The beauty market is becoming more and more saturated, with a plethora of brands to choose from.


That’s why it’s more important now than ever before to stand out to your consumers. Beauty brands today are also proving that it’s not just about how great the product is – it’s about how it looks too. With influential and aspirational images everywhere from social media to television, people care about how it’s going to look on their bathroom counter as well as on their face.

Glossier is one of the first beauty brands to launch primarily on social media, their philosophy being, give customers a voice through content. CEO and founder Emily Weiss said when launching her start-up she “went through that exercise of looking across 10 or 20 beauty brands, thinking about whether or not I would buy that sweatshirt, wear that sweatshirt… I just kept coming up with the answer ‘no’”. The beauty industry’s struggle to connect with the millennial generation and rise of social media left a gap in the market for Glossier, making their packaging look so “instagrammable” that customers could do a lot of the marketing and content creation for them.

The use of black and white coupled with pale pink and red accents retains a feminine, young and minimalistic aesthetic. Glossier’s products are intended to provide minimal coverage for a fresh and youthful look and their packaging conveys just that. The products arrive packaged in a branded box, a multi-purpose pink bubble wrap bag and branded stickers. And, they have indeed branded several sweatshirts.

Dr Jart was founded by dermatologist Dr Sung Jae Jung and architect Chin Wook Lee. The fusion of their two backgrounds has afforded the brand to achieve a balance of quality formulas and signature packaging. The Korean Skincare Brand is centred around one philosophy: ‘powered by science, inspired by art’, which is communicated through their packaging.

 

The designers at Pentagram said, “the containers combine the classic forms of beauty products and cosmetics with unexpected industrial objects like oil cans, kerosene cans and paint tubes”. The clinical but simultaneously stylish packaging looks like it’s going to effectively target the problem just as if you were taking the antidote for an illness. The sleek containers are designed to be left out on the counter and not hidden away in a drawer.

 Pure Sensations is a “‘go-to’, affordable and no fuss brand that provides confidence for consumers to use the products no matter what their skin type and feel comfortable with their skin”. This is reflected in the simplicity of the packaging, which is clean, minimal, clearly stating the purpose of the product. In other words, it does what it says on the tin. 

The skincare brand aims to make “you feel comfortable with your skin and combat the ageing process”. The muted colours give it a soft appearance with the underlying impression that it’s gentle to the skin. The silver logo makes the product look more refined and premium. It’s targeted at a slightly more mature audience. However, there’s never a bad time to start taking care of your skin.

Central Saint Martins post-graduate student Mi Zhou has created toiletry bottles called Soapack, cast from soap which melts away and dissolves once you no longer need them. They are composed of a vegetable oil-based soap that is dyed using pigments from minerals, plants and flowers and formed in a mould. Each Soapack is coated in a thin layer of beeswax to make them waterproof, and prevent the liquid contents from dissolving the bottle. 

The project is a response to the disposable nature of regular plastic packaging for toiletries. Zhou said, “I found that compared to shampoo bottles, we are more likely to keep perfume bottles which mostly are made of glass and look gorgeous.” Soapacks abstract and elegant aesthetic coupled with it’s it eco-friendly design appeals to a new and environmentally conscious way of thinking. It perfectly emulates Zhou’s mission to “encourage people to use alternatives to respect our environment better without compromising in user experience.”


Nowadays, beauty packaging not only needs to be strongly branded and aesthetically pleasing, it can be functional and environmentally friendly too.