The Quiet One 247: Tea Packaging

For my Year 3 Semester 1 project last year I chose to create some tea packaging for my manager at my part time job. This gave myself 12 weeks to research, set a brief, create mock designs and the final design. This gave the opportunity to use my passion of tea and of packaging design in order to complete this project. During the twelve weeks I did a lot of research however when it came to creating the actual packaging I was overwhelmed with the task in hand with myself over thinking every step of the design process. I felt this lead to my final piece of work not up to my usual standard in which I am disappointed with. However as I am a perfectionist I will never settle for something until I am happy so I have now the chance to tweak the brief and redo my tea packaging design.

Old Packaging Design

As my portfolio of all my work for this project is over 46 pages I have decided to include some snippets of the work to help show the background of my idea and the process.

Project Overview

I have been asked by the manager to design two types of packaging for a black and a green loose leaf tea that is sold in the store. This was originally set as a challenge for her to see my design skills as she was intrigued and to show what I have learnt in my product knowledge at work. The brief was open in that I had the choice of material, shape, colour scheme, content, graphics and the actual product. However after some research i found that my packaging was required by laws in the UK must be easy to read, have the best before date, weight of the product, how to use the product. list any warnings and not be misleading.

Mandatory information and graphics

Due to the laws in the UK on food labelling and packaging the following information will feature on my design:

- Product name

This will tell the consumer what product is inside the packaging.

- Use by Date and Batch code

This will tell the consumer when the product will expire, warning them when the product will lose its freshness. The batch code will help if there are any problems with the tea such as it the quality, the batch number will help identify if it was that tea which was produced at the time or if it is a one off case.

- Where it was packed

As the product will have information about the history and the origin of the tea, it is best to put where it was packed so they are not mislead.

- Weight of product

The weight of the product will be displayed on the front to inform customers how much loose-leaf tea it contains.

- How to brew

This will be an instruction on how to brew the tea either with a teapot or in a cup to make sure the consumer get the most out of the product.

- Contact Details

The packaging will have the contact details on, for the consumer to get in contact of there is a problem with the tea, any feedback or suggestions to help improve the tea.

- Ingredients

As they are only one ingredient that is used in the tea i have chosen to still contain this information on the packaging to not mislead the consumer.

Below is a list of all the other content and graphics that I will add to the design that is not lawfully needed:

- Barcode

This will be on the bottom of the packaging to make it easier to scan when the product is being bought.

- Recyclable symbols

As other packaging has recyclable symbols I felt it is best to follow in their lead, as more consumers are aware with recycling.

- Logo

This will be on the packaging to make it easier for the consumer to recognise the brand rather than just relying on the look.

- History of company

Currently the history of the company is on all of the product as this helps emphasis the passion of the company and offers them an insight into the history.

- History of tea

This will be on the back of the packaging in order to educate the consumer about the history of that particular tea in order for them to build a connection.

Packaging Analysis

Mind Map

Mood board

Colour Scheme

The colour swatches have been chosen by using a website where you get to choose the first colour then it helps you choose the contrasting colour. I chose for both designs to use contrasting colours as I felt that it would give the packaging an edgy modern look which the current company packaging lacks. The blue and orange palette is the colour scheme for the black tea whilst the green and pink is the scheme for the green tea.