Boba Guys 🌈

I curated post-cards and a customized boba cup logo for Boba Guys to promote their transition to sustainable cups.

Boba Guys is a company that prides themselves on making quality bubble tea. At the time that I worked with Boba Guys, I actually did not have an official design position. I was just a part-time bobarista who was a big fan of their drinks and the way that the Co-Founders Bin and Andrew treated their employees as equals - by working together with them in-store and having a transparent line of communication.

That being said, because I’m someone who looks for opportunities in whatever space I’m in, I wanted to make an impact for the time that I was at Boba Guys in order to foster community. I wanted to utilize my design skills to do so, and so I reached out to Bin and Andrew to see if I could make a postcard to promote their transition to sustainable cups.
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💡 The Opportunity 💡

Bin and Andrew had made the announcement in March that the company was planning on switching to more sustainable cups the following summer. I was drawn to this idea because I had experience building sustainable initiatives as senior class president in high school, and wanted to use my art and design skills to promote this eco-friendly change on a larger scale.

Thus, because of the structure of the company, I actually had the opportunity to talk with Bin and Andrew directly. Like how Starbucks designs holiday-themed cups, I wanted to create a special summer-themed boba cup that had a nudge for promoting sustainability. This initial proposed morphed into my designing of both the cup as well as a postcard.

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Considering the Primary Audience

Because this was supposed to promote how to actually compost the cups, I had to consider who would be the primary audience of the postcards.I broke down who would be the primary users in this case to see what I needed to include when indicating a call to action to a customer. I have listed them into

• Those that bought their drinks on the spot
• Those that brought their drinks home
• Actual customers themselves
• Doordashers

I then realized that with any postcard I was going to make, I had to consider long-term and short-term call-to-action behaviors that were going to be implied. Consequently, my message had to be both engaging and easy enough to follow so customers would follow the call to action. I also had to make the message simple (at max a couple words) for a few easy to follow steps.

Moving on to Design

Bin, Andrew and I concluded that most customers would be finishing their boba right after purchasing it at our on-site locations, so I narrowed down the message to target these users. The idea was that the customers would receive their drink and be handed one of the postcards. Since I addressed the purpose of the message, now all I needed to do was form a layout and design choice that would inspire Boba lovers to both enjoy the aesthetic of the card and follow its actions.

Logo Design

I had a lot of artistic liberty and I wanted to create a spinoff of the traditional boba guys logo for the postcard.

• Color selection: I wanted to choose bright summer colors and include flowers that induced a sense of longing for the summer.
• I chose flowers that were part of the native wildlife to California
• I chose bright colors to draw the flowers to put in the body of the aardvark because it would appear more eye-catching
• I chose to outline the aardvark because it appeared softer and more friendly than the traditional Boba Guys logo
• Similarly I gave the Aardvark softer features
• I went with a monoline pen tool to create a sketchier feel to the traditoinal boba guys design. To me, summer induces a sense of freedom and fun, so I wanted to create something that would emulate that idea.
• I chose to draw flowers on top of the written logo because it would connect the color and elements of the aardvark
• I ended up with two versions of the logo: one more traditional and one in my own style
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Front of Postcard

I went through a lot of iterations of the two versions of the logo with different background colors.

• I chose colors that would compliment the colors of the logo
• For the background, I chose more muted colors and blended them heavily to keep the flower colors the main attraction
• Previous Boba Guys postcard submissions were also sketch - like and you could get a feel for the artist’s personal style, so I tried to emulate that
• My personal style is a lot of muted colors with pops of icons/logos and white ink

Back of Postcard

Again, the back that would give someone instructions on how to correctly compost and recycle their boba cup. Once again, I chose the same color and typography elements for the flowers and background with the same rationale as the front. I wanted to create icons that demonstrated the steps for the call-to-action. I did this by sketching the icons using just a white monoline and pen in Procreate to both play into a sketchier feel to the postcard as well as to blend well with the elements on the front of the postcard. It also addressed the primary audience, which were people who were buying boba on site.

Final Postcard

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🪞 Impact

Boba Guys will be distributing these postcards at all 14 of their locations, from San Fransisco to Los Angeles to New York City. This really means a lot to me because it goes to prove to me how 1) amazing Boba Guys is as a company and 2) how just from being a part-time worker and having the art skills and reaching out originally “just for fun” can lead you to making impactful postcards that will be distributed all across the area that I grew up in.

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