Thinking Tree Spirits

Hired Guns Creative created an interactive packaging experience for Thinking Tree Spirits. They took inspiration from the playful exuberance of storybooks and Rococo scrollwork, while successfully evoking the lush bounty of Oregon. 

“We designed the Thinking Tree brandmark for flexibility, personifying the brand as a contemplative woman collared and crowned with ornamental branches that either gently germinate or grow wild to fill the canvas, be it the small circular icon on the cap, or front and centre on the hangtag." 

"For the illustrations, we were inspired by Late Baroque mirrors to create highly dimensional packaging, using the main label for deep background artwork, and layering over it a hangtag of duplexed card-stock with a pop of purple foil and, finally, a colorful ornate frame raised to its highest relief with sculptured embossment. Hidden throughout are local and mythological life, from Odin's ravens thought and memory, to the polyphemus moth (whose eyespots are named after Homer's cyclops) and its caterpillars, down to the great horned owl, whose face is composed of oak leaves." 

On the hangtag's verso, the line-work is reproduced by a letterpress, whose raised ink, along with the purple string that ties tag to neck, all add to the rich tactile experience. Here, one is invited to be creative, whether scribbling thoughts or verse, notes on a new infusion, or a kind gift-letter to a friend. 

Beneath the hangtag is a fable of our composition that sets down the brand's folktale roots: 

"Once, there was a forester who planted a seed in the earth. When the seed grew into a great tree, the forester placed an egg at the top of the highest branch. When the egg hatched into a great owl, the forester returned with gifts. I have the gift of speech, said the forester, mand the gift of thought. The tree and the owl listened. I can give only one gift each, and each gift only once, the forester said. First, one of you will receive the gift of speech. Growing impatient, the owl asked who? And the Thinking Tree shook her leaves knowingly."

Designed by Hired Guns Creative

Location: British Columbia, Canada

Client: Thinking Tree Spirits, Oregon

Printer: Twin Ravens Press, Oregon