Since its beginnings in 1969, Celestial Seasonings, Inc. has prided itself on being an innovator in the specialty tea category, never content to just “sit and sip,” as Vice President of Sales and Marketing Tom Arcuri says. That’s why in August 2015, the company rolled out revitalized carton graphics for its core tea items, consisting of 70 SKUs, that modernize the look and feel of the brand, while incorporating the classic characters and illustrations that consumers have come to love.
Rest assured, tea drinkers, Celestial Seasoning’s Sleepytime Bear will continue to relax in his easy chair with stocking cap and dressing gown on the Sleepytime tea pack, and the Bengal Spice tiger will still lounge regally on the Bengal Spice carton. But a contemporary new logo, updated typography, a clean, white background, and new color codes provide a fresh new perspective, allowing for easier product differentiation on shelf and attracting new tea drinkers to the brand.
“We’re excited to introduce our refreshed packaging to consumers, since we think the new boxes are an even better reflection of the Celestial Seasonings’ goodness inside,” says Arcuri. “We kept the elements that our consumers loved from our previous boxes and built upon them to appeal to an ever wider audience.”
More evolutionary than revolutionary
The redesign of the packaging for Celestial Seasonings—a brand of The Hain Celestial Group, Inc.—was a collaborative effort between the company’s in-house Creative Department and branding and design agency Tether.
Before the team undertook the project, extensive consumer studies, conducted by two external firms, confirmed that the Celestial Seasonings brand was strong and healthy. “Our takeaway was that our packaging refresh should be more evolutionary than revolutionary,” says Arcuri. “Consumers also responded positively to packaging that conveys simplicity and calm—which are representative of the tea experience as a whole—so that’s where we took the new design.”
Arcuri explains that the most important goal, and the biggest challenge, was to protect the brand’s heritage while at the same time infusing the design with modernity. To do this, the team very carefully evaluated all of the heritage artwork and elements. In the end, they kept most of the classic illustrations and characters from the previous boxes, among them the Mint Magician, the Tension Tamer lady, the Candy Cane Lane polar bears, and the Morning Thunder Buffalo, in addition to Sleepytime Bear and Bengal Tiger.
“In fact, we designed the new boxes to spotlight the characters even more than before, since we know that a lot of consumers shop for our teas more by the character than the flavor name,” says Arcuri.
Where artwork needed to be modernized or made more relevant, the design team commissioned new illustrations. For example, graphics for Orange Spice have been changed from a female Japanese figure with orange blossoms in her hair to a pagoda illustration with orange tree branches in the foreground.
Another heritage element that was preserved was the quote on each box. On the Cinnamon Apple Spice package, a quote from Emily Dickinson reads, “That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet.” On the Peppermint box is a quote from Leonardo Da Vinci: “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
Clean, natural, and inviting
Probably the most noticeable change to the Celestial Seasonings carton graphics is the elimination of the elaborate, and sometimes busy, backgrounds for each variety, which have been replaced by a clean, white canvas. A color block along the bottom of each box, with a burlap-like pattern, distinguishes each flavor variety. A color-coded tag in the top right-hand corner of the front panel includes copy that indicates the type of tea: herbal, green, or black.
Another big change is the new Celestial Seasonings logo, which Arcuri says harkens back to earlier iterations. “It’s an elegant typeface with no holding shape,” he says. “It’s centered at the top of the box, and the ‘C’ and ‘L’ in ‘Celestial’ are larger—but at the same time it feels fresh and relevant.”
The design team also created an entirely new logo for the Sleepytime sub-brand that comprises a stylized treatment similar to the new brand logo, but clearly differentiates the Sleepytime line.
On the left side of the carton are positioned the variety name and flavor descriptor, both of which use carefully selected typography. While Knockout is used to boldly communicate variety, Halis and Wisdom, for the flavor descriptor, are friendly and warm.
The carton is offset litho-printed in four-color process plus two spot colors by Graphic Packaging International.
“The new package is lively, fun, modern, appealing, timeless, fresh, and natural,” says Arcuri. “Communication is simple and legible. It’s a perfect balance of information and relaxation.”
‘Celestial feel’ remains
Once the team finished with the design, they presented it to consumers for their reaction. According to Arcuri, the feedback assured Celestial Seasonings that they had accomplished their goal. “Taken as a whole, consumers considered the new packaging ‘more modern’ and ‘updated,’ but still recognizably from our brand due to the familiar illustrations and colorful packaging,” he says.
Since being introduced in August 2015, the new packaging has been well received by retailers and consumers alike. Included in the feedback have been complimentary blog and social media posts, says Arcuri. While he says some fans miss the old boxes, “which is perfectly understandable,” a healthy percentage recognize and appreciate the time and effort taken by Celestial Seasonings to keep the “Celestial feel” in the new packaging.
