Case 01 · Ceremonial matcha · 2025

SORA

A ceremonial matcha brand built on one idea: the packaging should be as still as the ritual it belongs to.

Client: Concept project
Role: Brand strategy, visual identity, packaging, art direction, photography direction, brand guidelines
Timeframe: 4 weeks
Scope: Mark · wordmark · palette · icon set · packaging · stationery · campaign
Made in: Illustrator · Photoshop · Figma · Dimension

The problem

Ceremonial matcha in western retail tends to arrive as one of two things: a wellness supplement in a clinical white tub, or an imported curio wrapped in borrowed ornament. Neither describes what the product actually is: a slow, deliberate morning. SORA needed an identity that reads as premium without raising its voice, and that a small team could apply across tins, pouches, cups and cards without a designer in the room.

The approach

01
Drew the mark from the moment rather than the plant: a sunrise breaking over two leaves. Sora means sky, so the mark reads as dawn before it reads as tea.
02
Set the wordmark in a high-contrast serif with wide letterspacing so the name sits still on the pack instead of competing with it, with one line of copy underneath and never more.
03
Split the range by light. A cream, silver-lidded tin for daylight retail, a deep green tin with gold foil for gifting and dark shelves. Same layout, same margins, different temperature.
04
Wrote the photography rules into the system itself: natural daylight, soft shadows, no clutter, no artificial colour. Every future shot has a spec to meet.
05
Ran a black-and-white typographic campaign as counterweight. The name repeats until it becomes texture, which lets the packaging stay quiet while the campaign carries the volume.

The outcome

A complete identity system: mark, wordmark, four-colour palette, a ten-icon set, photography direction, packaging across five formats, full stationery, and retail and gifting collateral. All of it documented in a guidelines book that can be handed to any printer or photographer without a briefing call.

Open cream SORA tin of matcha powder beside a stoneware bowl of whisked matcha on an oak table in window light

The morning ritual, in the light the brand specifies

The mark

Sunrise over two leaves

The SORA sunrise-and-leaves mark blind-debossed into textured uncoated paper — Blind deboss on uncoated stock

The mark is drawn on a single stroke weight so it holds at 6mm on a hang tag and at 300mm on a shopfront. The wordmark never sits closer to it than the height of the sun.

Primary SORA lockup with the tagline "Ceremonial grade. Born from the morning ritual." above a green rule — Primary lockup with the fixed line of copy

The system

Colour, icons, photography

SORA colour palette: cream and deep green primaries with tan and sage secondaries — Two primaries, two secondaries

Ten line icons for tea, scoop, leaf, gift, steam, shipping, bowl, journal, whisk and sustainability — Ten icons, one stroke weight

Annotated photography guidelines calling out natural daylight, soft shadows, minimal composition and no artificial colour — Photography written as rules

Packaging

Split by light

Gift tin, deep green and gold foil

Retail tin, cream and silver lid

Deboss-only variant

Cream 30g resealable matcha pouch in raking daylight — 30g resealable pouch

Carrier bag

Both tins carry the same grid: mark at the optical centre, wordmark below, one rule, one line of copy. Only the temperature changes.

Takeaway cup, gift range

Cream takeaway cup with the SORA mark and a green rim line — Takeaway cup, retail range

The cream SORA tin on a wooden retail shelf between artisanal coffee bags and chocolate bars — On shelf, among the category it had to stand apart from

Gifting

The ceremonial kit

Open cream gift box containing a bamboo whisk, scoop, stoneware bowl and matcha tin — Kit box: whisk, scoop, bowl, tin

Overhead flat lay of the ceremonial kit on cream linen with the retail tin and gold scoop — Kit, light set

The kit is the one place the range is allowed to be generous: whisk, scoop, bowl and tin in a box that opens flat. Everything else here is made to be bought again. This is made to be given once, which is why it gets the foil.

Stationery and applications

Applied across every surface

Business cards, envelope, letterhead, notebook, stickers and gift card in the SORA identity — Cards, letterhead, stickers, notebook

Application grid showing gift box, carrier bag, stoneware bowl, tin, shopfront window, tote bag and wall signage, all carrying the mark — The same mark at tote and shopfront scale

Deep green SORA tin with its lid lying beside it and a stoneware bowl of matcha powder, on a dark wooden table by a shoji screen

The same system, after dark

Counterweight

The campaign

The packaging holds still, so the campaign does the shouting. One compressed grotesque, the name repeated until it stops being a word and becomes a pattern.

SORA typographic poster installed in a street-side billboard beside a bike rack

Black and white poster of a carrier bag behind repeated SORA lettering

Poster of stacked SORA wordmarks interleaved with whisk and bowl photography

Nine-tile campaign grid mixing repeated SORA lettering with product photography

Poster of the matcha pouch behind repeated SORA lettering

Poster of a takeaway cup behind repeated SORA lettering

Poster of the open ceremonial kit box behind repeated SORA lettering

Poster of a stacked matcha tin behind repeated SORA lettering

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The system, together

Two boards

The system on one board

SORA editorial spread pairing a daylight still life with a dark studio still life under the line about light and shadow

SORA taught me that restraint only reads as confidence when something else is carrying the volume. For most of the four weeks I thought the quiet was the whole idea. Then I mocked the cream tin onto a shelf beside coffee bags and chocolate bars and saw that quiet, on a shelf, is just invisible. The campaign came out of that, not out of the brief. It exists so the packaging can afford to stay still. The part I would still want to test is the part a concept project cannot answer. Everything here depends on things a screen flatters: the deboss, the foil, the weight of an uncoated stock. None of it has met a printer. Until it does, this is a set of decisions rather than a finished system, which is why I wrote the photography and the margins down as rules instead of leaving them to taste.

At a glance

Scope, not outcome

Pack formats: 5
Core colours: 4
Icons drawn: 10

Next case · 02HSBC

The problem

The approach

Drew the mark from the moment rather than the plant: a sunrise breaking over two leaves. Sora means sky, so the mark reads as dawn before it reads as tea.

Set the wordmark in a high-contrast serif with wide letterspacing so the name sits still on the pack instead of competing with it, with one line of copy underneath and never more.

Split the range by light. A cream, silver-lidded tin for daylight retail, a deep green tin with gold foil for gifting and dark shelves. Same layout, same margins, different temperature.

Wrote the photography rules into the system itself: natural daylight, soft shadows, no clutter, no artificial colour. Every future shot has a spec to meet.

Ran a black-and-white typographic campaign as counterweight. The name repeats until it becomes texture, which lets the packaging stay quiet while the campaign carries the volume.

The outcome