15 minutes tea: sending the wrong message
It raises a smile every time I go to that café, but then I’m easily pleased. I can see the marketing meeting in my mind's eye: brainstorming around the core message that this tea helps create a small piece of the day that's just for you. 15 minutes where the outside world can go hang itself as you detox in herbal-tea-heaven.
The café in question is at the railway station here in Hebden Bridge, so people passing through are likely to be in a hurry. They must have been losing enough in sales to make it worth putting up a sticker to 'augment' the branding. It's a salutary reminder to consider where and how the messages you send might be delivered.
Seriously, however, it hightlights the importance of test-driven design processes. We know that test-driven design is great at picking up unintentional messages that you are sending and feeding those back into the creative process. There's nothing like showing a design to people not involved in the process for highlighting where your assumptions have led you astray.
