Ayurvedic Packaging
In my Junior year at Columbia, I was tasked with designing packaging for a beauty line. I was determined to create a “beauty” line which intended to be a healing product rather than a traditional beauty product.
As a rule, I believe women are beautiful without modification and products, and the beauty industry is a function of our male-dominated culture to keep women enslaved to consumerism, disempowered, and in self-judgement. And because I was designing this for me, this product would need to reflect my values – in minimalist “beauty”, holistic health, and bring Ayurveda into a modern American marketplace with humility, dignity and a less-is-more feel.
Packaging research for the category to identify niche — General Beauty
More packaging research — Ayurveda-Specific Beauty
Mockups
I sourced bottles to purchase later and recreated realistic vectorized mockups of the bottles in Illustrator (using actual dimensions) to test label designs.
Vector bottle designs, amber glass
I then rendered boxes and designed according to accurate dimensions for each bottle.
Iterations
Preliminary sketches to explore concepts
Further exploration of the concept
Box design
Solution
A “beauty” line designed around the constitutional types using colors and ingredients for each dosha which are known to be balancing and therapeautic for each type. Lotion, shampoo, and face wash packaging were designed with attention to including natural botanicals appropriate for a dosha’s individual skin type, moisture level, and needs.
What I Learned
It was a fun challenge to try to bring a design through to so many applications, different bottle sizes and boxes.
I learned about presentation in this project, since it was so heavily about creating an atmosphere around something simple based on my approach. Presentation of the packaging, taking the product photos and working with them in post-production in Photoshop or retouching them were all things which I learned during this assignment, and know I will improve on in a professional environment with adequate equipment and resources.
