Swedes love Asian food, but don't know how to cook it. The brand UMA is here to change that with ready-to-serve sauces. Just drizzle over anything. Bam. Wow. Yum. Asian flavours in a snap. Behind the brand is Jennie Walldén, born in Korea but raised in Sweden. After winning the Swedish edition of Master Chef – she's served us simple ways to cook Asian on TV and in social media. As UMA means mother in Korean, our hearts and minds travelled to Jennie's birth town and the buzz of Seoul.

To embrace the sauces' authentic flavours and user-friendliness, we created desirable pieces of Asia. Quick. Easy to grasp. Bold in typography and messaging. Seasoned with conversational copy; "Umami-yum" and "Drizzle over anything". A palette mirroring the city street neon signs. Monochrome on their own, but colourful as a range. A tailormade saucy logotype. Topped off with a handmade pattern reminiscent of steaming delicious dishes. Every sauce has its product name written in its original language; Korean or Japanese. Altogether, the design serves a set of Instagrammable pieces for the dinner table.

The launch is a success – UMA is expanding to Sweden's largest retailers while adding more flavours of Asia. All we can say is wow yum!

Jennie Walldén is Sweden's most famous profile within Asian cooking. Born in Korea but raised in Sweden, she combines her cultures to serve us inspiration for flavourful meals. No muss no fuss. Always with a shortcut up her sleeve. With many best-selling cookbooks, a popular restaurant, well-known TV shows, and 350k followers on Instagram, she has a solid platform. Her new brand UMA is an extension of her desire to infuse exciting and authentic Asian flavours into people's everyday lives. As a chef, she's got high demands on quality. Everything from UMA is made of great ingredients and cooked in Sweden. The first launch was planned with three ready-to-serve sauces – and they had already received indications of getting listed in one of Sweden's largest retail chains when she contacted us.

Our job was to identify an overall concept and design. In the brief, the target group is described as travellers – curious about the world. Interested in food, but not foodies. Open to new trends. Active on social media. They want to vary their cooking in easy and uncomplicated ways. A wide age span from 20-60 years old.

To find a unique expression and narrative, fit for the brand and appealing to the consumer, we started exploring the category. We went store-checking, investigating the sauce category and competition in retail, in Asian food shops, and restaurants to identify overall trends and tendencies. We looked at both the global and the Nordic markets. We conducted desktop research on the target group's relationship to Asian cooking. Scrolled through TikTok. We evaluated different bottle formats, designs, names, and claims. We read all of Jennie's cookbooks. And we dove into the Asian kitchen as well as traditions. Based on our observations, we concluded;

- Everyone has an inner image of Asia. Authenticity is everything. In Sweden, we travel a lot to Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, etc. We have an emotional connection to these countries and their dishes. These sauces don't just bring flavours to our meals – they have the capacity to bring flavour to our lives. Authenticity needs to come through.

- Swedes love Asian food and eat it often as takeout, but they don't know how to cook it at home. They find it complicated. There are too many spices that are hard to pronounce and find in-store. Too many steps. And in the end, the result never tastes like in the restaurant. But UMA changes all that. Simplicity and user-friendliness need to be clear.

- Three SKUs to create a brand block. Looking into the sauce shelves in retail, it's a burst of colours. Different cuisines are placed in the same place. Colour is often used as flavour coding – black easily disappears. To find the perfect format and balance of colours is crucial for a standout expression.

- Lack of inspiration. The shelves are filled with brands, but no one is sharing inspiration. With Jennie as a sender, we have the possibility to add a trustworthy interpreter to get more people to cook and discover authentic Asian flavours.

Our initial exploring led us to create Instagramable pieces of Asia. The choice of colours together with the sauces' names written in their original language immediately takes you to the city street neon signs of Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing. The bottle itself is intuitive, quick, and squeezable. With inspirational callouts coupled with QR codes to Jennie's recipes, we infuse generous of inspiration into the category. All together the design and narrative of Asian in a Snap brings out these sauces' authenticity and user-friendliness – helping people to find inspiration to easily cooked Asian dishes every day.