Hi, everyone! I hope you all had a great week and are getting ready for the end of the spring 2026 semester! This week, I am once again writing about my latest packaging design project. For this project, we had to design a health and beauty product, but every aspect of the design and packaging had to be 100% sustainable. A lot of the world’s waste can be attributed to the packaging of makeup and other beauty products, so this is a very prevalent issue.
When I was brainstorming ideas for this project, I decided that I wanted to create a sustainable tea brand. In researching this topic, I found that, although tea itself is very sustainable, the packaging and preparation of tea are not. A lot of tea bags contain microplastics, which can be harmful to the human body. Some tea farming practices are not organic, can lead to deforestation, and harm local wildlife habitats. To make my product more sustainable, I chose to design a loose-leaf tea brand with a reusable and recyclable tin container. I chose to use loose-leaf tea because it produces less waste than tea bags and requires less packaging. The tea would also be organically and fair-trade-farmed, avoiding pesticides and chemicals in the tea leaves and promoting a fair working environment. In terms of habitats and environments, my tea would support biodiversity protection, as sustainable tea production helps safeguard wildlife habitats. All of these changes would promote healthier, more sustainable consumption of tea products.
For my designs, I wanted to use a monochrome palette for each tea type to limit the amount of colors used throughout my project. Although we only had to mock up one product digitally, I decided to make three flavors to create a more cohesive set. For my tea flavors, I chose Irish Breakfast, Earl Grey, and Chamomile, and I represented each with a green, blue, and yellow color palette. I wanted my logo and packaging to have an artistic feel, so I drew it in my sketchbook, then image-traced it in Illustrator. I also wanted my packaging to be informative, educating people about the sustainability of tea and how to prepare it effectively. Each panel of the tea container includes important information, such as tips on sustainable practices, how to brew a cup of tea, the flavor notes of the tea type, and an identity statement for my brand. I also had the idea that, if my product were real, it would make reusable steel tea infusers available for purchase along with the loose-leaf tea.
Overall, I had a great time researching tea sustainability and designing the packaging for my product. It really opened my eyes to healthy practices and how we should all be doing our part to protect our environment. I hope everyone enjoyed my process on this project, and I hope you learned something new about the sustainability of tea. If you had to choose, which packaging or flavor is your favorite? Personally, I love Irish Breakfast tea, but I might be a little biased. Anyway, thanks for reading, and I’ll see you all in my next post!
Have a great week!
– Cecelia 🙂