Tea branding and packaging design are crucial in driving sales. In the world of beverages, few are as universally loved as tea, especially in England.
Tea itself has its own brand identity – quintessentially British, evoking images of people calling each other “old chum” with their little finger raised.
Well, that or the Royal Family.
However, we’re not here to discuss tea’s overall brand. Our focus is on the branding and packaging design of individual tea brands.
The world of tea is full of comforting warmth, diverse flavours, and amazing branding and packaging.
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In this blog, we’re exploring successful tea branding examples and the strategies that have made them stand out.
So, whether you’re a tea enthusiast, or a marketing professional looking for some inspiration, this blog will provide you with practical insights into what makes tea branding effective.
Standing out and having a strong brand identity with any product brand is key.
All of these tea brands do have one thing in common:
They understand their target audience. This allows them to craft a brand that resonates with their customers, whether that’s through focusing on their history and heritage, introducing new flavours to keep up with changing tastes, or emphasising the health benefits of their product, they know exactly what their customers want.
Grab a brew, and let’s dive in.
Classic British Brews
While this post seeks the latest and most impressive tea branding and packaging, it’s essential to recognise the timeless classics that have shaped Britain.
These brands may be familiar, but their remarkable branding campaigns have cemented their place in our daily lives. Here, we feature these recognisable names not because they’re the newest or flashiest, but because of their enduring impact and memorable marketing efforts.
Yorkshire Tea
According to a Britsuperstore survey, Yorkshire Tea is Britain’s most popular tea brand.
Celebrated for its iconic red-striped packaging and picturesque Yorkshire countryside backdrop. The brand emphasises tradition, quality, and regional pride, often highlighting these themes in its brand marketing campaigns.
Their “Where Everything’s Done Proper” campaign emphasises the brand’s heritage and the idea that everything tea related is done properly in Yorkshire.
Their TV adverts often feature humorous and heartwarming scenarios where people from Yorkshire take their tea very seriously, highlighting the brand’s commitment to quality.
Yorkshire Tea is a British staple, and you can always find a jumbo-sized bag of it in the Canny office. However, once the Ringtons delivery has arrived, we put it away until we run out again!
Tetley
Tetley’s charm lies in their beloved brand mascots, the Tetley Tea Folk, and their catchy jingle, “That’s better, that’s Tetley.” These endearing characters have helped create a warm and relatable brand image.
Tetley also has a strong association with “builders’ tea,” a strong and robust brew preferred by construction workers. They have used this association in their advertising campaigns, showcasing everyday folk interacting with builders, humorously highlighting the strength of Tetley tea.
PG Tips
PG Tips stands out with its humorous and playful brand positioning, featuring the popular “Monkey” mascot voiced by Jonny Vegas. Known for its humour-focused campaigns, PG Tips has created a lasting and light-hearted brand image.
This was reinforced with the #SolidariTea social media campaign, sparked in February 2020 after then-UK chancellor Rishi Sunak was photographed with their competitor, Yorkshire Tea, leading to social media backlash.
PG Tips turned this into a positive by offering to share a cup of tea with Yorkshire Tea’s social media manager, promoting unity and engaging a younger audience.
Typhoo
Typhoo has updated their packaging three times since this post was originally published.
Known for their vibrant red packaging and memorable slogan, “You only get an oo with Typhoo,” the brand’s famous advertising campaigns have featured celebrities like Julie Walters, Glenda Jackson, and Richard Branson, making them influencers before the influencer era.
Several years ago, Typhoo rebranded to encourage people to “come together over tea,” leading to a complete redesign incorporating nostalgic elements from past designs.
Now, they’ve done it again.
This time, with the bold messaging, “Tea made right” and “Is your tea fear-free?” to raise awareness about the plight of women working on tea plantations. Their new slogan, “the refreshingly bold brew,” ironically highlights their daring new direction.
This arresting campaign grabs attention and underscores their commitment to social issues.
Twinings
Twinings nearly didn’t make it into the “Classic British Brews” section because it’s a bit posher than that.
Yorkshire Tea, PG Tips, Tetley, and Typhoo are for your everyday, on-the-go tea break. Twinings tea, on the other hand, is fancier. You find it in hotels and posh brunch places.
Exuding elegance with their black and gold packaging, often adorned with a royal warrant, the brand leverages its long history dating back to 1706, combining tradition with innovation. They are also the official tea supplier of the British Royal Family. However, you can find them in supermarkets around the UK, especially if you shop on the pricier side.
Twinings focuses on quality and variety, branding itself as a purveyor of high-quality teas and providing a wide range of choice. Their advertising highlights the effort in blending and packaging, reinforcing their premium position.
