Let’s Steep Tea – Visual Identity Design

The Brief

Create a visual identity for a new organic loose leaf tea company, Let’s Steep Tea. Let’s Steep Tea was a start up company with a focus on boutique teas and indeed tea parties. The logo needed to be dynamic, conversational and warm hearted.

The brief also required the logo to be elegant and inviting, to tell a story about the tea drinking experience. Enjoy a relaxed cup of tea or sharing it with friends.

The process

Our visual identity logo design process allows us to discover several key words to help guide our research for the logo. For Let’s Steep Tea this revealed the origins of the tea and general tea drinking culture. Exploring our research and keywords with sketches on paper helps us to communicate visually our thoughts and ideas. An idea that stood out was the cycle of the tea, from grower to cup and a circle of friends. We explored several concepts to convey how it’s grown, to how it’s steeped and enjoyed with friends.

When refining the concepts we explored ideas around growth, relationships and the hand crafted-ness of the tea. These are all important steps in the tea cycle. We explored this by playing with textures through lines, shapes and water colours.

The final logo has a natural illustrated tea leaf which is paired with the bold and elegant colour palette of a deep blue and gold.

The Outcome

Inspired by flat lay images, where tea is photographed from a bird eye view. This not only emphasises the tea but considers, what is happening around the cup; catching up with friends and family, relaxing at home or talking about those annoying neighbours. Tea sets the scene for a story and like a good story leaves its mark.

The Packaging

Since the completion of the logo design we have created the packaging and labels for the tea flavours. The client provided us with some samples of the packaging which the label would adhered too. Originally we wanted to use a wrap the label around the top of the packaging but after testing it and considering the process packaging the product, a better solution was to utilise separate labels for the front and back. We also had to ensure all the required information was displayed on the label and was legible, a challenge with the limited space we had to use.

We chose a thinner styled strip for the label being mindful of the spacing and fonts used on the labels. Utilising icons helped communicate the various attributes of the tea while reducing space.

Let’s Steep Tea has 11 flavours of tea which we represented with 11 different colours added an interesting aspect to the tea collection.

The Website