“The craziest ideas usually work.”
– Sergio Laskin, designer of the MaiChai Tea House identity
Ask some complete (good-looking) strangers on the street to hold a cup of tea. The result? Diversity in your brand’s photos and free advertising. And not a penny spend on models. Perfect.
In this second post about CBI (Café Branding Inspiration) we are looking at the MaiChai tea house in London. I found this project through Behance and after reading the vivid descriptions of Sergio about his workflow, I knew I had to talk to him. I hope you enjoy this week’s example. Please feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments.
The visual identity
The visual identity of the MaiChai Tea House is happy, vivid, colorful. Why were these bright colors chosen? Eh, believe it or not but it was a girl on San Francisco airport that inspired Sergio Laskin, a designer from Latvia, to use these colors. “As I was leaving San Francisco airport I saw a marvelous girl wearing similar colors and I thought: if she was a cup – I would hold her!”
The MaiChai Tea House is still a young brand, but eventually it wants to grow into a chain. This means Sergio will get to keep on working on the visuals of the brand in the future. “My main idea, in the beginning, was to associate cool-looking tea cups with a trend. We wanted to create this feeling where if you’d see a cup you’d wonder “what is that?!”. We can see Sergio managed to do that.
“Be bold and communicate their message through every possible channel. ”
– Sergio Laskin
A bit too feminine, maybe
The overall style of the MaiChai Tea House looks very feminine with its bright and mostly pastel colors. However, the target audience doesn’t exist out of just women. Although the style is classy and playful, it might need a little ‘kick’ to reach the guys. “We are now looking into the masculine part of the audience. and will make more brutal tea stuff as well.”
Take-aways
- Be honest and go outside, be close to your potential customer and get to know them.
- Always keep your target audience in mind. As we can see the MaiChai Tea House now needs to change their identity a little to also reach the guys – it would have been better if this had been taken into consideration from the start.
- Work closely with the designer. Make sure you are one the same wavelength regarding the project and have the same objectives.
Did you find this helpful or interesting? Then please leave a comment! Also, if you know any other café, bistro or coffee place which I should check out because of its visual identity, please let me know.
> I post an inspirational example of great café branding every 2 weeks. If you want to stay updated, make sure to become part of the Tremento Tribe.
The pictures used in this blog post come from the MaiChai Tea House project on Behance by Sergio Laskin.