Ringtons Tea
Ringtons Tea is a local favourite, proudly founded and operated from their base in Newcastle (with a new space in Longbenton). They’re the tea of choice for the Geordie nation.
Although this blog focuses on tea branding, it’s worth noting just how tasty their biscuits are too!
One of Ringtons’ biggest brand and marketing strategies is their door-to-door sales operation.
Known for its unique and personal approach to customer service, Ringtons’ distinctive delivery vans bring tea and other products directly to customers’ doors. This personalised touch sets Ringtons apart in the industry and provides excellent brand exposure as the vans drive around.
Up until recently, their black vans were emblazoned with a full gold leaf version of their historic logo design, which shimmered perfectly in the sun. Following a recent brand refresh, their vans now feature a more modern black and white design aesthetic.
Seeing these vans on the road raises brand awareness and keeps Ringtons top of mind for their customers.
Despite its higher price tag, Ringtons prioritises quality, which has earned the loyalty of generations of consumers.
Harney & Sons
Harney & Sons is our first American brand on this list, offering the British tea experience to an American audience. Their branding features a heraldic lion, conveying tradition, quality, and sophistication, reinforcing their premium position in the tea industry.
Their packaging, from tea sachets to 20-count tea bags, stands out, especially with promotional ranges like their Black Cask Bourbon tea tin. With stores in SoHo and Millerton (New York), they are clearly doing something right.
Harney & Sons’ tea packaging often include detailed labels with information on tea origin, brewing instructions, and flavour profiles, highlighting their commitment to delivering a premium tea experience. Their website is clean and user-friendly, offering educational content about tea and brewing methods, further establishing their authority in the tea industry.
They are selective in their brand partnerships, collaborating with high-end hotels, restaurants, and luxury retailers, which aligns with their premium positioning.
Booths
Booths hold the place for my favourite tea packaging design ever. Their visual language demonstrates “keep it simple stupid” with no shapes, patterns, or fuss – just block colours and sans-serif typography.
This minimalist approach works brilliantly, making the packaging instantly recognisable. It looks great alone, but even better when stacked to form a “wall of tea.” This design is featured on their delivery vehicles and in-store point-of-sale stands.
Booths’ tea range is rooted in a rich history. Founded by Edwin Henry Booth, who began as a tea dealer, Booths has passed down tea expertise through generations. They blend and pack 17 types of loose leaf tea, with some blends crafted to family specifications.
Their beautiful use of colour and typography makes Booths’ tea packaging a huge success. It shows what can be done with a creative idea and a few simple design elements. Wonderful.
Pukka Tea
Pukka Tea is known for being organic, ethically sourced, and dedicated to wellbeing. The brand uses sustainably sourced herbs and botanicals, appealing to eco-conscious consumers. Their unique blends of herbs and spices offer potential health benefits, resonating with those interested in natural remedies.
Pukka’s vibrant and colourful packaging reflects the natural world and the ingredients within each tea, making it stand out on shop shelves. The Pukka logo uses a unique typeface with a tea plant growing from the first ‘K’, aligning with their focus on nature and wellbeing.
Each tea bag is individually wrapped in eco-friendly sachets, ensuring freshness and convenience. Despite its commercial availability, Pukka’s bright and recognisable packaging makes it easy to spot in supermarkets.
Pukka’s commitment to mind, body, and spirit health, along with their striking packaging design, shows they care about overall wellbeing, delivering a powerful message to their consumers.
Pukka Tea should not be confused with Pukka Pies — one nurtures your spirit, the other nurtures your hunger. Very different vibes!
Credit to Markaworks
Sophia’s Tea
Sophia’s Tea is a natural herbal tea brand based in the USA, offering a variety of fruity tea blends made from natural homemade ingredients. Their packaging, developed by the Marka Networking Brand Agency, is an absolute standout.
Originally, the designers considered a cursive script font but opted for a sans serif font to give a more professional and classic look. The packaging features a rich palette of pastel colours, each representing different flavours with unique patterns and illustrations.
The packaging design includes informative labels detailing steep temperature, time, tasting notes, and ingredients. This approach ensures an engaging experience for consumers. The unique shape and pastel colours of the packaging make Sophia’s Tea stand out, perfectly blending form and function.
Sophia’s Tea’s packaging is a perfect example of how creative design can elevate a brand. It’s the kind of packaging we’d love to see on our office shelves, adding a touch of elegance and creativity to our tea collection.
