Jesslyn’s project is centred around Teh Tubruk, which is a traditional Javanese tea product that has made its indelible mark on Indonesian vernacular design for the past century. With colourful illustrations and strong letterpress printed packaging, they remain distinct against current day tea products that follow the Western norms. The first part of Teh Tubruk: A Visual Feast for Teatime aims to examine, archive and develop a sense of the design language utilised by the Javanese designers and cultural influences that shapes the public consciousness today. The second part of her project explores Teh Tubruk's main consumers: the culture of eateries (angkringan/wedangan) in the city of Solo which serve this tea fresh, hot and blended with many brands all at once. Jesslyn’s new packaging design for tea blends made by Angkringan takes their histories, motivations and approaches into account. These will all be printed using letterpress plates.

You mentioned that visual elements in graphic design persist in the ability to become unique when inspired by local cultural practices. So, why do you think that is?

The thing about these tea corporations is that they want to modernise their designs. They feel like they have to keep up with the times and that usually means keeping up with the ang mohs, which is not always ideal for these kinds of cultural products. It's not always this approach that works all the time.

There's this big company, Teh Dandang, that has already changed their packaging to this more contemporary and minimalist style, like most Western corporate stuff nowadays. Whenever I see this in the market, it's kind of sad.It's definitely losing that edge, like this cultural design vernacular that's been perpetuated in these packaging. Now it looks like what everyone else has. I wanted my project to encapsulate the original kind of design practice, which is more retro.

Is there a reason why you wanted to design the tea packaging for these eateries?

I've been going to these eateries all across Solo, which is my hometown. We have this thing — even my other Javanese friends think it's weird in comparison — where we mix all of these tea brands into our own personal blend and then we sell them at street stalls called the angkringan or the wedangan. They've got all of these quail eggs, snails and shells and meat on sticks. And you can get them for super cheap. Sometimes the tea is also five cents. In this case you will get the warm tea with loose leaves served in a metal cup, and then you get all of the bits inside and you add rock sugar.

You have to come and drink it yourself, since the eateries don't sell their own tea. These individual eateries like Monggo Pinarak and Pendopo, and all of these different tea masters and practitioners, don't even have this packaging. So I'm trying to bring this design language to them.

What are some of the considerations that came with designing the packaging?

One of the designs I've been working on is Putri Solo, a very feminine woman from Solo. She's the womanly ideal of a gentle Javanese lady. I've been trying to add three colours as part of a system; I rate these three factors that are from the WASGITEL spectrum. That's what we believe in. Wangi means fragrant; panas means warm; sepet means acidic; legi means sweet; and kental means intense. So I just took three of those metrics and made them into a colour spectrum.

I also came up with a second design. This one is the Anjing Ajak, which is an endangered animal in the island of Java and the island of Rial. It connects the two locations. It's not just a place in Solo. I want to bring up the fact that they're not just any other Javanese eatery, because they're so far away from Solo, and they've even acclimatised to some of our cultural quirks. They sometimes have people order teh openg which is not what we usually order. That's just one of the things that I want to include in my design, like all of this cultural mixture.