Artisan Tea Brand Identity and Packaging Design Čajanka

The Collectible Tin Range
The tin collection was designed as keepsakes. Each variety gets its own colour palette and botanical illustration drawn from the ingredients: a rose for the ayurvedic blend, white flowers for green tea, strawberries and citrus for the fruit range. The wavy leaf border ties the collection together while each tin stays distinct enough to read individually on a hotel shelf.
The folk art illustration style references Croatian decorative craft traditions without being literal about it. It belongs in a serious establishment, not a souvenir shop.
The gift boxes extend the system into hospitality. Kraft board, illustrated belly bands, clean enough to feel premium, warm enough to feel personal. "Tvoj trenutak mira." Your moment of peace.

The Everyday Doypack Range
The everyday range solves the operational problem directly.
Each doypack uses the same brand architecture: the Čajanka logo, clear typographic hierarchy, brewing instructions, and the gingham footer that runs through the whole brand. The gingham changes colour per variety. Everything else stays identical.
This means the team updates any SKU in Canva themselves, in minutes, without briefing a designer. Hundreds of teas, one coherent system.
The Full Touchpoint System
Branded shipping boxes. Custom packaging tape. Paper bag stickers for restaurant and hotel trade. Menu cards in terracotta and gingham for the Boban placement. Every touchpoint, same voice.

Čajanka moved from a Canva logo to placement in one of Zagreb's most respected restaurants and in boutique hotels across the region.
Web-dependent sales became physical retail. The brand now lives in the kind of spaces that require a serious visual identity to even get a conversation.
The Canva template system means the team manages their own packaging across hundreds of SKUs without ongoing design costs. The brand scales with the business.
The project was featured on Packaging of the World.

What does a complete tea brand identity and packaging system actually include?
For Čajanka it included brand strategy and positioning, logo and identity design, a collectible tin range with custom botanical illustrations for each variety, a gift box system, an everyday doypack template system, a Canva template kit for in-house updates, shipping box design, custom packaging tape, paper bag stickers, and restaurant menu design. The scope is always driven by what the brand actually needs commercially. I don't pad projects with deliverables that don't earn their keep.

Can you design packaging that works across hundreds of SKUs without a designer on call?
Yes, and for Čajanka this was the central design problem. I built a Canva template system where the brand architecture stays fixed: logo placement, typographic hierarchy, the gingham footer. Only the colour and product name change per SKU. The team updates it themselves. The brand stays consistent. This is the kind of thinking that separates a design system from a collection of nice labels.

How do you position a tea brand against a saturated category?
By not designing for the category. Most tea packaging benchmarks against other tea brands, which is how you end up with a shelf full of near-identical botanicals and minimalism. For Čajanka the reference points were Croatian folk art traditions, the warmth of domestic rituals, and giftable objects people actually keep. The result doesn't look like a tea brand. It looks like something worth buying.

What does boutique hotel and restaurant-quality packaging actually require?
Packaging that holds its own next to everything else in those spaces. Hotels and restaurants curate their environment deliberately. Every object on a shelf or table is a statement. The packaging needs to communicate quality, provenance, and care without explanation. That means considered materials, a visual language that signals craft rather than mass production, and copy that sounds like a person rather than a label. For Čajanka, the collectible tin range was designed specifically to earn counter and shelf space in exactly these environments.

Do you design packaging for Croatian or European brands, or primarily US clients?
Both. Čajanka is a Croatian brand. Winston & Co and several other clients are US-based. The strategic thinking is the same regardless of market: understand what your buyer is actually buying, design for that, and make sure the packaging does the commercial work it needs to do at your specific price point and retail context.

What does a project like this cost and how long does it take?
My signature packaging and brand identity service starts at $9,000 USD, with scope driving the final number. A project like Čajanka, full identity, two distinct packaging ranges, template system, and print collateral, sits at the higher end of that range. Timeline is typically eight to ten weeks from signed brief to print-ready files. Payment plans are available.

Can you design a system that my team can manage themselves after handover?
Yes, and for brands with high SKU volume or frequent product updates, this is often the smartest investment in the whole project. I design Canva-ready template systems built on the same brand foundations as the rest of the identity so your team can update packaging independently without it drifting off-brand. Čajanka manages hundreds of teas this way.