BM Daniel – the font that was designed by the food delivery app BAEMIN exclusively for the Vietnamese market – recently won the highest award “Best of the Best” at the Red Dot Awards 2021. This is the second time this font has been awarded and recognised by the world’s most prestigious design organisations after the “Type Champions Award” in 2020.
Inspired by its tremendous success with regards to the branding strategy in Korea, food delivery app BAEMIN developed and introduced a font exclusively for the Vietnamese market named BM Daniel. This font was created by BAEMIN and Rice Creative after the brand observed and learned about the local market as well as the characteristics of Vietnamese street food culture. BM Daniel squeezes the diacritics within a set cap-height, allowing the characters to come to life and helping readers to better relate with the witty content demonstrated by the font.
In November, the BM Daniel font won the top award “Best of the Best” in the Brand and Communication Design category at the Red Dot Awards 2021. This recognises the best brands and creative work of every year and is considered one of the three major international design awards of the world besides iF and IDEA Design Awards. BM Daniel is praised for being able to express the Vietnamese alphabet in a witty and creative way, a challenge that is considered arduous for designers because of the complexity of Vietnamese unique diacritics marks. What’s more, this font has successfully embodied the charisma, beauty and characteristics of the Vietnamese language. To win this award, BM Daniel had fulfilled the judging rigorous criteria such as idea, form and impact. This was assessed by a jury made up of 24 leading independent experts in design and communication from all over the world.
This is also the second time BM Daniel font has won a global competition after winning last year’s Type Champions Award 2020 held by international typography company Monotype. At that time, the organisers stated that “BAEMIN has succeeded in unearthing a strong and impressive brand identity with just one font.”
Mr. Kiwan Ihn – CEO of Woowa Brothers Vietnam (the owner of BAEMIN application) shared: “BM Daniel plays a very important role in reaching Vietnamese users from the very first days of our inception. At BAEMIN, we care about our users’ emotions and constantly come up with innovative ideas and initiatives to cherish and celebrate those emotions. The design and development of our own font sets have been positively welcomed in Korea, we hope with this approach we can further tell unique and wonderful stories of Vietnamese cuisine and help connect up those who participate in the food technology ecosystem.”
Users can easily come across the BM Daniel font right in the BAEMIN application, on out-of-home billboards or through various promotional materials. This font is also used on BAEMIN rider-partners’ uniforms or printed on BAEMIN logos displayed at merchant-partners’ locations.
In hope of spreading the positive and joyful spirit, BAEMIN also produces familiar stationery “BAEMIN Studio” items with witty names printed in BM Daniel font such as Túi Ba Gang, Ly Hộp Bút, Khẩu Trang Luôn Vui Vẻ, Thẻ Quà Tặng or Áo Mưa Tí Tách. These have been widely loved and sought after by BAEMIN users.
In Korea, BAEMIN has been designing and releasing different font sets every year for the past 10 years. In Vietnam, BAEMIN has started developing the second font after BM Daniel, which is expected to publish in early December this year.
As of mid-November 2021, BAEMIN is the number 1 food delivery application in Vietnam in terms of geographical coverage, including 20 major cities across the country such as Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi, Da Nang, Can Tho, Hai Phong, and most recently Bac Ninh, Phan Thiet, Thai Nguyen. With the plan for continued improvement and expansion of new services, BAEMIN hopes to serve more users across Vietnam and help people enjoy great food at the location of their choice.
Detailed information about the award can be found here: https://www.red-dot.org/project/bm-daniel-55106