TEAVANA - Special Edition
Packaging | Personal Project

Client

TEAVANA for Starbucks

Location

Chicago, Illinois , USA

Year

2022

Brand personality

Encouraging a positive, healthy outlook for all who enter. Live the tea life.

TEAVANA meaning

A combination of the words Tea and Nirvana.
The owner and his wife wanted to create a heaven of tea. Hence, tea and nirvana

Brief

The client has reached out to me to design the new visual for their package of their Starbucks-Teavana Chai tea Special Edition that can be found in Oregon and later on in any Starbucks in USA.

Design the special edition of the organic Chai tea package for women who has a maternal love for their cats, who

work remotely and like to have chai tea in company of their furry friend on their tea breaks.

The targeted audience

Gender: Women

Age: 25 to 40

Location: USA

Special traits:

Works from home
Moms’ cat
Drinks tea at their tea breaks in company of their cat(s)

The product

Organic Chai Tea
*** Special ingredient: rose petals for women’ s health

Phase I

The thinking

I spent some times researching about the company Teavana before and after it was bought by Starbucks. As well as verifying the credibility of this project. I gathered logos, fonts and images that inspired the final result.

I always create a moodboard that helps me to define some elements, the mood of the project and to stay in line with the brief and the visual direction of the brand.

Research & Moodboard

My expectations

I knew I wanted to keep it simple with only tones of pink and maybe a little bit of orange (because of the meaning of orange cats) as well as keeping the visual in the same line as the current product visual line, but being a special edition allowed me to have a little bit more freedom with the visuals. I wanted to include the spiritual effect of tea on the human. How we nourish our soul with such a comfort tea. I wanted to represent this in an image: comfort, love, passion, friendship, and happiness

Sketching

I used a combination of traditional and digital technics to sketch. I find it easier to put my ideas on paper first.

Insights

I could reflect easily with the targeted audience as more than once my cat was disturbing me while drawing. This was the real-life experience! I took some moments to stop and just pet, play and brush him, while drinking tea!

Then I use my Ipad Pro working in Procreate to ink my sketches.Only the best ones are presented to the client.

Inking

Sharing my process

I drank a lot of tea while designing this package. I took the time to taste the flavors and stop myself to think what other women do when they drink tea.

Why did I choose this approach?

I had few ideas. One that I came up with was to use many quotes about happiness, friendship, and cats with cat and coffee cup patterns. I found many and thought it would have been a very nice way to connect tea with values and what women see in their cats. My sketches were looking too masculine which didn’t respond to the brief, and I believe therefore I decided to go with the actual concept.

To include the spiritual effect of tea on the human. How we nourish our soul with tea as well as the comfort we feel in the presence of our furry friend. I wanted to represent this in an image: comfort, love, passion, friendship, and happiness by featuring the pink color. This color not only means those values, but also is the reflection of femininity as well as the special ingredient used in the tea: a hint of rose petals.

Because deep inside, when we drink tea, it is almost like meditating. We feel this sense of calmness, gratitude, and love as we enjoy a moment for ourselves. The nirvana. Petting a cat while they are purring has the same effect. We feel loved, calm, and grateful. This is not visible. But all these feelings, for me if I could imagine it, it would look like what I draw. Life represented by the branches, growing inside of us with love and the calmness of nature. Love for teas, love for cats and love for what we do. As well as the lightness of life when we are happy represented by the smallest elements going up in the sky.

Phase II

The production

Illustration

After the sketching step I jump on my computer using a Cintiq 22 inches to bring my sketch to life.

Using Adobe Illustrator to vectorize my sketch and to enhance the illustration allows me to be able to scale it as much as I want and to move elements easily on the canvas.

Layout Production

The illustration is made on the box's die line in order to be able to visualize where each element will be located as well as the content.

Problem encountered - 01

As I was getting closer to the end, I noticed that the colors I had chosen, which I made sure were trendy and followed the main idea, were not creating a strong enough contrast with content that was in white. I was determined to keep the content in white because of the Teavana Visual Line in all their products.

This is when I decided to blend with pinkish gradients. A pinkish purple and yellow together. The vibrant pink in the middle (vertically) shows the heart of the box. It gave more depth to it and put in evidence the love between the woman to her cat in the illustration.

Problem encountered - 02

Another challenge that I came across was that originally, I had planned on giving a handwriting style to the lines. I did it but didn’t seem appropriate and looked a bit messy. I remembered the brief and the targeted audience. We weren’t targeting creatives, but all kind of female remote workers. It didn’t make sense to have an artistic look. I opted for a much cleaner look, and it refined the visual making it much easier to read the content.

Phase III

Presentation

Mockups are according to me one of the most valuable elements in the process of designing a product. It really gives a sense of realism and can bring a client to feel that they can almost touch it. It is often with this last step that a client is sold with the design.

Mockup

Do I feel proud of this product?

Absolutely! I’m very satisfied of my work as I believe I conducted good research, assigned enough time to design and used the production time to polish the idea with colors and details. It looks a lot better than what I had imagined. I knew where I was going with my idea but didn’t have a clear vision of the last details. The final render really showed the idea that I wanted to convey with my illustration.