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Alan Fletcher tea study

Chinese tea · one serif, one red

One serif, one red, one idea per page

A designer's shopfront: cream stock, a single high contrast serif set very large, and a picture joke that explains the tea faster than a paragraph.

Huge black lowercase serif letters on cream, a round photograph of dark tea dropped into one letter, and a halftone hand pouring a red stream from a black teapot into a cup

Seven categories, two colours

34 teas · 7 categories

Green teaGreen tea5 teasOolongOolong14 teasRed tea (hongcha)Red tea (hongcha)6 teasPu-erhPu-erh4 teasWhite teaWhite tea2 teasTea paste (chagao)Tea paste (chagao)2 teasBuckwheat (not a tea)Buckwheat (not a tea)1 tea

The joke, printed

All tees and hoodies →

Wear — Ālǐshān Zhū Lù CháĀlǐshān Zhū Lù CháWear — Bái JiānBái JiānWear — Passion-Fruit OolongPassion-Fruit OolongWear — Raw Pu-erh PasteRaw Pu-erh PasteWear — Ripe Pu-erh PasteRipe Pu-erh PasteWear — Dà Hóng PáoDà Hóng Páo

Why one idea is enough

One high contrast serif, one red, and a single idea on each page. Letters are allowed to overlap, an ampersand can hold two words apart, and a halftone hand pours from a teapot because the picture says it faster than a sentence. The stock is a warm cream close to old offset paper, and the red appears once or twice, never as a background. Photographs of leaf are cut round and dropped into the type as though they were the counters of the letters. It is dry, cheerful work, finished in two colours, and it treats each of the thirty-four teas as a fresh puzzle.