umbra beauty
Umbra Beauty is a clean makeup brand that highlights night-blooming flowers as the main skin-boosting ingredients. Umbra Beauty’s makeup products do the work, so you don’t have to, lasting day until night. Wherever and whenever, Umbra Beauty strives to allow you to feel and look your absolute best. I wanted to create a very elegant brand visually to reflect these values.
Details
Instructor: Soonduk Krebs
Student Work, Tyler School of Art & Architecture
Elements
Branding, Packaging, Layout, UI/UX
I aimed to create a beauty brand that differed from most current clean beauty brands, highlighting creativity and longevity. While most clean brands like to stick to the light, minimalist look, I wanted to explore something darker and more expressive. Being able to express yourself is something I value in makeup, and I didn’t want to sacrifice that with my branding.
Reframing the Problem
Research: To kickstart this project, I researched already existing makeup brands. The ones that I looked at were Fenty Beauty, Milk Makeup, and Urban Decay. These brands stuck out to me because they have strong branding. I wanted to see the range of products most makeup lines utilized and how they branded their products. Another selling point that I wanted, alongside clean ingredients, is that I wanted my brand to stand out. After researching, I came upon night-blooming flowers. I thought they would be perfect as the flowers mirrored what I felt was important about makeup: it should make the wearer bloom in confidence and happiness. This inspired my brand’s tagline: Bloom into the night.
My Process
My moodboard into looking at cohesive makeup brands
Naming: Finding the right name was important for setting the mood of this brand. I didn’t want to have a super wordy name since that’s uncommon in the beauty industry, so I focused on finding a name that sounded sleek. I specifically looked for words that meant dark or shadow in different languages since they fit the night theme. After choosing “Umbra,” which means shade or shadow in Latin,
I sketched out different ways to turn it into a logo. For the logo to be more than just a work mark typeface, I subtly added a flower element further to push the idea of a clean, plant-based brand. Flower illustrations were also created that would go on to use in the rest of my branding while exploring illustrations for my logo.
Products: The project started with the makeup products, with the foundation being the first designed. A goal of the design of the products was to create a feeling of luxury, something I am often attracted to. I explored a lot of different color palettes while designing the products. However, I ended up sticking with a deep dark purple with dusty blues and lavenders.
The foundation box set the brand's tone: dark, mysterious, and alluring. While I knew that I wouldn’t be able to create all the products that I wanted to, I still wanted to make sure that there was a product for each part of the face: skin, eyes, and lips. A foundation, an eyeshadow palette, mascara, and lipstick complete Umbra’s beauty line.
Print pieces were also made, as I needed to think about what this brand would look like outside of the products.I made a set of promotional posters that would hang outside of makeup stores like Sephora or Ulta.
Each poster displays one makeup product from the line. A gift card was also created, with a sleeve, something more luxurious than a simple gift card. I was challenged to think outside the box and elevate the customer experience.
A brand book was developed, pinning down the color palette, typography, illustrations, and other patterns that would be used throughout the brand. The brand book and the website were the most complex part of this project. While it was easier for me to capture the elegance of Umbra Beauty on the products themselves, translating it onto the website was a challenge.
I navigated this by reflecting on the design choices I made on the packaging onto the brand book and website, whether through type, color, or other design elements. I wanted to ensure that Umbra’s branding was thorough and conveyed a mature yet lively vibe.
The website was an essential part of the branding, as a virtual space for Umbra and its products to exist. It also serves as a place where customers can purchase Umbra Beauty and read about the brand, no matter where they are.
This project taught me a lot about building a brand and especially how to build a cohesive one. It also let me explore my love for beauty and learn more about what it takes to design makeup products. Incorporating UI/UX into branding was also something that I got to tackle. With more time I would love to expand a create more items.