A style study — not a real store, not affiliated with thisisneverthat · more
Draft — 8 of 34 teas designed in this style. Ask us to finish it
thisisneverthat tea label

Chinese tea · card stock, seals and stripes

Printed like a crate label

Thirty-four Chinese teas set as crate labels: striped bars at the edges, the name arched over an oval, a rosette seal for the age and the leaf pinned in the centre.

Pressed pu-erh cubes on cream card stock under an arched brick-red display line, with navy and red stripes across the top and bottom

Seven categories, seven labels

8 teas · 5 categories

Green teaGreen tea1 teaOolongOolong3 teasRed tea (hongcha)Red tea (hongcha)1 teaPu-erhPu-erh2 teasTea paste (chagao)Tea paste (chagao)1 tea

Wear the label

All tees and hoodies →

Wear — Ripe Pu-erh PasteRipe Pu-erh PasteWear — Dà Hóng PáoDà Hóng PáoWear — Gong Ting Pu-erhGong Ting Pu-erhWear — Hēi JīnHēi JīnWear — Lǎo Chá TóuLǎo Chá TóuWear — Mòlì Lǒng ZhúMòlì Lǒng Zhú

Why the tea comes with a seal

A crate label has one job: say what is inside, where it came from and how long it sat, in that order, at a size readable across a warehouse. Everything on the sheet serves that job — the name arched to fit the widest part of the card, a rosette seal for the age, small boxed lines for city and year, striped bars top and bottom to close the composition. Chinese tea fits the form almost exactly, because age and origin are the two facts that actually move the price of a pu-erh, and this is a language built to state both without adjectives. The palette stops at navy, brick, gold and card cream, the four inks a cheap label press could run, and the grain of the board is left showing under them. The leaf is photographed on the label rather than drawn onto it, so the one true thing on the page is the tea. Registration targets stay in the corners as a reminder that this is a printed object and not a scene.