English Tea Shop
English Tea Shop went through a rebrand in 2019, resulting in this stunning new packaging. Focused on high-quality, organically sourced tea, the new brand tells their sustainability story beautifully.
Design agency Echo describes the new packaging:
The new teapot icon – a classic round English teapot shape – holds elegant figures of a man and a woman nurturing tea plants, while beautiful mandala designs by French illustrator Margaux Carpentier burst from the centre, celebrating each product’s organic ingredients. The in-pack illustration shows an ocean connecting a farm and factory on one side, and an English tea shop on the other.
The mandala is the packaging’s focal point, with each product line featuring its own unique colour scheme and illustrations. The packaging format may be familiar, but the vibrant colours enhance the brand identity and accentuate the illustrations.
The new English Tea Shop logo isn’t a huge departure from their original, but the illustrated tea packaging is a gamechanger. You don’t have to completely overhaul your brand identity to create interesting and impactful packaging.
They’ve also recently refreshed their website, and whilst it’s a little on the slow side, when it does load, it’s truly captivating, immersing you in the world of English tea.
Credit to Toro Pinto
Nahnya
Nahnya is a unique blend of famous Chinese tea and powerful Mexican fruit and plants, bringing together the best of both worlds. The name “Nahnya” combines “nah” meaning “house” and “nia” meaning “our,” translating to “our home.”
Toro Pinto, the agency behind the packaging design were briefed to create a homey brand experience by reflecting the heritage of each town of origin within the packaging design.
The brand’s cylindrical packaging is distinctive and visually appealing. The design system had to be versatile enough to work for both tea and wellness products, requiring a solid, easily identifiable system.
Aduna
Aduna takes a completely different approach with its tea packaging. While there’s still a lot of colour, the design is very ornate and pattern-heavy. Aduna is a health-focused brand that makes “super-tea” using five key ingredients: moringa, baobab, cacao, hibiscus, and turmeric.
Their packaging, which almost looks like chocolate, features a consistent pattern design with variations in key illustrations. This signature pattern is inspired by the traditional fabrics and red earth of West Africa.
Aduna’s packaging truly stands out for its unique colour palette and intricate patterns, as well as the distinctive shape of their boxes. It’s a unique tea packaging design that captures attention and conveys the brand’s vibrant, health-focused identity.
Quemingfang
Quemingfang’s tea packaging captures our attention with its bold use of colour and unique structural shape. This Chinese tea brand, hailing from the Yunnan Province, aims to bring authenticity to the tea industry.
Designed by Xiangaopeng, Quemingfang’s packaging for their rose tea showcases the regional characteristics of Yunnan, one of China’s most beautiful locations. The peacock, a symbol of Yunnan Province, is elegantly combined with the rose, symbolising brand communication.
The packaging, known as a Pu’er or tea cake, features a cotton cloth wrapper tightly wrapped around the leaves, reflecting traditional Chinese packaging methods. Quemingfang’s packaging is the most delicate and ornate on this list.
Incorporating elements from Yunnan Province, the design highlights the region’s beauty, with the peacock as a central symbol. This tea packaging is a masterpiece, demonstrating that breaking the mould can lead to extraordinary results. It serves as a reminder in not being afraid to try something completely different.
Ketl
Ketl is an “in-house tea brand” designed by the agency Traina Design to serve as a one-of-a-kind gift for their clients. Created back in 2018, Traina has since gone on to design branding for notable names like Space Center Houston.
The vintage tea packaging evokes images of blacksmiths, craftsmanship, and authenticity. I know for sure I’d love one of these on our shelf!
To differentiate between flavours, Traina designed unique labels that wrap around the tins. Using labels or stickers to differentiate your products allows you to cut down production costs.
The tin itself is the most expensive part of the packaging, and making different variations would be costly. By using one tin with multiple sticker variants, costs are kept to a minimum, making the design both economical and versatile.
Grek
Grek is a tea company importing high-quality herbs from Greece, where they thrive with essential oils, solar energy, and aromatics.
The founder’s childhood trips to Pyrgi were the inspiration behind the brand identity and packaging, using mono-geometric Xysta tiles that represent perfection, clarity, and simplicity. These tiles not only serve as flavour signposts on the packs but also bring a distinct visual identity to the packaging.
The black and white geometric shapes and sans-serif typography of Grek’s packaging are striking, almost like Booths’ colourful design but as a monochrome evil twin.
The quality of the tea is expressed throughout, from the bespoke box construction to the wine-inspired flavour descriptions. Each tea comes with an illustrated short story book, adding depth to the Grek brand story and messaging.
