Babingtons English Tea Rooms

Designed by Minale Tattersfield. The design has just won a DBA Design Effectiveness Award that will be presented to Minale Tattersfield (Agency) and Babingtons (Client) in December 2011.

Project background
Babingtons English Tea Rooms has been a Roman institution since 1893. Situated at the foot of the Spanish Steps, in the heart of Rome, Babington’s served tea the English way and over time became the place to meet for writers, actors, politicians and artists as well as tourists. The tea rooms today are in the same location and run by the descendents of Isabel Cargill, one of the original owners.

A programme was commissioned in 2010 to re-position the business to emphasise its English heritage, promote the tea rooms to visitors and Romans, increase the sale of branded merchandise and make the concept attractive to potential franchisees.
Minale Tattersfield put the brand at the centre of the solution. The idea was to develop a personality that would be “ownable” by Babingtons. The core thought was English eccentricity, the idea in England that everything stopped for tea.
A visual Identity of a proud cat (a faithful resident of any finest tea room or Roman ruin) and advertisements were designed together with menu covers and point of sale material communicating the idea of English eccentricity. Packaging for a new range of teas was created, each featuring a different but very bizarre Victorian invention. Merchandise was developed for the gift shop; attractively packaged home produced jams, decorated place mats, shopping bags, aprons, dish cloths and tea caddies all feature modern stylish designs yet with a Victorian twist to them.

Solution
We wanted to capture the uniqueness of an English tea room in Rome by communicating the idea of English quirkiness. It was the idea that everything in England centred around tea. We were fortunate in finding a number of Victorian etchings which we could use on a royalty free basis. These etchings featured strange and wonderfully eccentric Victorian inventions. We customised these by adding articles associated with tea drinking. We then brought these etchings up to date and made them stylish through the use of vibrant modern colours.

These designs were applied to menus, a range of teas, dishes, bags, gift boxes and other merchandise. These items certainly appealed to the style conscious Romans. Leaflets and press adverts were designed using these designs to inform tourists that Babingtons was an essential stop on the tourist circuit.
A small fleet of 3 wheeler moped vans have also been purchased and feature the different Victorian etchings. The vans are all set to become a little Roman icons in the same way that the tea rooms have become.