Confidential
Chicago, IL
Brand Concept Development
Naming
Visual Identity
Packaging Design
Messaging & Copywriting
This line stood out by pairing traditional profiles from across Asia with unexpected ingredients — like pairing Japanese yuzu and miso with tarragon, a distinctly French herb — but that novelty risked feeling unfamiliar to consumers rather than intriguing. The brand needed to lend approachability to flavor combinations people hadn’t tried before.
The PLS SND NOODS brand draws from Henri Matisse’s iconic cutout art — flipping the cheeky, lowbrow meme to associate the brand with famously highbrow nudes. Designed to coincide with art that entered the public domain in 2025, the illustrations feature a specific Matisse reference whose limbs and hair happen to resemble noodles. Matisse himself was deeply influenced by Japanese art and design — a fitting echo of a brand built on unexpected cross-cultural flavor pairings.
Brand Inspiration
A classed-up nude doubles for a sauced-up noodle, joyfully dancing with the other ingredients.
Taglines about the product’s wholesomeness humorously juxtapose the salacious brand name.
The color palette and lightly roughened texture were adapted from the artist’s late-era work. Assembled from gouache-painted sheets of paper, his cutouts included irregularities like scuffs and visible brush marks.
Product line extensions like sauces underscore the brand’s quality through materials like glass bottles and wooden stoppers.
Another iconic Matisse in his signature shade of ultramarine hoists a bowl of noodles over its shoulder.
