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Hand pouring tea from a glass teapot into a black mug with "Portal Tea Company" branding, surrounded by loose tea leaves, orange slices, and a green plant, on a wooden surface.
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Portal Tea

Goal

Portal Tea came to us with a mission: Elevate their small chain of landmark tea shops into a fully-fledged tea brand.

Services

Brand Strategy
Visual Identity
Packaging Design
eCommerce Website
Naming
Photography

Three tea tins from Portal Tea featuring distinct flavors: "dream blend" in blue, "vanilla rose chai" in pink, and "sencha fukamushi" in green, showcasing organic and caffeinated labels with a modern design.
After 20 years, Portland-based tea company Portal Tea was ready to infuse their flavors into a nationwide market.

Portal Tea was ready to move from a small tea shop company to an elevated tea brand. Our team helped them redefine their identity with a new brand name, a comprehensive strategic framework, sophisticated packaging design, and a robust e-commerce website to support nationwide sales.

Two cups of brewed tea, a wooden spoon with loose tea leaves, and a white teapot on a wooden tray, surrounded by a yellow cloth and chamomile flowers, representing Portal Tea's unique offerings and brand identity.

Brand Strategy

Portal Tea, formerly Tea Chai Té, was ready to be more than a tea shop chain. They wanted to grow their sales nationally and needed to shift their brand focus to the virtues of their custom teas. We honed in on the elements that made their brand of tea completely unique in the market and crafted hardworking tools to guide their branding journey.

Angela Larisch, Strategy Director at Murmur Creative, smiling in a black blazer and gray shirt, representing the agency's collaboration with Groundwork Coffee on website design and SEO strategy.
“In developing Portal’s brand strategy, we wanted to capture their culture of creativity and spirit of adventure. We wanted to emphasize their expertise in tea, but remain very welcoming, as their whole philosophy revolves around the idea that tea is for everyone. Our focus was developing foundational brand elements that would help them communicate their unique take on tea.”

Angela Larisch

Strategy Director

Hand pouring tea from a glass teapot into a black mug featuring the Portal Tea Company logo, surrounded by loose tea leaves, orange slices, and a plant, on a wooden countertop.

Naming

When Portal Tea described their tea to us, they said each unique flavor had the ability to transport you. Through our workshop discovery process, we dug deeper into this idea. We explored a number of different directions but ultimately landed on the name Portal. This simple but unique name for a tea company perfectly captured the idea of entering another world.

Angela Larisch, Strategy Director at Murmur Creative, smiling in a black blazer and gray shirt, representing the agency's collaboration with Groundwork Coffee on website design and SEO strategy.
“Working with Portal Tea was an absolute joy. Their team was fully invested in the process and showed up at each stage donning their creative caps. We gained really good insight into what makes their tea and their brand different from others in the industry. When the idea that their tea has the ability to transport taste buds surfaced, we ran with it!”

Angela Larisch

Strategy Director

Portal Tea logo featuring a traditional tea kettle silhouette with a mountain landscape and moon, emphasizing the brand's transportive nature and connection to unique tea flavors.

Identity Design

Portal’s new logo design pulled inspiration from the transportive nature of the name Portal. A traditional cast iron tea kettle silhouette echoes the original logo, while the liquid interior reflects a place or landscape to which that tea can transport you.

Three tea tins from Portal Tea featuring vibrant packaging designs: "dream blend" in blue, "vanilla rose chai" in pink, and "sencha fukamushi" in green, each labeled with organic and caffeinated details, emphasizing the brand's transportive theme and unique landscape imagery.

Packaging Design

Expanding on the landscape featured in the logo, the packaging design reinforces the transformative quality of tea. The label makes intentional use of the matte finish by subtly fading a mountain skyline into the bottom of the tin. Endless permutations of custom color palettes give the packaging flexibility and the metallic effects across the design add a premium feeling.

Senior Art Director Renee Dimalla posing in a colorful vest, showcasing her role in Canvas's branding project focused on health and sustainability.
“To create a feeling of transportation, we featured tranquil scenery held within a teapot. We added unique detailing to the landscape for elegance and chose an array of bright colors to differentiate the various tea lines.”

Renee Dimalla

Senior Art Director

Vanilla Rose Chai tea packaging design featuring a serene mountain landscape, vibrant colors, and brewing instructions, emphasizing the transformative quality of tea for Portal Tea Company.
Website design for Portal Tea showcasing vibrant tea packaging against a serene mountain backdrop, emphasizing discovery in every cup.
Portal Tea website showcasing tea subscription options and gift cards, featuring colorful tea tins and a clean, modern design.

Website Design

Our goal for website design was something rich and flavorful that immerses users in the Portal brand and their unique tea offerings. Animations help create joyful moments, and a serene color palette and beautiful photography give it an artfully simple feel. Although the site includes a lot of information and e-commerce shopping items, implementing a functional filtering system helps keep it light, approachable and easy to navigate.

Dani Ramsby, Senior UI/UX Designer at Murmur Creative, smiling in a navy shirt and jeans, representing a woman-owned firm committed to innovative and sustainable architecture.
“The goal for the website was to showcase the beauty, complexity, and history of tea while keeping it approachable. From curated product collections to engaging resources, the new Portal Tea website meets its customers wherever they’re at on their journey into the world of tea.”

Dani Ramsby

Lead UI/UX Designer

Vanilla rose chai tea product page on Portal Tea website, featuring a sleek design with product details, pricing, and an add-to-cart button, emphasizing the brand's unique tea offerings.

Website Development

A big part of Portal Tea’s site build was balancing custom-coded elements while leveraging Shopify’s e-commerce features. We also integrated apps like Wishlist Engine, EcoCart, and Recharge to help deliver on our shared goals.

Senior Developer Amy Hwang in a black top and trousers, smiling confidently, representing Murmur Creative's collaboration with Groundwork Coffee.
“Shopify is a great e-commerce platform but has limitations when it comes to building multi-layered site structure and showcasing content. For Portal Tea, a company that does more than simple e-commerce, we used the CMS app and Accentuate Custom Fields to build more flexible templates that better fit the client’s specific needs.”

Amy Hwang

Senior Developer

Cup of brewed tea surrounded by dried flowers, a small milk jug, a teapot, and a plant, on a light wooden surface, showcasing the essence of tea culture and branding for Portal Tea.

Let's infuse flavor into your branding.

Let's infuse flavor into your branding.

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