AKIND
NAMING | BRAND IDENTITy | PACKAGING DESIGN | BRAND LANGUAGE | BRAND STRATEGY PARTNERS: MATTERFOX CONSULTING
The skincare category is overflowing with advice. Brands, influencers, experts all prescribing elaborate routines multiple times a day, often with conflicting opinions on seemingly everything. We’ve been told that natural is better than chemical, that science based actives are more potent than home remedies, been sold skin actives in their purest form for highest potency but also blends of multiple actives for highest efficacy. In a landscape where words like niacinamide and hyaluronic and alpha-hydroxy acid have become common language, it’s no wonder that the average person gets overwhelmed with choices and information.
The core idea of Akind as a brand came as a response to this overwhelming chaos and noise, building on the idea that your skin knows best what it needs to be the healthiest version of itself. We recognise that each of us is one-of-a-kind and we encourage you to explore, learn and evolve your own skin routine. To keep the overwhelming noise of trends & unsolicited skincare advice aside and listen to your skin asking you to be kind to it.
CREATING A BRAND PERSONAlITY
Our brand personality comes from our beauty philosophy. As a brand, we lean into the innocent explorer archetype, going on a journey of exploring your skin’s changing moods while letting it breathe through gentle products that rebuild the skin barrier.
Akind is confident, happy, warm, and optimistic. Knowledgable but not preachy. A friend, not a doctor.
SURVEYING THE CATEGORY
Before we started design, we first took a look at what was existing in the Indian skincare category, and found that not only was there an abundance of bright colours in our category, this also did not align with our brand’s personality. We also found that muted colours had not been done before and worked beautifully with the message our brand was trying to tell.
THE DESIGN EVOLUTION
We felt our packaging should reflect our minimal approach to skincare. Although minimalism is much sought after and was the obvious choice to go with, we knew it ran the risk of being unmemorable in our category. To avoid this, we decided to stick with muted colours but rely on typography and introduce a graphic device to set us apart.
Keeping this in mind, we explored multiple directions, each indexing on one of our brand pillars, but always staying true to an external expression of one’s inner monologue.
BRAND IDENTITY & PACKAGING
Our logo is inspired by a sense of individuality and being true to oneself. There is a calligraphic touch to the ‘a’ in akind, setting it apart from the rest of the wordmark. Calligraphy as an art form is individualistic because it is deeply influenced by personal style, creativity, and expression. Our monogram uses the distinctive ‘a’ from the primary logo, creating a deeper connection to the brand name. Our stamp conveys two key aspects of the brand at a glance: our product proposition (Barrier Building Beauty), and our brand idea (Listen to your skin).
The various logo lockups.
CREATING CATEGORIES
For product classification, we decided to take a benefit driven route and categorise products based on what they did for the skin’s barrier. We came up with three categories: Barrier Build, Barrier Balance, and Barrier Defense, and created icons to go with each one. Our brand colour palette was also built around these categories.
Typography and negative space are the key aspects of our packaging - tying back to our philosophy of looking inward and listening to your skin.
TYPOGRAPHY, ICONOGRAPHY, and pattern
To further channel the concept of listening deeper and drowining out the noise, we developed a type style that uses italics for the majority of text but all caps for the important parts of any paragraph, encouraging viewers to look for and find what matters.
The calligraphic element of our logo was reinforced in our icon style, using a stroke that looked like they were done with a cut-nib pen.
The icons were all hand drawn digitally to bring in the human aspect of the brand.
We also used all of our visual elements to create a repeating pattern made up of a base tile that includes elements of our logo, our text style and messaging as well as a few illustrations. This is to be used on a variety of applications such as the inside of packaging boxes, on tissue paper, as backdrops, etc.
Above: The brand side of pack uses calming imagery that depicts moments of quiet reflection and uses scattered bits of text to convey our brand philosophy.
Above: The front of pack heroes our text style with a paragraph of text explaining the benefits of the product up front and center.
Above: The product side of pack mentions a list of key ingredients and also uses the diagonal line from our logo to show where each product fits into a skincare routine.
Communication LOOK and feel
Akind is an approachable brand where women can talk about everything they feel- even if it’s not directly related to skincare. We wanted our communication as a brand to be aspirational but not unattainable: for our imagery to retain a warm, welcoming look while inspiring people to be an elevated version of their authentic self.
We extended the diagonal line from our logo and used it in multiple ways - both as a stroke and a fill. We created multiple buckets of posts - educative, informative, and evocative for an overall look that gave out the information we wanted to convey without being too pushy or loud.
