Suggestions for Improving the Design of Ten Ren's Tea Packaging Boxes

When autumn arrives and the weather gradually turns cold, one always wants to drink some hot tea to warm the body. This time I specially picked up several varieties of Ten Ren’s Tea tea bags — after all, my heart is still restless (singing), and I always want to keep switching between different flavors.

Only when I set them on the cabinet did I discover that today’s packaging design is quite user-friendly, but also has its unfriendly aspects.

Please refer to the image below: their different products all have different outer box styles, and each has an additional die-cut, letting users directly “pop open” an opening to conveniently take out tea bags — this is the user-friendly part.

The opening of Ten Ren’s Tea packaging box

Although developing and manufacturing this way costs more, when boxes of different volumes and heights are placed together in a cabinet, it becomes quite unfriendly.

If the boxes of different products were placed together with their tops aligned and flat, it would amount to an extra flat layer that could be used to stuff other things, maximizing the use of space. Consumers might even, because the space is fixed, be more likely to repurchase the same brand next time.

Besides, brewing a tea bag is inherently a more interest-oriented, non-professional act, meaning consumers won’t be there reciting the profound mysteries of traditional Chinese tea classics to you.

Yet on Ten Ren’s Tea’s outer packaging boxes, the font explaining how to brew the tea is as tiny as those sneaky small-print clauses in movie contracts, and it’s hard to find.

Even the author, with his super vision that is 1.0 in one eye and 0.1 in the other, good for both near and far (?), nearly couldn’t find it — so for elders with presbyopia or the glasses generation, it would be even harder to spot.

There’s no need for this!

The author suggests that Ten Ren’s Tea might as well refer to the brewing guide illustration I casually drew in the image above, and openly place it right beside the opening.

That way, when we pull out a tea bag to brew, we can at any time brew a delicious cup of tea with the most suitable temperature, time, and amount of water. The seller is happy, the drinker is happy — everyone is happy.