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.

Ananda was looking to expand into retail with their existing range of oils, creams, scrubs, lotions and hair products that were currently only used in their spa. Our objective was to create a design and packaging structure that could be extended into B2C retail and into their line of products.

Ananda as a brand emphasises being at one with nature, promotes ancient Indian practices (through the concept of chakras) and takes you back to when holistic living was a way of life. However, we soon noticed that while chakras evoke emotion and make consumers feel a certain way, what draws a consumer to a cosmetic product is its texture and the way it feels when interacted with.

We therefore used varying textures and colours based on the product and its function – softer colours and textures were used for moisturisers, while scrubs had a deeper, rougher texture on their packaging.

Since we didn’t want to do away with Ananda’s focus on chakras, we decided to extend the number of chakras we highlighted from 4 to 7, to associate each product category to a specific emotion, scent and ingredient.

We also had to ensure that our packaging and design encouraged consumers to purchase treatment packages and not just individual products. To accomplish this, we added numbers to each product and product package, making them more relatable, giving them a more youthful feel and also assisting in the purchase of treatment packages.

To tie it all together, on the inside cover of the packaging, we verbally communicated how each chakra should make the user feel. This brought in an element of physical interaction with the product, that gave consumers an added sense of positivity and made them feel like they were being taken care of.

We were finally left with an amalgamation of elements that were visually engaging, in line with the brand’s ethos and told our story effectively.

We were tired of seeing brands that talk to either men or women. We wanted a brand that spoke to both. It only made sense to bring the two genetic chromosomes together as a name for the brand.

Because we wanted people to ask just that. It builds curiosity. You have to admit you were wondering that yourself.

We started designing prints, styles, playing with colours, the works. We had to get off our computers and go into factories to understand which colours run, which prints can be printed, what was the most cost effective method of using colour and print. We’re not fashion designers, so this brand was a whole new world for us. We had to unlearn and relearn a lot in order to design for XYXX.

Online. That meant we also had to design a digital presence for them. Here too, we pushed those boundaries. We built the site based on how the customers buy, based on styles of underwear. The fit is what drives purchase and where the web journey starts.

Everything! But before we get into that, we realised two things about customers who shop online:

1. They normally shop at work.

2. They use their work address as a delivery address because (unfortunately) that’s where they spend most of their time.

Now we all know that nobody wants people to know that they’re getting their underwear delivered to work. So we decided to create packaging that looks like everything else except underwear. We used coffee tins, shuttle cork boxes and everything else we could find to make the most interesting, reusable and discreet packaging.

Branding the band is a big deal in the underwear industry. We looked at them all, from the CKs to the Jockeys to the DKNYs and we decided to play somewhere where nobody else was… in between Calvin Klein and everyone else. We found our 2-inch comfort and style factor made people curious to see what the rest of it looks like.

Curiosity killed the cat. Not us.

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.