APOTHOS NOW
Visual Identity
Packaging Design​
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Photoshop
Apothos Now is an apothecary run by Chani Minh, a Vietnamese and Chinese American. She started her business when her brother was honorably discharged from the Navy and came home seeking non-drug remedies for his PTSD and anxiety. Apothos Now pays homage to her favorite movie, Apocalypse Now, from the naming of the teas, to the color palette, to the masks on the boxes. Chani strives to provide remedies not only to soldiers, but to others who struggle with mental health and remove the stigma of "exotic" from eastern medicine.
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Project Goals:
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Create a visual identity that allows the brand to stand out in two heavily saturated markets (health & wellness)
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Design packaging for a box set of 4, complete with a directions side, bottoms, and sachets to hold the tea
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Curate motifs and ideas with respect in mind for possible consumers and ethnic/cultural practices ​​
"Renaming the War"
While watching her brother's struggle with mental health, Chani learned that it was hard for soldiers (and civilians) to take that first step into healing. Certain words like PTSD, anxiety, insomnia, and other medical terms would be avoided, as if they were improper or a even a curse. Her brother called it "renaming the war," saying it was the only way he could talk about his mind.
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The phrasing stuck with Chani. When it came time to name her teas, she landed on the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Specifically, their opposites: Peace (War), Sufficiency (Famine), Abundance (Pestilence) and Life (Death). The antonyms not only felt natural for the names of herbal teas, but also literally "renamed" symbols of war and destruction. The Four Horsemen is also a callback to Apocalypse Now, which depicts the general themes of war, famine, pestilence, and death.
The Palette and Font
To pay homage to Apocalypse Now, I choose the scene where the American soldiers arrive and happen upon the temple with the Vietnamese soldiers. I loved the contrast between the army greens, the forest greens, the browns of the temple, and the bright orange mist.
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I used colored pencils instead of a dropper tool to decide the colors because I believed it would keep the vibrancy of the scene better. I choose colors that not only would represent dried herbs and tea clearly, but also provide accent tones to play with later.
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For the font, I decided to find one on Envato so that I could focus on the package design. I found one called Palmica that looked like the leaf and letter style that I was drafting in the early stages. The pulled edges and subtle bulges also felt tropical, like Vietnam's climate.
The Tea Boxes and Herbs
To start this process, I did research on anti-anxiety teas, insomnia teas, relaxation teas, and mind-focus teas from Asian American Herbalism: Traditional and Modern Healing Practices for Everyday Wellness. ​​I chose four of recipes and selected three main ingredients to assign to each tea. ​Next, I loosely assigned a set of colors to each herb. For example, Mint was assigned the three green shades while honeysuckle was given the reds, oranges, and yellows. Each herb was hand drawn and then turned into a vector shape.​
Next, the masks. I felt it was another way to embed themes from the movie. I also enjoyed how the masks gave a human element to a heavily floral piece. Once the masks were positoned, I assembled the flowers and herbs based on size, width, and amount of shapes.
THE BOX
BOTTOMS
Alignment ​
Color Palette
As stated before, I wanted to keep the font for "Apothos Now" simple and let the packaging speak for itself. However, as someone who has worked with brand identity before, I knew that there had to be some consistency between the design and the brand name. ​
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The answer was to incorporate the herb designs. I decided to make four versions of the name, Apothos Now, with its slogan and product description. Each one would include the sets of three herbs in a symmetrical style. This way, everything was compact and read like a logo, if needed.
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I also wanted to do it this way because not only did it increased the versatility of the design, it also grounded all the different shapes. Using the font as the "base" to build the design, helped with centering the viewer's eye.
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I took the main idea of the tea box bottoms and replaced the "Apothos Now" with the name of the teas. I kept the slogan, but then changed the product description with the actual product ingredients.
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The idea was that if someone saw just a glimpse or just the tea sachet, then they would know what t belonged to or even what tea because of the base colors and the herb designs. This organization helped in my design process as well because I didn't always have to read the font, but rather recognized each tea by color.
THE TEA
SACHETS
Alignment ​
Color Palette
TRIALS
Color Palettes
Design Choices
Grids and Guides
The hardest aspect of this project doesn't seem like a huge deal on the surface. However, I wrestled with the orange colors in the palette for hours. For some reason, my technique for finding secondary shades wasn't workin for that particular blood orange. It was coming out very pink and I had to branch out and work horizontally instead of vertically in the color wheel.
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I also I struggled for the first time with grids & guides. This is most likely because Apothos Now has organic structures as the main subjects, from the masks all the way to the herbs and flowers. Since they were all hand drawn, too, items landed in between grid lines. This forced me to use the glyphs for the text rather than guides for the objects to determine overall alignment.