Niche Tea
IWANT worked with London-based start-up Niche Tea to design their brand and packaging, aiming to create a lifestyle tea that stood out from high street brands. They developed patterns reflecting the blends of tea and used a limited colour palette across the packaging tubes.
This design approach allowed the patterns to really sing. The collaboration also included building an e-commerce website and developing a second range of black teas set to launch in 2020.
Niche Tea’s packaging made a splash with its bold, contemporary look and cylindrical shape, making it highly recognisable. The design perfectly matches Niche Tea’s motto, “crafted uniquely, blended beautifully.” From the outer packaging to the tea bag label, the attention to detail and creativity shine through.
The key takeaway from Niche Tea is that beautifully designed product packaging often receives great media attention and gets your brand noticed.
Volition Tea
Volition Tea’s branding captures attention with its bold logo and easy-to-read typography, making it instantly recognisable. The natural and earthy colour palette perfectly reflects the brand’s commitment to sustainability and environmental stewardship.
Volition Tea’s brand mission is to amplify the voices of tea farmers who reject the high-yield mindset and chemical pesticides, focusing instead on the sustainability of their soil and plants. Each purchase is a validation of their volition to do the right thing, supporting these farmers in their dedication to sustainable practices.
And that play on words in their brand name is beautiful.
The topographic maps that feature on the Volition Tea’s packaging help to make it stand out a mile and convey a sense of authenticity and care for the environment. Their green tea offerings, wrapped in this thoughtful branding, highlight the brand’s core values and mission, making Volition Tea a standout in the market.
Karma Tea Co.
Karma Tea’s packaging design stands out with its bright labels on brown craft paper boxes or packets. The contrast between the natural, neutral brown tones and the bright, energetic labels works tremendously well, creating a striking tea brand.
The labels feature the Karma Tea logo and the product name in a bold, slab-like serif font. This bold design helps their tea to stand out. And, despite having a huge range of teas, Karma Tea Co. has managed to develop and design a standout label for each of their products, showcasing their dedication to creating an interesting tea brand.
The combination of natural materials and vibrant design elements perfectly captures the essence of Karma Tea, reflecting their commitment to quality and sustainability while ensuring their products are easy to recognise.
Firebelly Tea
Firebelly Tea takes a page out of the minimalist playbook, with a design that doesn’t look too dissimilar to Booths. Like Karma Tea, they offer a large selection of teas, available by the box or by the bag.
Firebelly’s branding and packaging are stripped back to the essentials, but with a lighter touch than Booths. The typography is more delicate, and the colours are even more pastel. This subtle approach creates a serene and refined aesthetic that stands out in its simplicity.
As a fan of well-executed minimalism, I can say that Firebelly does it exceptionally well. Their clean and understated design not only makes their packaging visually appealing but also highlights the quality and care put into their tea selection.
Nepal Tea Collective
Nepal Tea Collective sets itself apart with unique, weaved basket-like packaging, breaking away from the typical box and pouch approach.
Their logo design is a clean and minimalistic interpretation of Everest and complements their simple yet effective product labelling.
The natural aesthetic of the packaging highlights their commitment to sustainability and authenticity. It also makes sure their social meida imagery immediately stands out.
This innovative packaging design not only enhances the product’s visual appeal but also emphasises their dedication to celebrating the tea farmers’ stories and sustainable practices.
Flowerhead Tea
Flowerhead Tea are responsible for some of the most interesting branding and packaging design on the list.
Their pouches feature one design, and their boxes are completely different.
Their packaging looks very 60s/70’s vibe and very “flower power” which is exactly what I’d expect from a brand with their name.
But then…
Their tea boxes feature a retro style that make them look almost like soap powder. Which I imagine is how flowery tea tastes to be honest! But the design is fantastic, and truly individual to them.
This playful and nostalgic aesthetic creates a memorable duality. The contrast between the designs adds depth to their branding, making for an interesting study in creative tea packaging.
Brewing Success: The Best Tea Branding and Packaging Designs
Tea branding and packaging design play a crucial role in driving sales and establishing a strong brand identity.
From the timeless classics like Yorkshire Tea and Twinings to the innovative approaches of Nepal Tea Collective and Flowerhead Tea, each brand has found a way to stand out in a crowded market.
Whether it’s through bold colours, an effective logo, minimalist designs, or creative storytelling, these brands understand their audience and craft their packaging to resonate with their customers.
As seen in the examples provided, thoughtful and impactful tea branding can gain you media attention, build customer loyalty, and highlight your brand promise.
Ultimately, the success of these tea brands demonstrates that investing in distinctive and well-executed packaging is key to making a lasting impression in the competitive tea market.
