PP6: 2010

For my Personal Project 6 I chose to create my own tea packaging design. People drinking tea everyday: when they wake up, or during the break from work, or when chatting with friends. We consume huge amount of tea daily and usually do not pay any attention how tea bags, which we place in a cup, look like. Usually tea bags are standard shape- square, sometimes- round shape.
The name of my brand is ‘’T-shirt Tea’’. The product I created aimed at people 25-45 year olds. Mainly people, who like to make drinking tea interesting. T-shirt Tea is a product, which will be sold in special gift shops only for special occasions like birthdays, meeting friends at home, for a fun, not for everyday usage – so T-shirt Tea will not be sold in supermarkets. T-shirt Tea, as a new product, has one flavour only. It’s green flavour. If the product will be successful - the company will start working on other variations of tea.
To make sure that I chose the right target audience I showed my T-shirt Tea design to 3 different people 25, 33, 44 year olds. One of them said that she would buy it, because it’s unusual and could be a nice gift, when going to see friends and to have fun, when drinking tea. Another feedback was quite funny: the guy I asked to give me feedback said that he would probably hang the little buggers back up to dry and re-use them after. Another person said that these tea bags would make her friends smile. So people would buy T-shirt Tea to have a laugh, to try a different way of making tea. I think, in any circumstances T-shirt Tea would make people smile and would bring warm atmosphere in their chat.
I started my research with visiting supermarkets. One of them was Sainsbury’s. The reason why I visited supermarket is- I wanted to see the products, which are sold in there and to get an idea how my design should look like. I managed to take some pictures of tea packaging and then based on that I started working with my own peace of design, which should be different to supermarket’s tea packaging, because my packaging is aimed on different occasions and shops (gift shops). After creating my first T-shirt Tea prototype- I presented my work to group, to get feedback for further design improvements, because, I think, it is very important to hear somebody else taking about your work. From other side- there are so many people around and everyone has his own opinion and it is impossible to make design, which will be perfect for everyone. We are all designers and we have our own view on designing things. But the good side is- when having group critic, you are able to see how other people would realize ideas, which you came up with and bear in mind all that, to create your own design. That’s what I did. My first design, which I presented to my group, was completely different to the latest design. Having group critic is like talking to your clients, which could like something or not. First group critic helped me a lot. I made major changes in my peace of work. After that my T-shirt Tea packaging looked much better than before, but still it wasn’t there yet. It required a bit more development. At that stage I send e-mail to designing company Chesapeake to get feedback for further developments. I didn’t get an answer from them, probably because they are quite busy with their own orders and projects. So, I decided to e-mail to my tutor (as to my mentor) to get feedback from him. So, he said that he likes the big image of the coat hanger, but still look a bit too football. Also he advised to try some different fonts to give a softer feel. During my further T-shirt Tea packaging developments I tried different fonts to apply on and I stopped on Museo300, which I think, is very different to my previous fonts, and gives to packaging softer feel. Also I changed the image of T-shirt on the side of the packaging: I got rid of the number 10, which was on the T-shirt, because it made people thinking that it’s football T-shirt or washing powder. So, after some developments and advises from college group members my packaging became gift worthy.
Second thing which required development was hanger with tea bag. I started with drawing some ideas on mood boards. Then I cut one from cardboard to make prototype. Also I cut t-shirt shape from standard squared tea bag. The first shape of tea bag wasn’t good enough. Also I had to make proper measurements of hanger size and tea bag to fit them in the box right. During the work progress I changed hanger design on more stylish and unusual, which looks a lot better, than an old one.
When I started my project, I thought to buy hangers on e-bay or somewhere else, but I couldn’t find the right ones for my particular project. So, I decided to make my own, and I had an opportunity to do it in college using special laser cutting machine.
After lots of tests I made a proper size and thickness hanger. The cardboard I used for my hangers was thinner than standard one, which usually used with laser machine. So I had to use appropriate settings for my design only to cut hangers. The thing is, if to enter a bit more laser power or frequency in settings it could burn the cardboard or it would leave marking on it. That why I had to come up with my own settings for this particular design, which was quite difficult.
About transportation of my product: hangers and tea bags can be delivered separately from the box in gift shops and reassembled directly, Based on that packaging will not have to sustain long transportation. Also it is very easy to hang tea bags on the box. which will not take a lot of time.
I learned a lot during this project. First of all I received more skills using Illustrator, CoreDraw (program used with Laser cutting machine). Also I learned how to use Laser cutting machine. From design’s side, I think I improved a lot since last time, and bearing in mind other people’s advises I produced my own peace of work, based on my imagination and point of view.