Matchpoint, LLC

Overview

Matchpoint is a small batch tea powder business venture that offers authentic tea powders and education of the tea industry in a fun and exciting way, marrying asian caffeinated products with our long time love of racquet sports. As the sole designer for this project, I completed a range of design tasks from branding to website design, and approached each challenge with a human centered design methodology.

Role: Product designer

Design Process: Design Thinking and User Centered Design

Timeline: January 2024-December 2024

Problem

With the rising popularity of matcha, we wanted to connect matcha lovers with a quality, ethically sourced, and thoughtfully designed matcha brand. We wanted a company that would reflect our personal interests and beliefs while challenging ourselves with the task of building a brand with a strong aesthetic vision.

Objective: To build a successful tea powder business with a strong brand identity, quality products, effective marketing, efficient distribution channels, and to have fun with an end-to-end process.

Discovery

First we explored our target audience with discovery exercises to create a user persona, Emily, to gain a deeper understanding of the needs, wants, and desires of our target consumer.

Needs

Quality- reliably sourced high quality products
Transparency- to establish trust, honest information and knowledge about the product's origin, processing methods, and health benefits
Sustainable and ethical sourcing- she seeks products from businesses with environmentally conscious values

Wants

Unique- Emily wants to experience unique flavors and to see unique designs, the overall product experience should appear and feel unique

Desires

Personalized experience- responsive and attentive customer service and additional content beyond the product would make Emily feel special
Community and connection- Emily desires a brand that aligns with her lifestyle and community. Using a product that connects her to an extended community would help with brand loyalty
Limited edition offerings- collaborations or limited edition designs can add to a sense of excitement and collectability

We also completed competitive market research to find existing competitors and their respective markets. This allowed us to empathize with Emily and what products were available to her. It also provided insight about existing trends which helped inform a unique direction of our product.

Competitive Analysis

Define

We created a mission statement aligned with target audience and business goals to inform our designs and identified 3 values: fun, playful, and authentic.

Mission Statement:

To provide consumers with a quality, ethically sourced, and thoughtfully designed product for daily activities.

Design, Prototypes, and Testing

Iteration 1

Using our brand's values, we created a mood board to inspire our visual designs:

Our first logo iteration

We created a unique graphic that would draw a wide range of curious customers to its abstract interpretation of a net and ball to convey the energy and playfulness of racquet sports.

After testing, found that it wasn't visually striking enough for a large audience.

Iteration 2

We created another mood board to find what worked for other brands to evoke playfulness, we noticed that character logos and bold typography were the backbones of the visual identities we liked.

We also revisited the mission and values, and came up with a cherub design. The cherub fit the brand motto of "serve with love" and is a visual representation our PNW Asian roots.

We selected a bold serif typeface to evoke fun, and paired it with a semibold sans serif typeface for a nostalgic aesthetic. Additionally, both Fraunces and Work Sans have 9 weights for versatility. In identifying our fonts, we were ready to continue designing with consistency in our visual branding across product labels, website, and social media.

Using our chosen fonts and limiting to a two color palette reminiscent of flexography on imported produce boxes, we created two label designs to test and found a 75% (n=12) preference for option B.

Homage to a love letter, playing with the idea of the tennis serve and love (zero) score

Reminiscent of an Asian fruit box stamp or rice bag

Deliver

Summary and next steps

To create a clear brand image, we engaged in brand identity and a product design project that aligned with the Matchpoint’s mission is to provide consumers with a quality, ethically sourced, and thoughtfully designed product for their daily activities.

Next steps would involve increasing our marketing efforts and upscaling the business to a larger online presence, wholesale to local boutiques and cafes, and table at markets to gain more visibility and share our quality product with racquet sport lovers and beyond.

[UPDATE]

(3/2025) We sold out within 6 months! Our customers were excited about our branding which laid groundwork for us to go into second year of business. We're planning a minor brand refresh and putting more emphasis on social media to widen our customer reach.

Online shop: www.matchpointmatcha.com