Brand Identity

Cream of the Crop

Identity and label system for a vegan skincare startup, built up from a home formulation.

Cream of the Crop

2015 — 2019

Built

They already had

The skill

Years of being good at one thing, and nothing built around it yet.

We built

The structure

Decide, Build, Live. Three stages, three payments, and they could stop after any of them.

So they reached

Their customer

Someone who can tell in four seconds that this is for them — and buys.

Before any of it

The brief

Who they are, what they do for a living, and what was standing in the way. Every engagement starts with someone who is already good at something and has nothing built around it yet.

“The product's whole claim was that you could pronounce every ingredient. The label had to look like that was true.”

Cream of the Crop product range and packaging

Stage one · after the first call

Decide

Who it is for and who it is not for. What they sell, in one sentence a customer can repeat. The name, what they charge, and what this brand will never do. No design happens in this stage — that is deliberate, and it is why everything after it holds together.

They left this stage with one sentence and a short written positioning note. If nothing else had followed, that would still have been the most useful thing.

Stage two · after Decide is signed off

Build

The sentence gets a face. The mark in every format they will need, colour and type with real values written down, the way they talk about it, the first real pieces, and a short set of rules so it stays consistent once someone else is applying it. Everything here comes out of what was decided, not out of what looked nice.

They left this stage with a complete brand kit — the first time they saw their own thing finished.

Stage three · opening day

Live

Everything switched on and running in their name — the site, the social accounts, the listings, the print files, and templates for the things they make every week. After this the brand is open for business.

They left this stage with a business that is open, consistent everywhere, and theirs to run without us in the room.

Still stage three

What a customer changed

The brand is out in the world now, so customers start telling you things. This is the one they told us, and what we did about it.

After the three stages

What it became

One decision, and everything that grew out of it.

The same three stages are open to you

This can be your brand.

Same order, same three stages, and the same thing in your hands at the end of each one — a business a customer can find, understand and buy from. Start with Decide: one sentence and a short written positioning note. You can stop right there if that is all you need.

Not sure which stage you need? The free check takes four minutes and will tell you.

Start with Decide → Take the free check

About the project

Who. A shopper reading an ingredient list in a crowded skincare aisle, deciding in about four seconds whether a small brand is credible.

What. The product's entire claim was purity — formulations built from fruit and vegetables, nothing you couldn't pronounce. The problem is that purity is the most crowded claim in beauty. Every competitor says it. The brand needed the claim to be visible before a word was read.

How. Colour taken directly from the ingredients rather than from a trend palette, so the shelf did the arguing. Typography set for legibility on small curved surfaces. Then a label system rather than a set of labels — one hierarchy that holds whether the product name is two words or six, so the line could grow without a redesign.

Outcome. Identity, colour, typography and packaging-ready artwork delivered as one system, built to extend across a full skincare range.

A formulation made at a kitchen table — skincare built from fruit and vegetables, nothing in it you could not pronounce. The claim was purity, and purity is the most crowded claim in beauty. Every competitor says it, so saying it louder was not an option.

What got settled first was the shopper: someone reading an ingredient list in a crowded aisle, deciding in about four seconds whether a small brand is credible. That four seconds is before a word is read, which meant the claim had to be visible rather than written.

Result: A position that could not be copied by wording — the purity had to be seen, not stated.

Colour taken directly from the ingredients rather than from a trend palette, so the shelf did the arguing before the copy did. Typography set for legibility on small curved surfaces, which is where most small-brand labels fail.

Then a label system rather than a set of labels — one hierarchy that holds whether the product name is two words or six, so the range could grow without a redesign every time something was added.

Result: Identity, colour and typography delivered as one system rather than a single product's artwork.

Packaging-ready artwork delivered to production spec, with a print specification written for the label vendor rather than for a designer.

Result: A formulation made at home arrived on a shelf looking like something a shopper would trust in four seconds.

Ingredient-led colour research rather than a trend palette

Legibility testing on small curved surfaces before the label was signed off

Hierarchy built to hold product names from two words to six

Packaging-ready artwork delivered to production spec

Print specification written for the label vendor

What customers said

Reviews

“The product's whole claim was that you could pronounce every ingredient. The label had to look like that was true.”

Results

Identity, colour system and typography built for a full skincare line rather than a single product.
Label system designed to scale across formats without redrawing the hierarchy each time.
Packaging-ready artwork delivered to production spec.

Client

Cream of the Crop

Discipline

Brand Identity

Timeline

2015 — 2019

Position

Built