2022
SCCA
Branding, Identity
11 weeks
Oasis Tea Zone is a cherished local Seattle boba tea shop. Currently, the branding does not communicate that it is a hub for young diverse audiences to play games and gather. The design aesthetic has many quirks in its landing page, menu style, and advertising but lacks one unified voice. Our challenge was to make the branding relevant to younger audiences.
We wanted to create a brand guide book identifying the brand, brand positioning, character, visual inspiration, brand identity, logo dos and don’ts, colors, typography, illustration, and photography rules. We also wanted to create various applications of the branding on deliverables such as merchandise, signage, advertising, and a landing page.
Our branding was focused on highlighting the excitement of going to Oasis Tea Zone and having fun with friends. Oasis is known for its late-night hours and large gathering space, particularly for college-age groups. We used spacey cool as our brand concept to highlight the youthful enthusiasm for space and the nod to their astronaut art installation in the former capitol hill location. Space invokes the feelings of possibility, hope, and optimism for what is greater than ourselves. Enjoying boba tea is an event and we highlighted the exuberance of what it would be like to see bright colors, funky graphics, and a welcoming approach that will both encourage people to keep coming back and to further dive into the product by buying eye-catching space-themed merch.
The larger group worked well on the initial research. Taylor and I worked well to create a comprehensive branding guidebook and deliverables. I also realized working in a group is super helpful in having someone to bounce ideas off and vet your work more easily.
Illustrator, Art Direction, and Researcher
As a team of five individuals, Athena, Taylor, Theo, Troy, and myself thoroughly researched Oasis Tea Zone. We went to several Oasis Tea Zone location sites to take photos of the exterior and interior and sample their product. We compiled the photos and described what worked and what did not work with the current branding. From there, we researched the history of Oasis, and its target audience (personas) to then write a mission statement, and identify its brand character and who they are/are not.
History of Oasis Tea Zone
Target audience
Oasis Mission Statement
Who they are/ who are not?
After the first initial weeks of doing background research and identifying who the client was, Taylor and I split into a group of two. Taylor and I found imagery to assign visual attributes to Oasis’s tonal territories (unique, fun and inviting). Based on the imagery we found to be characteristic of Oasis and their tonal territories, we honed in on Spacey Cool as a brand concept.
The first round of logos had line quality that was monoline in some regions and irregular in others. We wanted a more imperfect chunky shape to match our concept board.
The second round of logos was closer to our vision for the logo. We liked the chunky shapes and found a typeface that paired well with out logo.
We had our "aha moment," as a team when we working on iterating our logo design and realized that minimizing color and focusing on a bold black and white logo.
The brand guidebook looks at ways to apply the brand in color, type choices, photography and illustration.
After having our final concept finalized, we were able to expand the brand based on our design system. The following are further applications of Oasis Tea Zone.
A usability study was conducted to determine where improvements could be made and identify new ideas to satisfy user expectations, needs, and desires.
Organization of menu was confusing
The amount of choices is overwhelming
There are so many different drinks with similar flavors and add ins
Use a drink flow to have the user start with size, drink type, milk, tea, flavor then add ins
Narrow menu down by having customization but without the drink title
Add cute moments with the colored illustrations
