alive+well

If there’s one thing the world doesn’t need, it’s another skincare brand. The skincare category in India and across the globe is rampant with new brands popping up every single day, each promising a solution to a problem that doesn’t really exist.

In a category run by trends, skincare brand Alive + Well was struggling to find its own identity to separate from the sea of brands taking over. Started by the expert dermats behind Alive Wellness clinics, Alive + Well’s approach to skincare is one that focuses on holistic wellness over quick fixes that disappear with the next trend cycle. They’d perfected their formulations, locked down their distribution, but the one challenge they were facing – how do they make their visual identity reflect their thought, while looking differentiated on the shelf since they were primarily selling offline?

That’s where we came in. We worked closely with the founders to understand their vision over multiple discovery sessions, and then got down to our research and strategy. We surveyed over 50 Tier 1 and 2 skincare buyers and their ex-customers, to understand their perceptions of skincare brands in the market. We did a deep analysis of the cultural shifts and categorical changes in the skincare industry, before arriving at our brand strategy that flipped the switch for skincare, owning the narrative of ‘skin-well’ over skin-care.

From there, we got down to creating a visual identity that was as disruptive on the shelf as it was true to our brand strategy. Rather than taking a sedate, clichéd approach to wellness, we looked at modern day wellness cues and included journaling doodles as our hero brand element, and soft pastels in our colour palette, injecting fresh life into what one thinks of when one thinks of wellness. We kept our wordmark bold and minimal, a nod to the founders’ clinical history, and created an ambigram mnemonic for A+W, our very own balancing act, which became an iconic, versatile brand element for them to play with.

Our visual identity then translated into packaging, to truly make the product stand out on a skincare shelf. Energetic and approachable. Interesting and soft. With as much emphasis on the ‘alive’ as the ‘well’.