Welcome to 2026, the year of the horse! Whoever said “don’t play with your food” clearly had more self-control than we do.

May the new year bring you ideas worth racing, deadlines that know when to finish, and victories that taste rather good (even if they’re gone in a bite).

To our friends, collaborators, clients and everyone who’s put up with us:
We promise to only play with our own food this year.

Wishing you a perfectly decent year ahead.

今年も宜しくおねがいします！

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Branding refresh and SEO-optimized bilingual website for Next Level Japan, a sustainability-focused marketing agency based in Tokyo.

Overview

Next Level Global is a sales development and digital marketing agency based in Tokyo. They approached us with the vision to modernize and streamline their brand presence to better reflect their mission of supporting sustainability, and responsible business practices. Their existing visual identity had become saturated and inconsistent, prompting a full-scale brand refresh and website relaunch.

Goals

During the requirement gathering phase a few key priorities emerged:

• Streamline and simplify the visual identity
• Unify brand language across digital touchpoints
• Enhance clarity and focus in the communication of services
• Improve SEO and accessibility
• Introduce a dynamic News Feed on the website
• Ensure mobile-first, performant user experience

Brand Refresh

We first led a redesign of the brand’s visual identity, starting with:

• Logo refinement and adding flexible, responsive versions
• A pared-back semi “Dark Mode” color palette, moving from multi-color saturation to a focused visual tone with an electric Lime green brand color
• New typographic system that emphasizes clarity and professionalism
• Custom visual motifs like the “Double Disk” and “Energy Circle” to reflect the brand’s emphasis on balance and sustainability
• A comprehensive brand style guide covering logos, colors, typography, visual assets, and UI tokens

This phase was executed collaboratively through multiple client checkpoints and concluded with delivery of production-ready brand assets.

Website Redesign & Development

Following the brand refinement, the focus shifted to the website, where we provided:

• UI/UX design in Figma: a clean, minimal layouts with some highlight colors that reflect the brand’s clarity and values
• Responsive frontend development using WordPress with Elementor Pro
• SEO-optimized structure with improved page speed, semantics, and CMS flexibility
• A dynamic “Insights” news feed for updates and thought leadership, alongside with “Micro News” which are short form news snippets
• Localization-ready setup for Japanese and English audiences

Outcome

The result is a reenergized brand and digital platform that positions Next Level Global as a focused, values-driven organization in the field of sales development and digital marketing. The new design authentically expresses their commitment to clarity, sustainability, and purposeful transformation for a global and Japan-based audience.

Branding & Corporate Identity Development

UI/UX Design & Web Development

Localized Japanese Website

We engaged Bento Graphics Inc. for a comprehensive brand refresh, UI/UX design, and the development of our bilingual English-Japanese corporate website. Their team demonstrated exceptional professionalism and creativity.

We requested a friendly and approachable design, maintaining innovation as a pillar, but encompassing it in a wider context of sustainable development, resulting in the use of green and lime gradients, and a smooth complementary brand font. We also refined and slimmed down the logomark to convey a lighter, more environmentally friendly, and efficient future design. The new framework also gives us much more flexibility as we highlight new services or share insights. Our site is again, of course bilingual, ensuring an engaging experience for both our English and Japanese-speaking audiences. They further adjusted and optimized the typography for both English and Japanese writing systems.
The new brand guideline is now rolled out to all our corporate materials and social platforms.
We believe that this new forward-looking identity is a better fit with our company’s current positioning, and a much stronger contributor to our sales process than the previous one.

Bento Graphics Inc.’s attention to detail, customer requests, and their commitment to excellence are always appreciated. We highly recommend their services.

Stéphane Zadounaïsky, CEO, Next Level Japan

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Welcome to 2025, the year of the snake! May your year be loaded up with satisfying bites of inspiration, tasty collaborations, and a feast of achievements — but don’t let the tail tangle your tempura! Wishing our friends, collaborators and clients a happy, healthy and flavorful 2025!

今年も宜しくおねがいします！

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Trustworthy AI startup Citadel AI partnered with us to launch their new brand Identity, Japanese-English bilingual corporate website, custom illustrations and animations.

Trustworthy AI

The concept of Trustworthy AI refers to artificial intelligence that is implemented in a way that is reliable, ethical, and beneficial to society, emphasizing transparency, fairness, accountability, privacy, and security. With the boom of AI systems and their not always reliable outputs, Citadel AI was established to promote these principles in AI development and implementation.

