Research in Japan Centre: Tea and yuzu packaging designs

I have decided to start my research for my packaging design project by looking at the tea packaging designs of Japan and UK.

I went to Japan centre and saw what kind of Japanese green tea and yuzu stuff they have in the UK.

Different kinds of Japanese Tea Packaging Designs including Green tea, maccha Hojicha

Most of the tea packaging designs are only tea photographs with Japanese characters, 

and they all look very ancient. The fonts are all calligraphy style or Japanese serif fonts.

Some of them are designed to be more elegant, but they all look kind of the same.

Japanese tea packaging designs in English

I suppose the first one is especially targeting the UK audience, as it is only in English.

The packaging design is very different from the others.

I looked it up online and found out that it is actually a UK food company which emphasises on organic and free born products including authentic Japanese tea, seasonings, noodles and specialities etc and other organic food products.

Products from Clearspring: http://www.clearspring.co.uk

Packaging design style: Organic, neat, simple, modern

Japanese yuzu seasoning products

Yuzu(In Japanese, it is written as ゆず) is a very popular seasoning that is used in Japanese cuisine.

The Japanese citrus is considered as a very healthy fruit. (I will talk about it more in my later research)

The packaging designs are pretty similar to the tea ones, which is mostly very ancient and traditional.

Japanese beverage designs and energy drink designs.

The drink packaging designs are much more modern and colourful than the tea ones.

They are full of illustration and different types of font styles.

The general Japanese tea packaging designs all seem to be very traditional and not targeting the young people. However the drink packaging designs are totally different. 

In Japan, tea and sushi are very Japanese traditional cultures that a lot of sushi places and tea places are designed to look very traditional, but in UK, it is totally different again. We have itsu, avocado, and wasabi, which all look very modern.

It will be interesting to see Japanese stuff like tea and yuzu to be designed in a modern way in the UK market.