Reimagining the identity of a premium tea leaf brand
Aroma Tea House
Timeline
September - November 2021
Role
Graphic Designer
Team
Innovative Design at USC
I worked as part of the Design Team at Innovative Design, USC's premier creative agency club, to reimagine the brand identity, from strategy to final deliverables, for Aroma Tea House,
a Hong-Kong and Vancouver-based fine tea brand.
Overview
Aroma Tea House is an authentic tea shop founded in Hong Kong in 1955 and is now based in Vancouver. They are looking for a fresh, modern brand identity that would consist of a new
monogram logo, branding guide, social media templates & product packaging recommendations.
Original Logo
Defining the Problem
Challenges
Aroma Tea House came to our team with the following concerns:
Lack of brand definition
and recognition
Aroma Tea House aimed to penetrate into the North American consumer base, aspiring to become a classic tea brand with premium quality products that would be down-to-earth for daily enjoyment and consumption.
Creating a brand persona that
evokes high quality products
The client wanted the brand aesthetic
to be natural, with understated regality, neutral bamboo tones, as well as black and dark green accents.
Objectives
To address the above needs, our team set out with the following objectives:
Defined Branding
Establish a defined branding that would represent Aroma Tea House as a classic brand whose tea products are great for gifts (presentable and elegant) and easily enjoyable for all
Versatile Logo
Design a logo that is versatile
(e.g. standalone, with full text name, monogrammable) and easily presentable
(applied to social media templates
and product packaging)
Ideation
Low Fidelity
My team and I began with compiling moodboards for the visual brand identity
and working on initial sketches, primarily experimenting with the different ways (monogram, stamp etc.)
to illustrate the Chinese character (馥) of the Aroma Tea House logo.
During this stage, we worked separately on individual sketches. Presented below is my work.
Mid Fidelity (Digital Drafts)
After presenting our sketches and receiving feedback, my team began refining and
narrowing down ideas, and advancing our designs to the digital stage.
The client was looking for more variations of the logo, and in particular, wanted to see how
the logo would look like as a stamp, which is what I focused on experimenting with on top
of the monogram logos that I had presented previously.
My work
Logos by my teammates,
Andy and Jamie
High Fidelity
The client preferred a handwritten feel to the Chinese character (馥), and was looking for a
complementary English typeface that would be more neutral and universal.
Presented below are the three logos submitted for the client to select a final logo from.
Logo #1
(Mine)
Logo #2
(by Jamie)
Logo #3
(by Andy)
Final Deliverables
The Final Logo & Applications
The client selected my design as the final logo for its ability to represent
the premium, yet modern and approachable brand identity that they sought to build.
The six color variations correspond to Aroma Tea House's
six tea categories: green, white, oolong, red, black and floral tea.
Social Media Templates
Initial Drafts
Mine
Jamie
Andy
Brand Guide
In addition to the logo redesign, we developed
Instagram templates for Aroma Tea House,
to help them establish a stronger online presence.
The objectives were to create a cleaner,
more unified visual identity while better promoting
their products by directing users to the online shop.
Instagram: Before
Final Templates
Key Takeaways
Bilingual Branding
A logo is the soul of a brand. It should effectively
tell a brand story while distinguishing it from competitors. Creating a bilingual logo was an
added challenge that pushed me to design for different audiences and communicate visually across cultural and language borders.
Revisiting the Brand Story
Countless times throughout this project,
I found myself running into a designer's block.
To overcome this, I would frequently revisit our
initial objectives so that I would not lose sight
of the brand story and personality
that we set out to craft for Aroma Tea House.
Meet My Team!
(we were featured on Innovative Design's Instagram!)
