Our pals at Aesthetic Apparatus are no strangers to the Regional Design Annual’s jurors. For them, appearing in the design annual is as natural as drawing an Anthrax logo on the toe of your Chucks during home room.

But for us, it’s magic! Check out page 104 of the 2010 Print Regional Design Annual. Right there, amongst the cream of the design crop, is Thomas and Jackee!

A hearty “congrats!” to Dan, Michael, and Jonathan. And a warm “thanks!” for the skill, charm, and wit they bring to our ideas for each series.

I also wanted to step away from the design process. I was too attached to the company and we wanted new eyes and new ideas. We also wanted to bounce our ideas off of someone we were paying so they wouldn’t laugh in our faces.

So we started hunting down designers we might want to work with. We wanted designers that never did work related to tea and had a bit of a DIY vibe. We found the guy who designed the Rock and Roll Over album cover for KISS but didn’t contact him. Which is good because we would have demanded our logo look exactly like that album cover and he would have been pissed.

After some looking around, we decided to contact the fine gentlemen of Aesthetic Apparatus. We flew out to Minneapolis for a couple of days and chatted up the company and our dreams, hopes, and dietary restrictions. After a romantic sunset walk on the beach, a ferris wheel ride, and a picnic in a meadow, we knew we had found our designers.

The design process was perfect. They threw some ideas at us and we threw some back. They were very patient and quick with the solutions. They were the voice of restraint when we wanted to go nuts with visual geegaws. We once broke the cardinal rule of design when we asked them to make our logo smaller in a layout.

Which leads me to some advice: I encourage all designers to become clients. It’s an opportuntity to better understand the client/designer relationship. You will learn to better communicate your ideas and empathize with your clients’ crazy last minute requests and absurd scribbles on your comps.

Each label is screenprinted by hand in their studio. It’s a laborious process, but the results are worth it. The ink is thicker than everyday offset printing ink and the colors are richer. Each label is unique which is part of the charm of the process. We believe in our tea so the tins need to be special. And since we only produce a limited quantity of each series, we can revel in the creativity for every new series we select.

Now we’re rolling along, feeling great, and looking cooler than we ever did in high school.