Client

Citadel AI is a Tokyo based startup data security company assisting other companies to safely implement and monitor their AI applications.
Their flagship apps are Citadel Lens & Citadel Radar. With Lens one can test AI models and datasets against industry standards and improve AI performance. In contrast, Radar can monitor production AI models and data quality to improve real-world AI performance.
In October 2021 Citadel AI raised 100 million JPY in seed funding from UTokyo IPC and ANRI. In 2023 BSI (British Standards Institution), the leading global standards and business improvement company partnered with Citadel AI.

Corporate Identity Design

Logomark & Logotype

The grid-based logomark of “data blocks” was inspired by a continous cycle of monitoring and data sanitation, protecting the core data in the center. Alternatively the minimal logotype with the blue colored dot on the letter “i” can be used.

Brand Style Guide

Key Visual Illustrations

Animation & Storyboard

As eye-catcher for the homepage an animation was developed based on the initial data stream key visual.

Infographics & Diagrams

As part of the branding package a range of infographics, diagrams and spot illustrations were created to further explain Citadel AI’s projucts and certain AI model challenges.

UI/UX Design & Web Development

After a phase of research and wireframing we provided the UI/UX design in Figma which also included a digital design system.

Citadel AI worked with Bento Graphics on a full redesign of our company website, and we were quite impressed with their work! There aren’t many agencies in Japan that can design websites in English and Japanese, and we were impressed by Bento Graphics’ track record working on bilingual projects and with other tech companies.

The team at Bento Graphics was collaborative and efficiently managed the entire process across wireframes, Figma mockups, animation storyboards, and implementation. They kept our team updated during regular check-ins and incorporated our design input and business requirements throughout the process, and we were able to successfully hit our target launch date.

After launch, Bento Graphics helped us monitor each page on the new website for unexpected issues, and trained our team so we can effectively maintain the website over time.

Overall, we’d gladly work with Bento Graphics again and would highly recommend their team!

Kenny Song
Co-Founder & CTO, Citadel AI

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Global Japanese software company Asial commissioned us to design their international website presence. The project included the provision of a copywriter, information architecture & wireframing, UI/UX design, custom illustration & web animation, and quality assurance.

About Asial

With over 20 years of experience, Asial Corporation has served 200+ customers in Japan and globally. They pioneered Monaca and Onsen UI, Japan’s #1 cloud-based mobile app development tools with 300,000+ users. Their 60+ strong global team blends Japanese and international expertise, focusing on UX-driven development. Their skills span industries like software development and education, with specializations in AI, IoT, and Industry 4.0. 

The Project

Asial commissioned Bento Graphics as Tokyo based graphic design, web design and web development studio to direct and design their international web presence. One of the primary objectives of the project was also to establish the brand identity of Asial for the international market.

Asial’s core aim for its website relaunch was to attract international clients and global talent in the IT sector while also creating a sense of pride among existing members.

After researching and selecting a new brand font and secondary color palette, we extended their branding throughout the UI design using elements derived from the logo.
We designed a clean intuitive UI design in a minimalist grid-based style. The generally black background of the website creates a strong contrast with the colorful visual elements using their orange brand color. We also made the decision to synchronize section background colors with the page scroll position instead of using static colors.
To generate eyeballs, however, we used storytelling and a visual concept to create a large range of custom illustrations and web animations throughout the site. Additionally, we created playful interactive sections such as the company history timeline or the animated process & workflow chart.

Information Architecture, Wireframing & UI/UX Design

Brand Style Exploration & Style Guide

As part of the project, there was a need to explore the Asial brand and figure out how it could be smartly incorporated into a UI design. This involved researching and selecting a new font for the brand, as well as developing a visual design system for navigation elements that were derived from its logo.

Visual Concept, Custom Illustrations & Web Animations

One of the most exciting parts of this project was the development of the visual illustration concept. Initially, we presented 3 directions:

• Portals
• Japanese Craftsmanship
• Impossible Objects

“Impossible Objects” came out on top as the winning concept, but details of the other concepts were also incorporated:

Impossible Objects: Technology is changing the world around us every day, this concept looks at how things might look in the future. Taking a sci-fi angle we can bend the rules of physics and peek in to the science-driven future.

In total we created 18 illustrations, 12 icons, and 8 animations for use on the website. The development of the illustrations and animations also involved drafting a compelling storyline for each of them.
An interesting detail is that most of the illustrations cleverly incorporate three orange orbs as a reference to the Asial logo. This is not only visually attractive but also an effective way to reinforce the brand’s identity.

