Camellia House

01Background

Camellia House (Shanchafang, “camellia workshop” in Chinese) is a tea brand from Hangzhou, built around tea bases and camellia honey, and preparing to open its first twelve company-owned stores. The founder did not want the usual red-and-gold “guochao” look. She wanted each store to feel like a quiet tea room, and the brand to still be recognisable on a delivery bag or a gift box.

02My role

I handled everything from the visual strategy onward, once the name was set: logo and wordmark, secondary graphics, colour and material guidelines, four packaging pieces (cup, bag, gift box, delivery seal), plus store signage and the menu. Store construction was commissioned separately by the client.

03Process

1. 1

   Finding one symbol worth remembering

   I drew more than twenty versions each for three directions: tea hills, teacups and camellia flowers. The camellia in a single line won. The line is restrained, works as embossing and hot-foil stamping, and stays crisp when shrunk to 12 mm.

2. 2

   Redrawing the wordmark

   Starting from a Song-style skeleton, I redrew the stroke weight and spacing of the three characters in the Chinese name so the vertical lockup sits steadily and the small horizontal version still holds up.

3. 3

   Telling products apart by material

   Colour stays at three: celadon green, kraft and off-white. Product lines are separated by material instead, using kraft, white card and cotton-linen. After three rounds of proofing, I took the band emboss depth from 0.3 to 0.5 mm.

04Result

The first twelve stores opened together in spring 2025. The gift box became the top seller of the Mid-Autumn season, and quite a few repeat customers say they came back for the packaging.