Design Origins: Moon Garden, Aged White Tea Cake
Crafting a new tea cake is always an exciting process, and designing the packaging is just as rewarding. With our new Moon Garden White tea cake, we were captivated by its flavor from the very first sip. We wanted the packaging design to echo its unique character: the taste, the emotion, and the ambiance it evokes.
Note: this tea is also available in mini cakes
The Inspiration: Bird Flower Paintings
For the design wrapper of the cake, we aimed to blend traditional Chinese aesthetics with a fresh, modern touch. Our biggest inspiration came from the Bird-and-Flower paintings (花鸟画, Hua Niao Hua), a classic genre of Chinese painting that typically depicts birds, flowers, insects, and fish in their natural surroundings.
This style often overlaps with Chinese still-life compositions featuring elegant vases, fruits, teaware, stones, and plants, which are timeless elements rich in symbolism.
This was our original composition drawing:
Technique: Colourful Ink Wash
The technique used in these traditional works the Ink Wash technique (水墨画, Shui Mo Hua), which originated during the Tang dynasty (618–907). It has since evolved into one of the most revered styles of Chinese fine art, known for its graceful brushstrokes and expressive detail. The design of the Moon Garden packaging is a colourful, modern interpretation of the classic Ink Wash technique.
The Subject: Capturing the Essence of Moon Garden
Every element in our Moon Garden illustration was carefully chosen after countless tastings of the tea itself. The flowers in the vase capture the essence of spring—the season when the leaves were plucked—while the ginkgo branches bring the design into autumn, evoking the warm, creamy mouthfeel and nostalgic “autumn-like” notes that surprised us in this white tea.
The inclusion of pomegranate fruits and jujubes adds a richer layer to the story, reflecting some of the tea’s deeper, more complex aromas. And the Chinese pink mooncakes, shaped like delicate blossoms, that you can see on the bottom left of the illustration, represent the sweetness that lingers after each sip.
The Designer: Suyi
The beautiful artwork for the Moon Garden cake was created by Suyi, an accomplished designer with a strong background in Chinese-style illustration. A graduate of Sichuan Normal University with a major in art design, Suyi has over a decade of experience working with design institutions and companies. She’s received numerous awards for her work and has become a senior landscape designer. Today, she also collaborates as a certified illustrator with Visual China Group, Huajia, and Aiyuanwu. You can see her personal seal on the right of the design, under the ginkgo tree branch.
We’re incredibly proud of how the Moon Garden tea cake has come to life, both in taste and in design. We can’t wait for you to try it, savor it, and hopefully feel the same joy and inspiration that guided us through its creation.
