the orange and black ‘Nicepeople’ logotype and finger-pointer symbol remained as the only constant visual element in the brand toolkit. Whereas, the brand’s lead visual imagery continuously changes over time creating a fresh brand look for the restaurant every three months. The images are created by members of the creative community — a nominated artist, illustrator, photographer or designer. Each artist would also display their original work on the gallery wall inside the restaurant and launch their work with a party.

The work of JWDK’s in-house illustrator, Stuart Simpson, was the first artist to set the tone. His interpretation of ‘nice people’ featured across many applications including packaging, uniforms, menus, post cards, signage, and posters. The second artist launched his work in July 2018.

Nicepeople opened under soft-launch in March 2018 and has steadily built a strong loyal customer base in a short time. The management and customers responded well to the artistic brand concept and the first art launch event, in July 2018, was a big success. On average, revenue has increased by 40% since the original cafe and the number of seats increased by 66% to 83 seats. Nicepeople has also received more bookings for events, parties and catered workshops too.