Sonu Toyoda
 Konnichi wa! My name is Sonu, an independent business consultant at Pio2i LLC.
For the past 6 years, I have collaborated with Mr. Toyoda to provide engaging and sensible designs that have lead to the successful promotion of dozens of events in the San Francisco Bay Area.
As the host/creator of these events, Sonu was able to build a career path that ultimately paired him with a career at the multi-national consulting firm, Deloitte. Recently, Mr. Toyoda has gone on to take his learnings gathered at Deloitte and pursue his career independently as Pio2i LLC (Business Consulting). Among the countless projects that Sonu has pitched to me, his latest(Pio2i LLC)and NC2 have given me experience working flexibly within strict time constraints without the need to compromise quality. SInce the direction and welfare of each event has never been one-and-the-same, some challenges include accurately utilizing and organizing bilingual copy, accelerated design processes, and incorporating creativity into corporate design ideology. Vertical Divider
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Process:
Consultation > Research > Concept Sketches > Selection #1 > Drafting > Selection #2 > Finalization > Review > Delivery Avg. Completion time: 6-12 hrs Tools:
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Pio2i Llc
Pio2i LLC is an independent business consulting firm that works with private business' to help accelerate growth, manage data systems, and help their clients achieve new levels of success. In order to visually interpret and relay the mission of the business in a cohesive design, I referenced several competitors and studied how to apply certain ideas to my original logo mark. As always, I built a Pinterest board to host my findings in a manner that could easily be edited and expanded. This ultimately confirmed the technique chosen to render our logo.
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Draft |
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He wanted his logomark to incorporate female breasts in a subtle way only obvious to himself. Normally I would decline this type of assignment since I cant really reciprocate such a low level of maturity, but the challenge was too tempting. Thus, I folded and explored just how creatively I could execute such an idea.
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After blocking out my values in grayscale, it becomes easier to organize the composition and balance the proportion of shapes.
Final Iteration
After the draft was imported into Photoshop, I cleaned up the proportions and line work with vector tools. I already knew early on that the final logo would be some shade of blue, but deconstructing the logo into separate values made adjusting value, hue, and saturation much faster.
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Northern California Network Community(NC2)
NC2 was founded as an organization focused on collaborating with local Nikkei business' across the Northern California region to promote mixers, large-scale cultural events and professional seminars. Through these events, NC2 was able to establish connections between the aforementioned businesses and International Japanese students interested in employment within the US post-graduation.
Unlike my work with JSA, I was given the opportunity to expand my creative skills towards branding and corporate image.
Unlike my work with JSA, I was given the opportunity to expand my creative skills towards branding and corporate image.
Logo Design
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My first exercise in corporate image was designing the logo for NC2 from the ground up. We started the design base with simple shapes that featured elements describing unity, strength, and co-operation. After numerous consultations with the founders of the organization, we narrowed the focus of NC2’s mission; a group committed to helping the community. With this idea in-mind, we were able to translate simple shapes into suitable imagery that reflected NC2’s goals.
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Graphic Design
Flyers・Banners・BUSINESS CARDS
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Not unlike my graphic design work with JSA Career, the fliers produced for NC2 had a uniformly corporate feel since most events were in collaboration with third party organizations. As you can see from the image below, I found a use for the unused logo mark that I created above. Because there were numerous occasions where I was given tasks that required immediate delivery, I have developed a resourceful knack for re-purposing design templates and modifying processes to meet demand.
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As NC2’s in-house graphic designer, I was allowed to craft NC2’s brand identity in ways that allowed an accelerated design process and the implementation of a more cohesive design language. This afforded me the option of utilizing the logo and variations of it across mediums, digital and physical, including business cards.
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NC2 was later featured in San Francisco Bay Area’s J Weekly Newspaper(9/6/2013).
