Ogee tea party

The Tazo founder Steve Smith describes the Tazo brand identity as “Marco Polo meets Merlin the wizard.” The identity is a powerful one, combining two of our most beloved archetypes: the adventurer and the magician. However, it is easy to imagine how the design execution could have looked like some sort of confused hippy wonderland. Fortunately, the Tazo team took a different route and in the process, steered their brand away from style-ambivalent grandma’s and granola munchers.

The Tazo design features a simple, stylized Ogee dome – an architecture design feature that exists throughout the Islamic and Hindu worlds. The Ogee feature combines the exoticism of a Middle Eastern mosque with the romance of the Taj Majal. It feels proudly male and confidently female at the same time. It is sexy, worldly, and familiar (did anyone see Aladdin?). It is an eminently appropriate icon for a cup of tea – it takes you places and gives you a taste of religion on the journey.


It is not surprising then that designers have used this Ogee icon for inspiration during the Yogi redesign, Celestial Seasons redesign, and the Kamucha design. When I discovered that the three big ‘alternative’ tea brands and perhaps the nations leading fungus juice sport versions of the same architectural feature, I geared up for some diatribe on the homogeneity of design. But the designs work. They speak to the origins of the product and provide the titillation I look for in every instance of good design.