Lottie/SVG Animations

Custom Illustrations

Screencast Walkthrough

Testimonial

Asial Corporation is immensely pleased with our collaboration with Bento Graphics for our corporate website development. Their team’s ability to conceptualize and execute a globally appealing website, while operating from Japan, has been particularly noteworthy. Their international perspective has been crucial in creating a platform that effectively communicates to both our local and global audience.
Bento Graphics stands out for their comprehensive design skills, innovation, seamless communication, and quick responsiveness. These qualities have not only met but surpassed our expectations, making them an ideal partner for any organization looking to develop a globally-oriented web presence without compromising on quality and efficiency.

Masahiro Tanaka, CEO, Asial Corporation

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Welcome to 2024, the year of the dragon! Here’s to an exciting year, where Udon noodle dragons keep things slurpily delightful. Wishing our friends, collaborators and clients a happy, healthy and flavourful 2024!

今年も宜しくおねがいします！

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Design and web development of a new bilingual corporate website for Rapyuta Robotics, a leading Tokyo based robotics and automation company.

Rapyuta Robotics?

Rapyuta Robotics (ラピュタロボティクス) was founded in 2014 by two Indian entrepreneurs. In 2023 it has reached Japan’s top market share of 67.4% with their Pick Assist Autonomous Mobile Robot (PA-AMR). They further extended their robot line-up to an Autonmous Forklift (AFL) and a fully Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems (ASRS) for entire warehouses.
Their success is also based on their innovative and advanced AI rapyuta.io cloud platform. Meanwhile Rapyuta Robotics has increased its head count to 170 members across 4 offices, two in Tokyo, one in India and one in the USA. Numerous top awards and government funding rounds cumulated in a USD 51 Million investment by Goldman Sachs in 2022. In 2023 Rapyuta Robotics won a GOOD DESIGN award for their PA-AMR robot.

The Works

Rapyuta Robotics approached Bento Graphics as Tokyo based graphic design, web design and development studio.

Their main goal was to elevate the design and user experience of their bilingual English-Japanese language corporate websites. But specifically they wanted to transition from a restrictive template website to a flexible UI design framework of modules and sections. Something which would allow them to create blog posts and marketing landing pages in a fraction of the time.

To this end we designed a clean modular block framework of functional website sections. These can be swiftly picked, arranged and published as new pages.

The clean interface design emphasizes simplicity, crisp typography and intuitive navigation. We were also responsible for research and selection of a new brand font for their web presence. It has since been incorporated in their corporate brand guidelines.

Another challenge was tackled by successfully migrating all of their existing blog posts and inserting new landing page contents.

Key Deliverables

1. Planning, information architecture and wireframing.
2. Design system and style guide incl. English and Japanese web typography rules.
3. Design of a modular content block & section framework.
4. UI/UX design and interaction mock-ups.
5. Illustration exploration (unused)
6. Oversight of web development and implementation.
7. Migration of legacy blog posts and input of new contents.
8. Quality assurance and cross browser and device testing.
9. SEO and performance enhancements.

Outcome

The end result of the project was a modern, intuitive, and user-friendly website that greatly improved the user experience for Rapyuta Robotics’ customers. The new website not only allows for quick and easy updates, but also saved the Rapyuta Robotics marketing team time and resources and ensured that the website remains up-to-date and relevant.

Website Features

• English and Japanese language website versions
• Build on content block framework to add pages in minutes
• Introduction of robots line-up with features, benefits, timelines
• Custom design concepts for immersive product landing pages, often partially animated
• Blog section with various filter options.
• Case study section and custom template for case study content
• Integrated jobs listing via workable.com
• Hubspot integration
• Robotics Academy with video based learning content (subscriber locked)

We are further assisting Rapyuta Robotics with ongoing monthly website maintenance to build new features, renew landing pages, apply security patches or correct browser issues.

Website Style Guide & Modular UI/UX Design Block Framework

Web Design & Web Development

Homepage in English and Japanese

Product Page: PA-AMR R/XL (Pick Assistant Robot)

Product Page: AFL (Autonomous Forklift)

Product Page: ASRS
(Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems)

Blog Article Template

Website Screencast

Bento Graphics has been an exceptional partner in our journey of website renewal. Their expertise extends beyond mere design; they offer comprehensive monthly support, which has been instrumental in the dynamic growth and evolution of our online presence. Their proficiency in creating an appealing visual system, coupled with their skills in content development and backend maintenance, has proven invaluable.

What sets Bento Graphics apart is their meticulous attention to detail. They have consistently met our needs, efficiently handling a variety of challenging requests.

