These days it's become ridiculously hard to be a creative beauty brand. I mean - there are only so many creative ways how to spice up a lipstick bullet, an eye shadow palette or a blusher - especially when you want to keep some degree of usability of the product (remember those lip and eye shadow palettes in a shape of mobile phone? yuck!). Now some brands can comfortable ditch their creative team because their reputation and brand itself are enough of a pull factor - I'm talking Burberry, Nars, Chanel. These are brands that benefit from uniform designs more than they would benefit from quirkiness and novelty approach. But what about the drugstore land? Why ain't it more fun?!
Now don't get me wrong - I'm not saying that everyone should follow Anna Sui and have their eye shadow palettes in a shape of a ribbon (Christ, no!). My point is that many (especially, but not exclusively) drugstore brands could take an example from their more creative competitors and come up with slight design tweaks so the customer can actually tell which chubby stick belongs to which brand (I have a bunch of chubby sticks from Revlon, Clinique, Bourjois... and they are look bloody same, how silly is that?!).
My favourite illustration of creativity in the beauty world is tarte. Their products (and the packaging) are not out of this world innovative but they have the right touch of signature brand creativity (without having an adverse effect on use of the products). Just look at the selection of tarte products in the picture above - a touch of print here and there (not talking just the paper lipstick packaging but also the print on wood, so lovely!), contrasting materials (I'm in love with tarte's maracuja oil packaging - the wooden lid and bamboo box together with purple glass just looks absolutely stunning), slightly different shapes (the brushes look so original and luxurious, don't you think?). In my books tarte products are elegant and swanky, the packaging is not boring however it's not tacky or over the top! Just imagine how amazing would it be if all beauty companies put a tad more effort into their packaging, at least as much as tarte does!
Now don't get me wrong - I'm not saying that everyone should follow Anna Sui and have their eye shadow palettes in a shape of a ribbon (Christ, no!). My point is that many (especially, but not exclusively) drugstore brands could take an example from their more creative competitors and come up with slight design tweaks so the customer can actually tell which chubby stick belongs to which brand (I have a bunch of chubby sticks from Revlon, Clinique, Bourjois... and they are look bloody same, how silly is that?!).
My favourite illustration of creativity in the beauty world is tarte. Their products (and the packaging) are not out of this world innovative but they have the right touch of signature brand creativity (without having an adverse effect on use of the products). Just look at the selection of tarte products in the picture above - a touch of print here and there (not talking just the paper lipstick packaging but also the print on wood, so lovely!), contrasting materials (I'm in love with tarte's maracuja oil packaging - the wooden lid and bamboo box together with purple glass just looks absolutely stunning), slightly different shapes (the brushes look so original and luxurious, don't you think?). In my books tarte products are elegant and swanky, the packaging is not boring however it's not tacky or over the top! Just imagine how amazing would it be if all beauty companies put a tad more effort into their packaging, at least as much as tarte does!
Do you sometimes buy pretty make-up just because it's, erm, PRETTY?
Which company has the most amazingly packaged products?