2018
This project is for Sam, the founder of Food Boutique in Zwolle. Sam asked me to make a new packaging for the fresh tea he has in his shop. The tea is from different countries and are made in a fair and biological way.
But not every tea brand sell their products in a fair way. With Sturtea I wanted to speak up for the people who work under unfair and hard conditions. People like Janani. In the text below you can read the story of Janani, a tea picker I met in Sri Lanka.
Story
A day in the life of Janani the tea picker
It's a rainy Sunday, Janani is on her way home after a long day of seeking for food. She carries a huge bag with twigs on her head. Not so many nutrients but at least something to feed her family with. She walks on bare feet and wears a plastic bag to keep the snakes and the leeches away. Sunday is her only free day and it’s very important that she collects enough food for the whole week. On Monday till Saturday she has to work at the tea plantation. She must collect eighteen pounds per day. One tea leave isn’t that heavy so imagine how much bags she needs to fill. If she collects less than eighteen pounds per day she isn’t allowed to go home. But today she is free, and she needs to focus on food for her children. She looks from a distance how her children play with a snake. And she considers sad that their future isn’t going to look any better than hers. Her children can’t go to school, because school is too expensive. The tea is the most important export product for Sri Lanka. And that’s the reason why the government of Sri Lanka doesn’t support tea picker families. They are afraid that the children become too smart and don’t want to be a tea picker as their mom and dad. They are afraid that they don’t want to live in a house of cardboard. That they don’t want to share one room with seven people, and that they don’t want the uncertainty that they don’t have food tomorrow. And they are right this is no way of living.
Packaging
Tea has, like every product, a story behind it. And I wanted to tell this story with the packaging. In The Netherlands people see tea as a feminine product. But in other countries, like in the UK, it's normal for man to drink tea too.
Because I wanted to change the image of tea in The Netherlands, I came up with a more modern and sturdy design.
I called this new brand "Sturtea" (Sturdy tea). In the picture below you can find my stylesheet and you can get an idea of the style.
Stylesheet
First sketches design
Colors and illustrations
Because their are different flavors, I wanted to make different packagings. I did research on color and associations with taste and I implemented that in my designs. Green and yellow stand for a fresh and sour taste. Red is associated with sweet and fruity flavors. Dark blue and purple stand for cinnamon and warm flavors like black blueberry tea.
Black Blueberry tea
Sencha Lemon tea
Mellow Chai tea
End result
Products
Not only I designed the packaging for the tea of Sam. I also worked on some products where you can put the fresh tea in when you bring it along. Normally it is very hard to bring your fresh tea along and I wanted to make it easier with a product.
Ideas for tea component with Dopper
First sketch component in Dopper bottle
Ideas for tea component
I wanted to make it easier to bring tea along. That's why I thought of a component that you could add on your insulated Dopper bottle. The extra component works like a box in which you can put your fresh tea. You then turn that box between the two separate parts of the Dopper bottle. And you are ready to go!
First 3D sketches of the products
First 3Dsketches extra component
First 3D sketches extra component
First 3D sketches extra component
First 3D sketches extra component
First 3D sketches extra component
Then I discovered that the extra component wasn't very user friendly. If you wanted to bring your tea along in the train and you wanted to get rid of the tea, you had to trow the loose tea away and you had to store the heat component in your bag again.
So I designed tea infuser sticks. This are sticks that come in different flavors which you can use in your Insulated Dopper bottle. You can bring the sticks along and enjoy the tea wherever you want. When you are done with the tea, you easily trow away the loose tea and you store the sticks in a little box. There are five different flavors were you can choose from.
Because not everyone has a Insulated Dopper bottle, I also designed a version for paper cups. You can bring the tea along because there is a cap on and a tea infuser as well.
3D prototypes
