What is the unique selling point of Herbivore Botanicals?
Herbivore is a skincare and cosmetics brand that only use vegan, natural and ethically sourced ingredients. They don't use any fillers, meaning that almost every ingredient is an 'active' ingredient. Which makes their products highly concentrated and effective. They use plant-based food-grade cold-pressed oils, steam distilled therapeutic-grade essential oils, GMO free soy wax and their packaging is recyclable and reusable!
Herbivore really got my attention with their minimalist, yet colorful, design. So I wanted to take a closer look at it! I made all these images to try to showcase their lovely designs.
How does design reinforce their brand identity?
As they state themselves they have 'thoughtfully designed packaging and labels that really allow our ingredients to shine through'. Their packaging design is very minimalist, simple shapes with white lids and labels that really make the color of the contents really stand out. Instead of using color in their design they showcase that the most important thing is the ingredients.
How simplicity can convey honesty
Their labels are just white with a black text in a simple sans serif font. The text has wide spacing and they leave a lot of blank space. They are not hiding anything, they don't try to show images of the ingredients, because they are all in the bottle. With how many cosmetics and skincare have long ingredient lists and barely contains they star ingredient they are marketing it having, this simple transparent design feels very refreshing.
Monochrome Colors
Herbivore often uses backgrounds in the same color as the product, since the labels are white they still stand out and are very visible. They cleverly use color to differentiate between different product lines. They use soft pastel shades of lavender, pink, green, blue and yellow.
What have I learned from this?
Their designs are minimalist, clean and perfectly in line with their values as a brand. I think I need to remember to leave more blank spaces in my design and that using neutrals like black and white will make the colors I do use stand out a lot more. I love using colors but I think it can be a bit too much sometimes and get lost in all the other colors. Using visual hierarchy is important and a great way of drawing focus to use color in an otherwise black and white design.
Thanks for reading!
//Jennifer Carlsson
