• Yiayia and Friends extends its brand universe into tea, with a range of four organic Greek mountain teas
• Greek agency Beetroot helps build out a packaging system featuring bright color-blocked shapes that interlock

The Yiayia and Friends brand universe is as vast as it is charming, centered around its eponymous talisman, Yiayia. The Greek lifestyle brand has extended its folksy, whimsical world into the tea space, with adorable yet tasteful packaging that brightens your spirits, counter, and cupboard.

Partnering with the Greek tea company Symbeeosis on the product and Greek agency Beetroot on the packaging, YiaYia and Friends organic Greek mountain tea leans into its Greek roots in key ways, but feels welcoming to all, given the fantastically inviting and timeless YAF universe. The illustration style adds to this inviting vibe, built around simple color-blocked shapes in vibrant jewel tones. These colorful shapes build out the characters and scenery on each box, interlocking together pleasingly.

My favorite of the four box designs (there’s a unique one for each tea type in the range) is the lavender flavor, in which Yiayia’s body seemingly takes up the entire facade of the box, as her little head floats above the lavender flowers she’s clutching.

Yiayia and friends is a brand born in Greece but addressed to a global audience. It represents local, traditional values with universal appeal: respect for nature, a sustainable life cycle, care for others and the environment, food as an expression of tenderness and care. All-natural and organic Greek mountain tea, with a wealth of beneficial qualities, is the perfect addition to yiayia’s basket of goodies.

The packaging is designed to communicate the product, the brand, but also the sense of enjoyment and of sharing that is at the heart of the YAF brand values. Bright block coloring, naif-style illustrations that are equal parts joyful and evocative, interlocking characters that shape and complete each other, are the defining features of the unique yiayia and friends illustration style. For the mountain tea, four new illustrations were created, inspired by the aromatic herbs that infuse the different blends (lavender, dittany, mint), and incorporating subtle references to the classic tea ritual: tea kettles (in yiayia’s hand, but also in the elephant’s trunk, the cat’s tail, and the leaves of the plant) and cups (in yiayia’s hand and in the pelican’s beak).