Inside SODAA’s identity for the brand of a doctor-turned-designer

Front Office is the clothing label of Ken Sakata, a doctor-turned-fashion documentarian who built a cult following by making meticulously researched videos on sartorial culture. The label is an extension of that content: garments that combine workwear, military aesthetics and tailoring, researched over decades and recontextualised for the present. Three years in, after collaborations with C.P. Company, The Woolmark Company and Mammut, Front Office needed a brand identity to match its growth. For that, Sakata turned to Melbourne-based design practice Studio of Design and Art (SODAA). Across Sakata’s body of work, the studio found a practice that lives between things. Doctor and designer, Western aesthetics and Japanese sensibilities, research and development, tradition and technology. Rather than resolving these dualities, SODAA decided to build an identity that lies in the space between them. An early reference shaped that thinking: a video of Sakata discussing Donald Keene’s philosophy of Japanese aesthetics, its principles of suggestion, irregularity, simplicity and perishability. “They resonated strongly with Ken’s approach and became a valuable lens through which we developed the identity,” the studio explains. “Informing both the conceptual direction and the visual expression of the brand.” That sense of in-between-ness found its sharpest expression in the Japanese concept of ‘ma,’ which describes the appreciation of negative space and the meaning that emerges through absence. SODAA embedded it directly into the wordmark by incorporating a deliberate gap between the two words, rendered as a pause you can see. The idea travels beyond just the logo, expanding into dynamic lock-ups across the system. For the lettering itself, the studio looked for something timeless, something you might find on the door of an old library or institution, looking closely at Japanese ‘mincho’ typefaces for their elegance and contrast. They landed on Dinamo’s ABC Arizona Flare, a serif that sits between a mincho and a gothic. “It captured that quality, balancing a feeling of heritage and permanence with warmth and character,” SODAA clarifies.