Welcome to Package Design’s 13th annual Makeover Challenge, a blue-sky contest that re-imagines a real-world brand. I’m proud to announce this year’s brand will be Choice Organic Teas, which is owned by Granum Inc. The brand has a strong commitment to social responsibility, both to people and the environment.
Choice Organic Teas is based in Seattle, WA. Some of its proudest claims are as the first exclusively organic tea company in North America, first tea crafter to offer Fair Trade Certified teas in the U.S. and the first tea company to obtain a Non-GMO Project Verification.
“We consider ourselves on the frontier of the organic movement and the organic tea movement in particular,” India Nagy, creative director for Choice Organic Teas, Granum Inc., says. “We had pretty much the first organic tea bags that you can buy on shelf and were the first company to have fair trade certified tea. We are also Non-GMO Project verified.
“People are passionate about working at this company and passionate about the product,” she adds.
Nagy was first attracted to work for the company because of its commitment to both quality and its overall social mission. “When I first moved to Seattle, one of my roommates was working at Granum [as part of the Choice Organic Teas team],” she recalls. “He told me what a great company it was and how it is progressive and very supportive of its workers as well as had great products and great business practices.”
In addition to the causes Nagy mentioned, Choice Organic Teas works with a farmland trust to help ensure the viability of farmland here in the U.S., helps raise money for causes with programs such as Chai for Cancer, and is committed to higher education in the U.S. by creating a Wellness tea line, the profits of which, in part, help Bastyr University students in need of financial aid.
Package Design is excited to be working with this socially responsible brand and this year’s competitor agencies— Damen Jackson, Iron Design Inc. and Turner Lee Consulting & Design—on this blue-sky contest designed to educate the entire industry of consumer facing brands on the power of design and expose the industry to the diversity of strategic and artistic vision represented by the Package Design community.
Learn more about the competitors, where the agency bios start and you will have an opportunity to learn about each firm, its process and some of its work. Each competitor’s redesign concept will be unveiled in Package Design’s June/July issue. In that issue, we will share the Choice Organic Teas’ internal teams’ reaction, and the process and strategy behind each concept as well as launch online voting. We will also continue to learn more about this year’s socially conscious brand and its creative director.
Competitors:
Turner Lee Consulting & Design
Damen Jackson
Iron Design Inc.
Package Design thanks Printpack, a privately held company that believes that cooperation, honesty and integrity result in innovative solutions for brands. Printpack’s sponsorship is a major contributing factor to Package Design’s ability to conduct the contest without the need to charge contest entry fees—evidence of the corporation’s commitment to the design industry and support of design thinking. Package Design would also like to thank Caps57, which has kindly offered its color-accurate prototyping services to our contest competitors for the second year in a row.