Our market research found that packaging is no longer just a single image—today, half of packaging design is about "content"

A tea beverage client of mine—their product is tea bags—came to me for packaging and opened with: make it young, the kind you can photograph.

I said the “photographable” requirement is actually much higher than “good-looking.”

He didn’t get it: isn’t photographable just another way of saying good-looking?

I said no. Good-looking means you think it looks good; photographable means others are willing to shoot it—and being willing to shoot it means the packaging can go out as “content,” getting customers to promote you for free.

These days everyone scrolls their phones all day and is long desensitized to ads. You spend a hundred thousand on feed ads and people swipe past in a second; but if you get customers to snap a photo and post it to their Moments, that beats any ad. So packaging today is half making a container and half making “content”—content customers are willing to show off.

The tea bag category is especially suited to making content. It’s light, small, everyday—young people buy it and leave it on the desk or office table, seeing it every day. If the packaging is interesting, then one afternoon, with the sunlight just right, they’ll brew a cup and casually snap a photo—and your brand rides along into their Moments.

— Square paper box desk scene display

The solution we ultimately delivered: a square paper box in matte white card, each tea in its own color family—the lid edged with a contrasting color, like the purple lid on the osmanthus Longjing; the body printed all over with a background-pattern illustration, with a gold-stamped bellflower on the front—hit it with light and the flower glows. Line up the three teas and the gradient background patterns run in a row like three books.

— Top-down shot of three color-family paper boxes with gold-stamped bellflower illustrations

We really sweated the gold-stamping detail. The client thought gold stamping was expensive and wanted to cut it; I said if you save the money on this flower, customers won’t have that “finishing touch” highlight when they photograph it. When the prototype came out, he held the box up to the window and said the flower really does lift it—the whole box’s class comes down to this one touch.

For the gift box we made a purple hard paper box with a lift-off lid; open it and there are three individual tea boxes, held neatly in place by a light-brown corrugated paper insert, with a pinch of real dried osmanthus for accent. The client said this one’s for gifting—the moment of opening has to surprise.

— Purple gift box opened with dried osmanthus insert

The client asked: why does each box need its own color family? I said think about it—a customer opens a box of tea, three flavors in three colors; won’t they want to shoot a nine-grid? Won’t they post it in a group asking “which color do you guys think looks best?” That’s what letting the product make its own conversation means.

And then something fun actually happened: a girl posted a “one-week tea bag check-in” series on social media—seven days straight, one tea a day, each with a line about her mood. That post got over ten thousand likes, and the comments were full of people asking “where do I buy this?”

I said, see—that’s “content co-creation.” I didn’t have you spend a cent on influencers; the customer became your endorser.

— Convenience store shelf display, real shot

This taught me a lot: packaging used to be about studying how to print information clearly; now packaging needs one more layer of thought—once customers have it in hand, are they willing to “say” it out loud? The illustrations, the color schemes, the little details on the packaging are all handing customers a conversation starter.

Of course, the premise is still that the product delivers. Packaging makes people shoot; the product makes people stay. If your tea isn’t good, they shoot it once and no one shoots again; if the tea is good, this packaging can sell for you for years.

Sanyao Packaging

Good packaging speaks.