Hi.TEA 茶室 — Say hi.
Then tea.

Storefront hoarding, Woodside Square · 2021

00The project

Client: Hi.TEA 茶室
Store: Woodside Square, Scarborough, Toronto
Founded: 2015 · Guangzhou
Years: 2021–2023

Hi.TEA started in Guangzhou in 2015 with lemon tea and fruit tea. In 2021 it came to Canada, opening its first store at Woodside Square in Scarborough, Toronto. Before opening day, a hoarding and a door were all it had to speak with in the mall. We made that wall say hello to everyone walking past, then wrote a brand introduction for would-be franchise partners — and two years on, made the store’s seasonal promotions.

Storefront hoarding & door panels
Featured-drinks panel
Brand introduction, 20 pages
Seasonal promotion

01The storefront

Before the doors open,
the wall says hi.

The hoarding is one long red wall. The wordmark sits in a speech bubble, as if talking to whoever walks by; four people jump beneath it, and a glass of lemon tea — ice, orange, a splash — is drawn bigger than any of them. The door turns black and sets the wordmark vertically, as tall as the door. A red side panel lists eight featured drinks and snacks, in Chinese and English.

The whole hoarding, left to right: speech bubble, lemon tea, door, round mark, featured drinks

Hoarding detail: “Hi.TEA 茶室 Woodside Square” in a speech bubble, four people jumping below — Speech bubble and the jumping crowd

The black door panel: Hi.TEA 茶室 set vertically, as large as the door allows — Door panel

The red side panel: featured drinks, in Chinese and English — Featured drinks

02The brand book

Twenty pages
for future partners.

Once the store was open, the brand wanted partners for more of them. The introduction speaks the hoarding’s language — red, the speech bubble, the jumping crowd — across ten chapters: where the brand comes from, where the tea comes from, what it sells, what its stores look like and how head office supports them. Toronto is drawn on the front cover, Guangzhou on the back.

Front cover · Toronto

Back cover: Guangzhou drawn in white on red — Back cover · Guangzhou

Contents spread: Guangzhou on red at left, the ten chapters at right — Contents

Product spread: fruit tea, lemon tea and food photography — Product overview

03Promotion

For Mother’s Day weekend in 2023 the store ran buy one, get one: a lemon tea and a fruit tea. The poster splits red and black, lets the two cups fill it, and runs a brush-script “Buy one … get one free” across the diagonal, with the Chinese names set vertically beside each cup.

Mother’s Day weekend 2023, buy one get one: lemon tea and fruit tea on a red-and-black split — Mother’s Day weekend poster · 2023

The same red and black ran from the 2021 hoarding to the 2023 poster. Seasons and drinks changed; the store stayed recognisable at a glance.

Hi,
Scarborough.

Before the doors open,the wall says hi.

Twenty pagesfor future partners.

Buy one,take one home.

Before the doors open,
the wall says hi.

Twenty pages
for future partners.

Buy one,
take one home.