Brand Identity in the AI Era – Cho Choi Creative at Van Lang University

On August 15, 2026, Van Lang University hosted the talkshow "Brand Identity in the AI Era: Redefining Creativity and Strategy" for its Graphic Design students. Chợ Chời Creative was invited to speak, represented by Lai Nguyen Tin, our Founder & Creative Director and a Van Lang alumnus. For us, it was a return to where it all started.

Success is no longer "beautiful design"

When we started out, we thought success meant a great idea, an award, and recognition. After years in agencies, a year as a commis chef in a kitchen, and then running brands for our own F&B outlets, we came to see it differently.

A brand identity has three groups of users. Designers want it to be exceptional. Marketing teams want it quick and easy to use. Brand owners want customers to remember it and come back. The place where these three needs overlap is usually the part that gets forgotten.

The three "easies"

We believe a strong visual core should be easy for customers to remember, easy for the operations team to execute, and easy to get right. We showed three F&B branding projects as examples:

• Katinat: a custom typeface with full Vietnamese diacritics, which lets the in-house team produce campaign after campaign that still feels on-brand.

• Bahoa Fun Dining: the "Born to Cheers" spirit captured in a single mouth symbol that anyone on the team can use.

• Artemis Pastry: a custom typeface and the line "A piece of cake, a part of whole life," carried across the whole customer experience.

AI makes "easy" even easier

We believe the value of AI still comes from people: their lived experience, their thinking, their feelings. AI can't replace the core, but it can help with day-to-day operations. We are building a few internal tools that let marketing teams create patterns and posters within the brand system, faster and with the control still in place.

Q&A

Students asked how to become a Creative Director. Our answer: knowing how to set the design direction is part of it, but just as important is how you handle people and solve problems. When asked where type design stands in Vietnam, we talked about how Chợ Chời brings typography into each project, and how that helps clients see a custom typeface as a long-term brand asset.

For us, success today means the brands we build are still around years later, growing with their core values. Trends fade. Roots remain.

Thank you

Thank you to Duy Nguyen (M—N Associates), Alex Dang (Layơ Lab), and Tran Anh Thu for perspectives well worth hearing.

And special thanks to Mr. Nguyen Quoc Thanh, Head of Graphic Design at Van Lang University. He has been a close mentor to us since our own student days, and he gave us the chance to come back and share with the next generation.