The first thing about this website that caught my attention was the name. This extract from the homepage explains a bit of who they are
‘The "Tea Appreciation Society" was setup in February 2007 by a small collective of British designers who LOVE TEA. Not only do we love tea, we drink tea, we use tea for those moments when you need some inspiration, relaxation or to forget the din of the world.”
This extract made me smile, mainly as its true of so many tea drinkers across this country. When they are feeling tired, down, upset, stressed or as it says above uninspired one of the first things that they reach for, is a cup or England’s favourite drink.
The more you explore this website, the more you realise that it is using this title to promote the fair trade tea industry and ethical clothing through their own designs. On face value this could just be a site designed to make you smile and give a bit of extra publicity for the designers, but I actually think they are trying to do more than this. They are using what could otherwise be ‘just another’ blog style website and making it into one that has a purpose in trying to promote fair trade standards.
On another note, this has also got some links to artist and designer’s personal websites. If anyone has a minute I would recommend looking at them, the work is varied and really good.
With regards to the design of the website, I do really like it. It may not be the most flashy website or one that is extremely innovative in its design, but it does however look good and do what it sets out to. In a way I think my favourite part of the visual design is the background. They have used very natural greens here and constructed a leaf pattern that looks very much like my grandma’s old wallpaper. This is perfect for the site, this style is not only fashionable at the moment, but it reminds you of all the things that tea is normally linked to, such as living rooms, comfy sofas and resting at the end of the day. The only thing that I do think is a bit of a shame is that they have used a totally different, green for the main part of the site. Whilst it is not designed to match, I think that if they used this colour and style within the homepage a bit more, it would have more of an impact as at the moment it looks like many different sections not one whole cohesive site.
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