Welcome back to the series! Rebrands and Redesigns is a six-part series I started this year to practice creating brand identities and refining existing ones. This series inspired by graphic designer Kel Lauren whose rebrands of famous coffee companies earned her a feature in Fast Company.
This week's rebrand goes out to one of my favorite skincare lines - First Aid Beauty, maker of the extra soothing Ultra Repair Cream. FAB is a woman-owned business that maximizes "skin health and resilience through efficacious, sensitive skin-friendly, problem-solving products that were also enjoyable to use and made with clean ingredients." Founder and CEO Lilli Gordon was inspired by her grandmother and her sisters who "epitomized natural beauty." The brand voice prefers authenticity and embracing oneself rather than hiding "flaws."
I created packaging that used some of the brand's elements but that also reflected the time period of her grandmother through a 2021 lens. Here's how I did it:
Moodboard
I created a moodboard that began with the current Ultra Repair Cream packaging.
Since Gordon's grandmother lived through what appears to be the 40's and 50's, I added images from the title cards in romantic movies from that time period.
I find that good music always helps get the creative gears turning, so I also listened to music by Blossom Dearie, Ella Fitzgerald, and definitely the McGuire Sisters.
Colors
The first thing I did was pick out colors from the Ultra Repair Cream jar, which mainly consisted of blues, reds, and grays. I brightened some of the colors and pulled an off-white to keep the branding a little soft and have a nice contrast to the bright red from the logo.
Typography
The type on the current packaging is very urgent. I wanted to capture that urgency but also modernize the type. So I chose Roc Grotesk for the name of the product and rounded out the corners a tad to make it a little less harsh on the eyes.
For the FAB logo, I wanted to use the star, a powerful brand symbol used often throughout its site and packaging, so I added it to the "i". I used Temeraire for "first aid" and Roc Grotesk for "beauty." It was important to retain the bright red in the logo, a nod to first aid.
Final thoughts...
This process is so much fun. I recommend anyone especially if you're looking to practice your Photoshop skills (like me) try it out. It's so important to think about brand identity, its tone and voice whether you're designing assets for an app, site, or for printed materials.