MORINAGA & CO., LTD.

Client

MORINAGA & CO., LTD.

Summary

Challenges before the engagement

• To express more of Morinaga's "character" through the medium-term business plan document, a design-side brush-up was needed

Goodpatch's approach

• Interviews
  • Detailed interviews on the intent behind the medium-term business plan document and the key messages of each page
• Exploring the corporate personality
  • Putting Morinaga's "character" into words
  • Creating mood boards that visually express that "character" and defining the tone and manner
• Rough design
  • Aligning the direction of each page's illustrations and infographics through rough designs
• Final design
  • Creating the visual design for all pages under unified design rules

Outcomes after the engagement

• By appealing not only through words but also visually, the range of communication through the medium-term plan expanded
• The document's overall design gained consistency and came to appropriately reflect Morinaga's brand image
• Editable illustration and infographic parts made future document updates smooth

Wanting a Design That Intuitively Conveys Their Own "Will"

In its "2024 Medium-Term Business Plan," which begins in the fiscal year ending March 2025, Morinaga positioned the plan as the second stage for making the achievement of its "2030 Business Plan" more certain, and set the key message as "establishing a growth trajectory toward a great leap."

Reference: 2030 Business Plan / 2024 Medium-Term Business Plan

In producing the medium-term business plan document, the Corporate Strategy Department / Corporate Planning Group had previously commissioned part of the design to another outside partner company. However, aligning on the finished image was difficult, and they say they struggled with the question: "How can we make the design convey our intent appropriately?"

Initially, Morinaga had envisioned commissioning Goodpatch only to create editable illustration parts. But in the course of organizing their current issues and what they wanted to achieve, and reviewing past work by Goodpatch, they decided to commission the total design of the entire document.

From Verbalizing to Visualizing the Company's "Character"

Rather than starting immediately with the document's visual design, Goodpatch began by defining Morinaga's "character" based on a worksheet.

The worksheet included items such as:

• If the company were a person, what kind of personality would it have?
• What are its good points?
• What do you think it will look like in 10 years?
• If there is a "character" that never changes, past or future, what is it?

Symbolic and memorable answers were extracted and set as personality keywords, which served to build the definition of Morinaga's character.

On that basis, drawing on the purpose, vision, mission, principles of conduct, and values that Morinaga had already defined, the direction of the design was aligned by visualizing it in the form of a "mood board."

Interviewing on the Document's Focus Points and Production Intent

The members of the Corporate Strategy Department / Corporate Planning Group put extremely strong feeling into creating the medium-term business plan document. Staying close to these members' convictions, Goodpatch used Strap, the online whiteboard tool it develops, to carefully interview them, one by one, on what each page should convey and how.

As one example, on the page expressing "deepening the understanding of diversity and strengthening support that contributes to value creation," Morinaga wished to change the illustration to be shown on the page.

For the strategy of "supporting understanding and behavioral change by division," how should the sense of "by division" be expressed? Might it be enough to simply convey people communicating while taking in various ways of thinking? How should factory workers and researchers be depicted? Even for a single illustration, production advanced through detailed discussions like these.

Designing the Document's Visuals with a Consistent Tone and Manner

Repeating such interviews, Goodpatch advanced the visual design of the slide document spanning roughly 70 pages.

Goodpatch's "Character" That Drew Out Morinaga's "Character"

In this way, a medium-term business plan document was completed that appropriately conveys Morinaga's "character" and "will." By visually expressing the convictions of the Corporate Planning Group and the key information of the business plan — things hard to convey through words alone — the intended content can now be communicated effectively. The document's overall design gained consistency, appropriately expressing the approachability that is distinctively Morinaga's, and editable illustration and infographic parts now allow future document updates to proceed smoothly.

At Goodpatch, the same designer is involved consistently from the initial hearing at the business meeting through solution proposal and output production, eliminating gaps in the image with the person in charge and precisely supporting problem-solving. Looking back, the team believes a key to success this time was consciously creating an atmosphere in which project members could easily voice opinions, which allowed many cycles of "interview → structuring → visualization."

Goodpatch will continue to support design that effectively conveys the brand image of a wide range of companies.

Credit

Creative Direction: Yukimi Tochio
Art Direction: Aya Nakada
Illustration: Honoka Hirao
Design: Natsumi Obata, Manami Tsuchida, mine, Yuesheng Han