Designer Approved: 6 Skincare Brands That We Love
Designer Approved showcases brands that set the curve for branding and visual marketing. These brands demonstrate current marketing trends and visual standards that appeal to modern consumers. Today, we will take a look at 6 skincare brands that we love.
1. Aesop Skincare
Aesop Skincare is a luxury skincare brand headquartered in Melbourne. Founded in 1987, Aesop is known not only for their plant-based skin, hair and body formulations but also their cutting edge design-conscious shop interiors.
Why We Love It –
The signature packaging is not only eye-catching in and of itself but also serves as a compelling accent piece for your vanity or night stand. Many people have discovered Aesop not through beauty publications, but through interior design publications that have featured images including Aesop’s iconic amber bottle.
The Takeway –
Think outside of your industry. Are there ways that your product or service can appeal to adjacent industries?
2. May Lindstrom
May Lindstrom is an organic skincare line founded by formulator May Lindstrom.
Why We Love It –
May Lindstrom’s personal struggles with sensitive and reactive skin is an integral part of the brand. Her journey from creating “potions” for her friends in her hometown of Minnesota as a child to founding her own skincare line and creating powerful plant medicine blends for more extreme issues like skincare following cancer treatment and post-trauma skin is documented at length on their website.
The Takeway –
Keep it personal. Modern consumers are moved by shared experience – don’t be afraid to tell your story.
3. Hokuroku Sousui
Hokuroku Sousui is a Japanese organic skincare brand with a focus on primeval wild plants indigenous to Japan.
Why We Love It –
Hokuroku Sousui selects “wild” and “useful” plants that grow in Japan – not trendy or exotic plants that you can barely pronounce the name of – to create their formulations. The resonate simplicity and regionality of their formulations is evident in their branding and visual marketing.
The Takeway –
Look in your own backyard. Inspiration is not always found in faraway places.
4. Maison Louis Marie
Maison Louis Marie is a botanical skincare brand and perfumery that follows botanist Louis Marie Aubert du Petit Thouars’ floral tradition since 1792.
Why We Love It –
Maison Louis Marie’s historical resonance is manifested in their understated and elegant branding and package design. The classic typefaces and ample negative space give Maison Louis Marie products a distinguished look and feel.
The Takeway –
History can be translated through design. If your brand has a compelling history, seek visual ways to express it.
5. Le Labo
Le Labo is a niche perfumery and skincare brand that specializes in fresh formulation and unique, handcrafted scents.
Why We Love It –
Le Labo’s branding has a keen emphasis on the process, whether that be via well-documented collaborations with specific paper makers and candle pourers that help create their signature packaging to stylistic flat-lays of the various ingredients that comprise a scent.
The Takeway –
Show the process. Creatively document the hard work and collaboration that goes behind your products and services.
6. Commodity
Commodity is a London-based perfume and skincare brand with an emphasis on scent personalization. Through try-at-home kits and a vast unisex collection, they encourage consumers to seek out their own signature scent.
Why We Love It –
Commodity taps into millennial consumers’ desires to stand apart from the crowd and manifest their own uniqueness. As brands like Warby Parker have done, Commodity uses a single product strategy and offers a vast and cleverly named repertoire of aesthetic options to give customers an opportunity to purchase something that feels customized to their own personality.
The Takeway –
Use personality-driven marketing. Through copywriting and strategic naming practices, offer a buying experience that feels custom tailored to your customer.