Recently, I have decided to take a step away from my usual rate of casual caffeine absorption. I love a cup of tea or coffee as much as the next man, I really do, but caffeine is one of those drugs that your body becomes accustomed to, you could have ten caffeine drinks a day and that is not going to give you the sort of charge that a single coffee will about fifteen minutes before you need that rush. Brightbulb Design‘s Fiona Jeffery is a huge coffee lover and has decided to try something new following my blog post, so read on and let’s see if I can tempt you too.
Now I am not cutting off my lovely caffeine supply altogether, but in an attempt to stop myself over dosing, I have ended up wandering down the tea aisle in the supermarket on the lookout for something a little different. The tea and infusion market place has become rather crowded in the last few years and as the competition has increased this has led to increased innovation and development in the products themselves, and also with the packaging design and brand marketing, in a bid to grab your attention.
Bristol based brand Pukka Herbs are the ones that immediately caught my eye and have been my tea bag of choice since they first took my attention. First of all what takes your interest are the box designs, the patterning is intricate and a riot of colour with each of the colours projecting the family of teas that they belong to whether that be Energy, Digestive, Turmeric, Woman, Cleansing, Immunity or Relaxing. Whatever you need they basically have it covered, but the thing is, this colour coding device really works in helping the customer in their purchase. If you have tried one that you like then as you stand gazing at the shelves of coloured boxes, your eye is pulled to the colour of box that is your favourite, but beyond that your eye is also drawn to the box that your favourite is related to. It’s a clever system that works slightly subliminally helping you with your purchase while promoting the other flavours that they have to offer.
Taking in the print design of the packaging artwork, the Pukka logo design itself pulls from the natural growth of the herb plants as the tendrils reach upwards to the sky from the lettering and this motif also wraps around the rest of the box artwork. Inside the box this continues, highlighting toucans, pandas, fish and marmosets, as well as grasshoppers hiding within the leaves and flowers.
The healthy teas with a conscience is just one side of the growing Pukka Herbs company however, taking a look at the companies’ website design, this also shows you the other side of the company offering organic supplements to aid wellbeing as well as giving you a taste of the story behind the products themselves.
The Pukka Herbs corporate brand identity has been essentially built on being an ethical company focused on “benefitting people, plants and the planet”. Supplying Fairtrade products which are completely organic, they also invest greatly into the lives of the farmers and workers as well as environmental projects across the world. Started by Sebastian Pole and Tim Westwell, they created a small business start-up company, some sixteen years ago and have been very strongly independent since day one. However, since Pukka Herbs was sold to the rather enormous corporate giant Unilever that already owns PG Tips and Liptons in September of last year, that independent status is no more. Now in the words of a real creative genius, a certain Stan Lee “With great power there must also be great responsibility” and Unilever certainly have great power, so in light of the buyout, Sebastian and Tim have gone so far as to issue a statement saying that Unilever had agreed a complete commitment to their ethical, organic, fair trade, sustainable mission, being assisted by the sheer size and wealth of Unilever in that mission. I hope so.
