Context

SUMO Fest is the first sumo wrestling festival Canada has ever held. Showpass ran it with the Calgary Japanese Community Association, and I designed the brand: logo, type, colour, wayfinding, print, and the site. The hard part was never the volume of work. It was that I was building the face of a culture that isn't mine, with no one on the team who could tell me when I got it wrong.

The Problem

Lean on the obvious version of Japan, red circles, cherry blossoms, rising suns, and you don't just make a generic poster. You misrepresent the community the event exists to celebrate. The whole project came down to one question: how do you reference a culture with respect instead of performing a costume of it?

Research

With no cultural collaborator, I built my own reference system. I split Japan into two moods, Tokyo and Kyoto, to force specificity, then studied how brands like Nike and Uniqlo reference the culture without imitating it.

TOKYO

High flash

|

candid

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CHAOS

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ENERGETIC

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URBAN

KYOTO

MELLOW

|

CURATED

|

SERENE

|

NATURAL

|

LUXURIOUS

NIKE

BOLD

|

candid

|

CHAOS

|

ENERGETIC

|

URBAN

UNIQLO

MELLOW

|

CURATED

|

SERENE

|

NATURAL

|

LUXURIOUS

NIKE

BOLD · ATHLETIC · ENERGETIC · GRAPHIC

UNIQLO

CROSS-CULTURAL · SCANDI-DESIGN · RESTRAINED · PRECISE

Research moodboard collage

Logo

The logo had to feel like sumo without illustrating it. Planted, compressed, immovable, but round enough to still feel inviting. I went through 55 variations to get there.

logo — 55 variations contact sheet

SERIF / ITALIC

READ TOO EDITORIAL, WRONG ENERGY

DIAGONAL SLASH

GENERIC SPORTS BRANDING, COULD BE ANY LEAGUE

CHRYSANTHEMUM MARK

TOO OBVIOUSLY “JAPAN,” REFERENCE TIPPING INTO CLICHÉ

DIRECT KANJI

DECORATION I HADN’T EARNED, MEANING AS ORNAMENT

The O became the letter I spent the most time on. In the final lockup it’s a red oval seated inside the word, a figure planted in the ring.

logo — final lockup, red O in the ring

Compressing the type that tightly created a problem. Squeeze the letterforms and SUMO starts reading as SUM. I caught it, stakeholders flagged it too, and the final spacing plus the weight of that red O exist to close the gap. Immovable was the goal, but legible came first.

logo — legibility fix, SUM vs SUMO before/after

Typeface

No free font did both jobs, so I drew one. Round and inviting up close, compressed and immovable at scale, like a wrestler holding a stance.

Colour

Three colours, each earning its place. Oni red for energy and alertness, jet black for weight and contrast, cream to keep the palette warm instead of aggressive. A fourth, a purple I called Ceremony, kept stealing attention from the red, so I cut it.

RED

STAYS ENERGETIC & CULTURALLY GROUNDED

BLACK

ADDS WEIGHT & CONTRAST, A CLEAN NEUTRAL

CREAM

SOFTENS THE SYSTEM, ADDS WARMTH

colour — palette applied across the system

In the Wild

The system had to hold from a phone screen to a highway banner without losing itself.

poster series

highway banner

wayfinding & signage

event accreditation

sold-out venue, 2,600 seats

Outcome

Sold out. 2,600 seats and 30+ sponsor partnerships. With no time or budget for motion or illustration, the brand had to find its energy in type weight, colour, and compositional tension alone, and it ended up feeling more alive for the constraint.

Acknowledgements

Zariyan resides on the traditional and unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw, səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ, QayQayt First Nation, Kwantlen, q̓íc̓əy̓, Semiahmoo, Tsawwassen First Nations, kʷikʷəƛ̓əm, and Stó:lō Nation.

© 2026 Zariyan Mansoor

LinkedIn

zariyanmansoor@gmail.com