Yellow Emperor's tea box
by laila and antonin nosek

Michal Butor is a tea master and a founder of Yellow Emperor brand specialising in loose leaf tea. He has decided to create something special for selling his teas, he has decided to commission Laila and Antonin Nosek, a designer duo with a passion for 3D design and printing.

The task was simple to create a tea box that would add even higher value to Michal’s specialty loose leaf tea while maintaining the principles of well-thought-out simple design focused on the natural aesthetic.

“From the beginning, Antonin Nosek and I have contemplated using natural materials like Timberfill a wood composite filament.” Says Laila. “Unfortunately, this material does not have a Food Contact Certificate, and that is why we have opted to use PLA Extrafill “Mukha,” which has the Food Contact Certificate that is important for this product. Mukha has a beautiful color with a fine grain and a delicate surface that looks like sand or wood.”

As with many other projects, this one also started with idea sketches. Creating a design with many layers of comprehension was important to Laila, a design that would be an aesthetic experience as a haptic one. To make the tea box practical flexible gasket was needed since air exposure increases the chances that your tea will absorb moisture and odours. Another factor in keeping your tea in the best condition is keeping the light out since light, and UV rays degrade your tea very quickly.

HIPS was used for the prototyping process thanks to his favorable price and properties similar to PLA. Some of the ideas and iterations that didn’t make it into the final product were a tea tag and simple click mechanisms for the opening that was later changed to threaded closure. To create a charming and modest impression of the teabox, Yellow Emperor’s logo was placed on the lid. A part of the lid can also be taken away and used as a coaster. “If you notice, the surface under this part is made of some kind of stretched strips and thanks to PLA Mukha, they create a pleasant natural impression and an unfamiliar haptic detail resembling a split bamboo,” Laila says. “Fulfilling the client’s ideas is not always easy, but Michal was absolutely great and open to our ideas. Tonda added technical parameters and solutions to my visions. The three of us unmistakably created a very pleasant, functional, and aesthetically timeless design for something as great as China imported specialty tea.” One more interesting detail is that the tea boxes are stackable for easier storing.

One of the interesting design changes that happened was the removal of the tag originally placed on the gasket. The costumers used it to pull on it which make the gasket weaker and cased it to break the design. “It is also a great experience for us to see that something may seem natural and logical to us, but the customer may see it differently. And by the daily use of the object, he can come to the conclusion that design would not be functional,” Laila tells us. “However, the finishing of this project was temporarily postponed due to COVID-19. I look forward to seeing the finished product on the shelf at the Yellow Emperor.”

Choosing Fillamentum filaments was a natural choice for Laila and Antonin Nosek since Laila is Fillamentum CMO. Laila says that “Even if I wasn’t the CMO of Fillamentum, our materials are just exceptional. Reliable, pretty and Antonin works with them exclusively. It wasn’t even a question at the beginning. We only decided what colors, what kind and whether it will suit the needs of our client.”

Printed with:
HIPS Extrafill “Sky Blue”
HIPS Extrafill “Traffic Black”
PLA Extrafill “Mukha”

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