Thirty-three percent of consumers say they are more likely to reject a product or brand if they don’t like the look of the label.
That’s proof that design matters and companies need to start doing more to invest in packaging and design to ensure they’re making the right impressions on their target audience.
Products have to look good — so package design needs to be made a major priority.
When it comes to looking good, most people turn to cosmetics to give themselves a facelift. From makeup to skincare to perfume, cosmetics have a way of transforming your looks — on the inside and on the outside.
In 2016, the U.S. market for beauty and personal care products was valued at $84 billion. Those numbers make America the most valuable market for beauty and cosmetics products and brands. This market grew four percent in a year, and trends show this continuing upward shift.
But with the dozens of cosmetic brands available today, it can get exhausting sifting through the masses to find the brand that works best for you. Of course, there are certain aspects that call to you — if products were tested on animals, if they’re made from all-natural ingredients and if they have the benefits that your skin demands.
But on a basic level, what can really help you decide on a brand is the packaging.
Package design can work to elicit a certain type of emotion within you. It can make you happy or sad, energized or peaceful. Package design has a profound impact on your mindset and emotions, and package designs know how to push your buttons to get the reaction they want.
Cosmetic packaging is no different. And these 12 cosmetic package designs steal the show.
12 Cosmetic Package Designs That’ll Change The Way You Look At Makeup
1. Glossier
Glossier's packaging is sleek, clean and minimal. Glossier was one of the first to jump on the minimalist bandwagon, and they've been rocking it ever since. These simple, subtle and stunning designs are visually-pleasing and serene.
These cosmetics consist of an extreme amount of white space and solid, simple and black typography. There's a shine that catches the eye and a brightness that pulls you in and keeps you wanting more.
Simple lines, bright colors and a cleanness to the overall organization are all key aspects of minimalist design. And these Glossier designs embody these qualities in a stunning display of visual elegance and clarity.
Simplicity in cosmetic design has been a growing trend lately, with many other brands like CoverGirl and Milk capitalizing on these design trends. With elements like clean, white backgrounds, solid and simple typography and subtle shines, this package design is a real winner.
2. Nars X Christopher Kane
This psychedelic cosmetic packaging is sure to turn heads.
Nars is known as an industry leader in makeup and skincare products, with products and solutions that make a statement and leave an impression. But this team up led to a packaging that is almost more beautiful than the makeup held within.
Nars is a dark and moody brand, but this line has an edge and playfulness to it that makes an impact.
Dark, black packaging pairs beautifully with a holographic design of bright reds, greens, blues and purples. It moves with your gaze as it falls over the packaging. It's bright and bold and extremely seductive.
The signature Nars logo lies on this design in stark white contrast to the color that shines and glitters like gold.
This simple, minimalistic design has an edge to it that helps elevate it from the competition. It's colorful yet moody, with a dark and mysterious personality that refuses to be ignored.
3. Milk
Milk's futuristic package design is bold and in your face. This brand uses a bright, eye-catching silver color that shines for most of its packaging. This, plus a bold, white sans-serif typography make for a cosmetic package design that is as beautiful on the outside as it is on the inside.
Milk keeps its design simple and minimal. Whether selling a lipstick or a face mask. The packaging and its design remain consistent. This brand makes heavy use of white space, clean typography and minimal text to create a makeup line that lets you decide how to use it.
If you're looking for a makeup brand that knows what it's doing and doesn't go overboard with its design, Milk is the brand for you. This packaging is an exciting display of how minimalism can make an impact, and turn an otherwise simple product into one that could be seen in a display case.
4. Benefit
Benefit is a funky cosmetic brand that specializes in eye makeup -- from mascara to brow kits, Benefit knows its niche.
To stand out from the crowd, Benefit went with a design that's inspired heavily be vintage influences. Pinup girls line most of the products, cute and intricate drawing of beautiful, happy-go-lucky women straight out of the 1920s. This imagery is extremely engaging and adds a playful edge to the design as a whole.
This brand also takes advantage of bright and exciting colors. Pinks and whites and silvers are the main colors used here, either working as a background color, as an accent or in the typography.
