Loose Tea Leaf Packaging

The product line I chose for this packaging project is loose tea leaf. I'd like to narrow down my focus to a specific type of Chinese green tea named DragonWell because it is the symbol of my hometown and I'm excited to bring something personal to the design. I conceptualize the product to signify peace, calm and delicacy since DragonWell is a pretty high-end tea product. In contrast to fermented Oolong or black tea, the idea way to truly experience the fine quality of DragonWell green tea is to put dried tea leaves into a clear glass teacup for brewing so that we can sea the tender leaves floating. 

Brewed GragonWell tea

The outer packaging will be a bigger square box. The inner packaging will consist of 9 square flat boxes, each (hypothetically) containing about 2-3 teaspoons of dried leaves so that every individual box is good for one glass teacup (about 10 oz of water). I'm thinking of combining traditional Chinese watercolor painting with modern Western design concept.

I went to the Metropolitan Museum for inspiration. Unfortunately, Chinese calligraphy and paintings are not on display. So I checked out Japanese and Korean artworks instead.

I also got more inspiration from the contemporary artwork exhibition when constructing my color palettes. 

Working progress:

• Logo & Business card: I really the texture and delicacy of Chinese seals so I worked with this concept for the logo. I named the product "Ming" (see the character below), which means superior tea in Ancient Chinese. 

Logo: Ming

Business card front

Business card back

• Outer box lid: I'd like to bring something personal to this project so I used a map of my hometown and manipulated the texture to make it more hand-made. For the final presentation, the lid will be printed on a transparent piece of paper so that we can see the smaller boxes inside of it.

Outer box packaging

• Inner box: I made some variations based on the map concept so it connects well with the outer box lid. The watercolor fill is intended to convey a sense of authenticity and delicacy. I'll split the graphic into 9 pieces so each small inner box will be a part of the map and come together like a puzzle piece.

  

  Inner box packaging

• Prototype

• Final packaging product
  
  
  
  

Book Cover Design for Borges 'Library of Babel"

What this book is about?

Library of Babel by Borges describes a universe in the form of a library that consists of countless hexagon galleries and indefinite numbers of books. The first image that stood out to me while reading the story is well-defined geometric forms arranged in a chaotic and incoherent manner. The massive universe is composed endless hexagons so that each gallery is just a tiny little piece of its millions of duplicates. Men living in the library have concluded that since it contains all possible combinations of the 22 orthographic symbols, there must be a book somewhere that is the perfect catalog of the content of the library. Hundreds of people have attempted to travel through the library to seek the book, and as the library is infinite, despair and depression have emerged. I'm impressed to see how massiveness would become an obsession, and more importantly, a distraction that discourages people to live their own life. The despair of knowing that anything that we can possibly create in the future already exists can be so overwhelming that it pulls men in the library from focusing on what they are capable of and pushes them onto a pointless journey for the rest of their life.

My book cover design process

• 7.15 Summarizing the plot, images and philosophical implications in the book, brainstorming & sketching.

Group discussion summarizing the book

Trying out different concepts on sketchbook: pixel guy, hexagon glasses, books

Trying out different concepts on sketchbook: geometry, alphabet, etc.

• 7.16 Deciding on the graphic and concept & making 3 iterations of the design. I decided to play around with the alphabet and tried to depict my feelings after reading the book. 

4.25 * 6.87 in. 

6 * 8 in.

6 * 8 in.

• 7.17 Final version
  

  

  4.25 * 6.87 in. 

Book

I'd like to make the book project a documentation of my daily life, of what I did and how I felt. So I took pictures of my outfits folded into different gestures and rearranged these photos along with two sentences from our daily conversation:
- How are you? 
- I'm fine.
They are probably the most commonly used greeting in our life, but the inspiration was originally from a 1995 movie named Love Letter directed by Shunji Iwai. My concept was to address the impact of past, so I integrated pieces of handwritten diary with coffee stains and used digitally-made notepad paper as the background. For the final presentation, instead of binding them into a book, I'm thinking of stringing each page and hanging them from the ceiling.

Some prototype pages (trying out an old wall as background):

7.9 Sample Page 1

7.9 Sample Page 2

Revised page details for final presentation: 
Each page is double-sided and consists of the same photos and diary page. I played with a variety of rotation choices to make each back page similar, but not exactly the same as the front page.

7.12 Page 1 front

7.12 Page 1 back

7.12 Page 2 front

7.12 Page 2 back

7.12 Page 5 front

7.12 Page 5 back

Setup:

7.15 Front

7.15 Back