Nivea, through extensive research, had noticed that young women in India preferred to use home remedies and known ingredients for all their beauty needs. However, while they had the knowledge and proclivity, what they lacked was the time – to source ingredients, develop recipes and finally apply the product.

When we dug deeper into the consumer, we noticed that Indian women aged 18-30 had specific skin care routines. While these regimens varied from one consumer to the next, each was firmly based on the user’s skin type. We noticed a stark difference between ingredients used depending on whether the consumer had dry skin, oily skin, sensitive skin and so on. This was an important element almost unique to the Indian consumer and had to be taken into consideration when designing the final product.

We dove into the design process by looking at the shape of the bottle and developing an information hierarchy that clearly conveyed the usage of each product.

As this was the first time Nivea was launching a milk-based facewash in India, we created distinct typefaces for ‘FACEWASH’ and ‘MILK DELIGHTS’ and placed them clearly on the label. As part of our communication, we had to ensure that the skin type the product suited was also clearly visible and the resulting effect of the product stood out.

The white colour and shape of the bottle was also something we leveraged through our designs. By adding gradients and splashes of colour, we successfully highlighted the ingredients used in the product as well as brought out the fluidity and viscosity of the milk – the core element in the product line.

We now wanted to bring out Nivea’s core positioning which is that every product cares for the consumer, and to shine the spotlight on home remedies. To bring these thoughts together, we used the splash of milk as a cradle for the core ingredient, just as a mother cares for her child, and Nivea cares for you.

Our final challenge was to play with the colour of each product’s bottle cap. After exploring multiple options based on the ingredients, we chose to stay true to Nivea’s brand language and go back to the traditional blue caps that are symbolic with Nivea’s products worldwide.

Today, Nivea Milk Delights, with our clean, bold and evocative designs have flooded brick and mortar stores as well as e-commerce platforms across India.

To create a gift box that pushed Nivea to go beyond the traditional blue in order to create something that stood out and was relevant for their target audience.

The first thing that comes to most peoples’ mind when they think of Nivea is “daily essentials”, not gifting. That’s where we came in. Our job was to design a Nivea gift box for women that people would want to give to their loved ones over the festive season.

The insight that most excited us about a gift box was the feeling of joy you get when you unwrap a gift and that’s the feeling we knew we needed to translate into this gift box. In order to create this feeling, we decided to not only design the outside of the box, but to actually engineer the box from scratch to get the impact we wanted.

Engineering a box from scratch came with its own set of challenges; it had to be beautiful, but it also had to be practical, strong and sturdy enough to survive transport and stacking on shop shelves. We explored multiple directions before finally settling on the design for a box that would open like a flower to reveal the Nivea products inside. The flower was a perfect representation of the beauty we were looking to create and the soft touch of care that lies at the core of Nivea, the brand. The cherry on top, was adding a sign-off that said “With love” leaving a blank space for the person gifting the box to handwrite their own names. Thereby adding their own personal touch to the gift box.

A lot of thought and research went into choosing the right colours for the gift boxes. We made a conscious effort to not use Nivea’s traditional blue and chose instead to use a deeper, more mature red for women in their 30s or older; and a bright pop of teal for the younger women.The geometric pattern on the outside of the box represents a burst of light, the centre of all festivities filled with brightness and joy in India.

At the end of all our research and design, we successfully managed to break away from Nivea’s traditional outlook to create a box that was brighter, more emotional and definitely more gift-worthy.

We proposed two colours for the gift boxes for women. We assigned a deeper, mature red to the box for women aged 30 and above and a bright, popping teal for younger women. In addition to being aesthetic, the box had to be strong and sturdy to survive transport and stacking on shelves.