Tomás is a tea house that, through its carefully curated selection, portrays the history, tradition and culture of the place of origin of each of its products. The name Tomás references an important figure in tea’s modern history – Thomas Sullivan – who was a New York-based merchant that carefully wrapped tea leaves in individual fabric sachets, patenting thus the first commercial tea bag.
Through a simple and clean identity, we portray tea itself as an experience – through scent and taste – that translates into wellbeing for body and mind. Our design is inspired upon the lifestyle that surrounds the daily ritual of drinking tea for which we developed a complex graphic system that helps identify all of Tomás’ products, categorising and emphasising their origins and key attributes and benefits.
The interior design reinterprets the romantic elements that surround the culture of tea-drinking into a modern setting, using a colour palette that talks about the wide variety of blends the brand has to offer. They communicate a complex ritual, in knowledge and understanding, where each client is invited to create their own environment and their own moment. The main room is an introduction to both products and scents, featuring each individual tea packaged in large tin containers, unified and coded by the graphic language we developed. There is a secondary experiential bar where a variety of scents and fragrances can be examined and enjoyed, bringing the consumer closer to the colours and textures of Tomás’ tea blends, along with more detailed information about each one and their composition.
A home-like feeling is present in all of the interiors, but more so in the tea room. The furniture was designed by combining materials such as wood, ceramic and leather, crafted to complement the products’ values and functional needs. The walls feature a series of custom, hand-painted illustrations, that portray the concept of tea, in through therms of culture, production and consumption. This, along with a few other vintage elements, communicate a sense of balance between modernity and tradition.
All of the texts were written so that Tomás would turn all of its brand experiences into an actual journey across the emotional – and informational – world of tea, creating, along with its consumers, a new personal story, of wellbeing and belonging.
Design: Savvy Studio