Fiona Chen

RUNGCHA

Personal Project

RungCha started as a question: what would a tea brand look like if it were built from the inside out, starting with heritage and material honesty rather than aesthetics?

The brand draws from Thai and Taiwanese tea traditions, and every decision was made to reflect that grounding. The packaging takes cues from natural textures and everyday rituals. The reusable cotton tea bags are threaded with crystals, designed to outlive their tea life as soap holders or closet diffusers. Nothing is meant to be thrown away. That's not just a sustainability position; it's the whole brand logic.

I built everything from scratch: logo, visual identity, aesthetic direction, packaging mockups, content concepts, and product prototypes using unbleached cotton and bead-threaded materials. The brand voice is rooted in slow living and cultural connection, specifically bridging East Asian tea culture with a contemporary New York audience who may be encountering these rituals for the first time.

RungCha is where I got to ask the questions I don't always get to ask in client work: what does a brand actually stand for, and does every material, message, and moment reflect that? It's still the project I think about most.