These designs really pop -- because of the imagery, because of the vintage vibes and because of the enthusiastic use of color. These designs are unique, calming and beautiful. And they keep this theme consistent across all of their packaging. It's obviously much easier to tell a story on a tin or box than it is on a tube of mascara, but Benefit is able to weave this story and these characters across all of its product offerings to align itself as a brand that is fun, cool and in touch with the times.
5. Mor
This package design by Mor is sophisticated and stunning. Soft pinks and subtle whites make up the backdrop for the works of art that line these boxes, perfume bottles, lip balms and lotions.
Mor went a more traditional route with its package design, opting for luxury and refinement in its imagery, logo design and color choice. The Mor logo stands strong on all of its products -- with a large M written in fancy, curly font and made up of a regal gold color. This M is then surrounded by a golden wreath that exudes class and splendor.
For many of its products, this is the only imagery included, set against a pink background that gives off a very feminine vibe. But its other packaging includes some more intricate design elements that stand the test of time.
A floral theme is definitely present here, whether we're talking about the logo design, or the packaging itself. A floral pattern and design are included on many of the products, with deep greens, soft purples and subtle pinks adding a depth and an earthy quality to the packaging. These flowers are gorgeous and really heighten this design by adding another layer of majesty to it.
These package designs are gorgeous and splendid. They don't even look like cosmetics, and that's the point.
6. Kjaer Weis
Kjaer Weis went the modern route with its package design, playing with shape and material to create a cosmetic line that looks different than everybody else.
Kjaer Weis has a full line of products, from blushes and foundations to lipstick. But what makes these so interesting is the consistency in its design. All of Kjaer Weis's products are made in a minimal fashion, with little text and little imagery to speak of. The one element that ties them all together is the logo which is sleek, cool and sophisticated.
The wordmark is embossed into the metal of the packaging, but adjacent to it is the big, bold and in your face logo. This monogram is also embedded in the metal, though the letters aren't embossed in their entirety. Kjaer Weis uses geometric shapes and patterns to create an abstract monogram that stands out for its unique shape and the white color that makes it up.
This simple, yet modern design is immediately engaging.
The shape of the packaging is also unique. A metal tin holds the product in a square shape, with one of the corners cut off giving it a very edgy feel. And the way this product opens is also unique. It's not your traditional blush, where you open it like an oyster. Instead, you can slide the cover up, making this look like an old school lighter or something edgy like that.
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7. Lapierre
This design is dark, moody and mysterious. It's a seductive design that makes use of blacks, golds, and silvers to get you in the mood.
These products were created with a date night in mind, as they look like the kind of products that seduce. Black is the main color used in this design, a matte black that sucks you in and keeps you interested.
The logo stands at attention, a tiny, modern logo written in a rich gold font. Two lowercase Ps make up the logo, both facing in opposite directions. Between them stands a golden line that keeps the two apart.
It's simple. It's mysterious. It's alluring.
Many designs just capitalize on this rich gold and deep black, but some also include a geometric design with shapes cut out and embedded within the packaging. This adds depth and texture to these designs that urges you to reach out and grab them.
This packaging makes it clear that it wants you to get involved and participate.
8. When Masks
These When face masks make wearing silly face masks an even more fun time -- whether you're having a spa day with friends or by yourself, these colorful packages will give you something to look forward to.
When takes a colorful and simple look at package design for these cosmetics. The individual masks are wrapped in colorful and bright packaging -- purples, blues, greens, oranges, and pinks are just a few of the vivid colors that work to make a statement with these designs.
Instead of using color to add an exciting accent, these colors make up the entire background, with the quirky When logo in a complementary color. The shape of this logo is also a fun one. It's just a simple wordmark, ina lowercase sans-serif font. But the H in the design reaches up towards the top of the design, and the N reaches down to the bottom. It's a unique and silly way to play with typography to create an eye-catching design.
In white, plain font there is additional copy underneath the logo further explaining the face mask and its purpose. A minimalistic clock design tells users how long to wear the mask as well.
This is a subtly simple, yet interactive and enthusiastic design that certainly stands out on the shelves.
The design doesn't stop there though. These face masks are packaged in modern, clean white little boxes. The logo stands the same, only on these boxes they are written in a shiny silver font. There's a cutout on the sides of this box that add a pop of color that matches the packaging within. And a colorful image sits on the box to add a playfulness and a friendly approachability.
