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‘IS IT REALLY BRITISH?!’
CENTRAL SAINT MARTINS GRADUATE SHOWCASE.



... PACKAGING
... ILLUSTRATION
... PRINTING

These screen-printed tea boxes aim to educate a British tea drinker audience on the multi-cultural traditions that have influenced tea culture in Britain today. I used illustrative and humorous story-telling methods to share the historical stories that don’t necessarily showcase the British as there finest. 

The boxes allow education to be casually incorporated into the tea drinking experience, whilst using playfulness which keeps the audience open minded to the stories that depict themes such as class, thieving and colonialism. This required me to explore my interests in using humour, but with a manner that is appropriate for the topics and intentions.










DEVELOPING AN IDEA:


I knew this tea box concept would require characters to tell the stories depicted on the packaging, therefore I iterated multiple character types to decide what was most appropriate for humour.

I gathered references of the history of tea packaging through places such as the Twinnings store and the Museum of Brands, allowing me to take a preference to the earlier eras of tea packaging with their imagery.

I sketched up the box vessels and visuals for a tea series surrounding the themes and stories of the British colonisation of tea.

I built a net from my own measurements and testing, adding in the designs in a format that could be converted into a screen for single colour printing.




THE TEA BOX MAKING PROCESS


I screen printed onto 300 GSM card .

I cut out each box individually with a scalpel.

I made the folds with a hand operated folding machine.

I constructed each box by hand.






Finals


THE TEA BOXES
Each box has its own individual name utilising a clever tea related pun which links to the story being depicted in the illustrations. The colour choices are connected to the location of the story, and tea type featured inside the box. The tea set comes with a card with directions on how to brew that particular tea blend.

















But there’s more...



THE CRITICAL REPORT DISSERTATION
As this was a final university project, it required an essay disseration. This critical report was made using a perfect binding technique and A5 in size. The typography for titles included a hand drawn font, and the character design of myself reflected the stylisation of the characters on my tea box packaging.




For my dissertation essay to coinside with my project, I explored the debates around representation of culture and what is appropriate in the depiction of humour. My line of enquiry was: ‘How as designers can we explore the relationship between humour and design to appropriately portray British culture and its multi-cultural influences?’.