Their problem-solving skills and willingness to go above and beyond have greatly contributed to enhancing the functionality and aesthetic appeal of our website.

Juho Viitasalo, Creative Director
Rapyuta Robotics

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Dignified Professional Network (志士ネットワーク) entrusted us with visual identity development and interface design (UI/UX) of their new membership website.

Client

The Dignified Professional Network aka DPN is a new kind of business network based on trusted partners in various countries.

Founded in 2021, DPN is a global network of organizations and individuals committed to business collaboration that also contributes to the common good. The members of the network, known as Shishi (志士), are company representatives, private individuals, and public officials who are selected for their integrity, their expertise in diverse professional realms, and their synergies in contributing to the network’s goals.

DPN’s founding principle is happo-yoshi (八方良し: literally, “good in eight directions”) for the benefit of all. Derived from sanpo-yoshi (三方良し: ”good in three directions”), a time-honored Japanese approach to business that is “good for the seller, good for the buyer, and good for society.” Happo-yoshi embraces eight stakeholders: customers, business partners, employees, shareholders, management, local communities, the nation, and society. The aim is to serve the interests of everyone involved. In this sense, happo-yoshi works along lines similar to true “win-win” but recognizes a much broader set of stakeholders.

The Works

DPN approached Bento Graphics as Tokyo based graphic design, web design and web development studio. The main goals of their project was the design and development of a visual identity and website interface design (UI/UX) for their new business network.

Visual Identity Design

In the first part we developed the visual identity based on DPN’s unique “happo-yoshi” business approach. In their philosophy 8 stakeholders are vital to the successful business liaisons they facilitate.
Based on this we submitted 4 initial logo and branding directions. The winning logo draft features a hexagonal outline which represents the 8 stakeholders. It evokes an image of interpersonal connections of members, as well as the appearance of a Sakura flower, an iconic Japanese symbol. Additionally a branding pattern was derived from the logo which represents continues collaboration with its looping shape.
The color palette and font selection support the overall visual identity with a fresh and modern appearance suitable for a contemporary business network.
The final deliverable is a visual identity guideline with English and Japanese logo versions in various arrangements, color palette, font selection and branding patterns.

UI/UX Design

An important aspect of the bilingual English-Japanese website, apart from introducing the network, is the members only content. To this end, a subscriber lock mechanism was designed. Depending on the login state several new features become available, such as member-only articles, more in-depth stats and opportunities about each participating country, as well as contact option for a dedicated representative for each country.
Initially planning, information architecture and wireframing was carried out to define all core templates. In an second step the final interface design was applied to all templates in Desktop and Mobile screen sizes. Further several key templates were designed with Japanese typography as reference.
For this project the web development was carried out by a third-party selected by the client.

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Welcome to 2023, the year of the rabbit! As we say goodbye to the old and hello to the new, let’s grab life by the chopsticks and make this year a tasty one. Wishing our friends, collaborators and clients a happy, healthy and flavourful 2023!

今年も宜しくおねがいします！

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Fresh new identity design, visual concept and UI/UX design for cyber security company Pipeline.

As a Tokyo based branding, UI/UX design and web design studio Pipeline Inc. approached us about revamping their outdated visual identity and web presence. In essence Pipeline is a company which can review your existing data and derive actionable insights and threat intelligence from it.

Corporate Identity Design

From raw data to structured data

Our key targeting phrases revolved around “review/view data”, “process data”, “extract intelligence” and similar. 

Initially a set of mood boards were prepared to get a feeling for the design direction. After multiple design drafts we settled on the circular eye/iris shape created from bracket characters often found in software code. Also the new corporate font – Neue Machina by foundry PangramPangram – evokes code and data, but with an organic twist. We completed the corporate identity development with a design guideline for client perusal.

For the brand visuals something impactful and unusual was requested by the client. Staying clear of clichés like virtual assistants with intercoms or tacky 3D cyber networks was a must. From a range of concept ideas the winning one was outer space which coincidentally also matched with cyber space. Additionally we mixed in data noise imagery to achieve a more digital feel.

Information Architecture, Wireframing and UI/UX Design

We agreed on a limited scope of two key templates for the UI/UX design part: Homepage and Page Template. To create a meaningful connection with the new corporate identity we introduced brand elements such as code brackets or logo shapes throughout the web layout. As part of the web layout design for desktop and mobile templates we also created interaction mock-ups, a typographic guideline and a visual concept (as mentioned above). The design of other templates and web development was handled on the client side.

Testimonials

We are glad having received positive client mentions for our work over at Linkedin here and here.

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