9. ColourPop
ColourPop walks the line between modern and minimalistic, and elegant and dreamy. Whether looking at their eyeshadow color palettes or their lipstick, there's a regalness and a flirty quality to these product designs.
Colourpop plays with color and imagery in each of its products packagings. Some use creamy and fluid matte colors and enchanting designs. Others add an exciting sparkly and a glitz and glam. Others are simple, straightforward and minimalistic.
There's a lot of variety here, which sometimes can seem distracting or offer a disjointed brand identity. But with ColourPop, it just works.
Each package has its own identity and theme. Each package, just like each product, is supposed to get you into a different mindset. Some products are created for a night out on the town. Some are created for a subtle and simple morning in. These products do a great job at selling their own stories, and they use unique and personalized designs to get these ideas out there.
It's a creative take on package design, giving each product its own identity -- the only thing holding these products together being the bold, sans-serif typography and ColourPop wordmark. But this brand rocks it.
10. Space Age
Celebrating individual beauty and female empowerment, Space Age makeup is a concept that sparks a conversation. These bold and beautiful designs were created for the sole purpose of compelling women to take the concept of beauty and turn it on its head to fit their own needs.
Stunning designs and imagery make up this packaging. Retro images, abstract characters and vivid splashes of color line these palettes and lipsticks. They're bright and exciting and clean. This brand has a personality and a purpose, and it's reflected in these designs.
These designs deliver a powerful punch with the fluidity of these colors that seem to move and adapt before your very eyes. The abstract quality of this packaging further emphasizes the subjectivity of beauty, and the message this brand is encouraging women to hold onto.
These cosmetic package designs are unique and urge users to understand their own uniqueness and make the most of it. Bright colors, bold typography, and a clean backdrop line this makeup, and is bound to make you feel more beautiful than you've ever felt before.
11. Miller Harris Tender
Miller Harris went for the wow factor in its latest perfume packaging. Instead of going for subtle, soft and elegant, Miller Harris went for bright and bold and abstract.
These perfume boxes are made up first with a clean, matte background. They come in either white or black. But they're soft and mysterious and alluring. At the bottom, you have a kind of abstract painted quality that looks like wet paint. Lines fall up the designs, looking like wet paint falling down a wall -- only in this design, it's falling upwards.
The design that lines the bottom of this box is abstract but has a floral quality to it that makes it look like a multicolored flower. Pinks, blues, reds, greens, oranges and white make up this unique and eye-catching design.
It's stunning and bright and beautiful. And this colorfully playful design is mimicked within the box as well.
You don't want to look away -- you almost don't even want to open this box and take out the bottle of perfume.
12. Rael Face Masks
Fresh, clean and bright -- those are a few words used to describe these face masks, both in their usage and in their design. These soft and sweet boxes hold within them face masks that purify, and the designs give off the quality as well through its use of pastel colors, floral imagery and simple text.
Pastel colors make up the background of these package designs. It's a soft, matte color that adds depth and further emphasizes softness.
A letter makes up the main design, depending on the ingredients within. And these letters aren't just plastered on the boxes. No, they are created in a floral fashion, taking on the identity of vines and flowers with fruit hanging off of them.
These designs are subtle and gorgeous.
There is additional copy on these boxes, but it is small and simple. Thin, sans-serif copy gives further explanation about the masks and what they can accomplish. And this simplicity adds an elegance that can't be ignored.
How Cosmetic Package Designs Are Changing The Look And Feel Of The Cosmetic Industry
The cosmetic industry has ebbed and flowed in recent years, transforming itself from a product used to hide and conceal, to a product that aims to highlight your inner beauty and grace.
Cosmetic packaging has followed this trend, becoming more open, clean and consumer-focused. Cosmetic brands are changing their identity to be the products consumers are demanding — products that come from a good place and have a healthy purpose.
These 12 cosmetic package designs highlight existing as well as emerging trends in the beauty industry. They are fun, clean and colorful. They are minimalistic and vintage. They are exciting, simple and magnificence.
These brands strike the perfect balance of sophisticated and quirky, and many competitors are trying to emulate their successes.
If you’re looking for even more design inspiration, look no further than these stunning package designs on DesignRush. Plus, we've got plenty of incredible packaging agencies that can create a product your consumers will covet!
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