Maeli Naturecare is a start-up that develops highly concentrated luxury skincare made of only natural and organic ingredients.

The goal was to create a more professional, elegant, and overall elevated look for their brand in order to align the high quality of their products with their brand visuals.

Brand Redesign

The first thing I did was create a new brand strategy and identity for Maeli based on their target audience, their goals, and mission & vision.

Web Development

After that, I worked on the new website. I created user journeys and user experiences based on the brand strategy I had created before and used Adobe XD to build wireframes and the final prototypes. To build the website I used WordPress with a fully customizable theme called Divi and added custom CSS.

Packaging Design & Photography

With the new corporate identity, I designed the new labels for the new and the existing products. Since my client had a product launch planned, we started with the new products. I also did all the photography for the products as well as lifestyle pictures for Instagram and marketing purposes.

CREATIVE PROCESS

Branding

The two founders contacted me because they wanted a more professional, elegant, and overall elevated look for their brand in order to align the high quality of their products with their brand visuals. We kept the butterfly icon because it represents beauty, feminity, renewal, and transformation.

01 Discovery

First I started to ask my client to fill out an in-depth questionnaire about their brand, goals, problems and target audience. We talked everything through in a zoom call to clarify any questions.

02 Research

After gaining all the information from my client, I then started to research for myself. I looked into the target audience, how to position the brand in the market and who the competition is.

03 Brand Strategy

Once I found all the information that I needed, I created the brand strategy for Maeli including mission, vision, target audience, competition, messaging and the first ideas for a visual direction.

04 Design

After getting the approval for the brand strategy from my client, I started to create possible concepts for the brand and developed the final logo sets and brand guidelines.

Logo Breakdown

Since a lot of natural skincare brands are using sans serif fonts (like the brands Junglück, I+M, Aveda, Lush for example) or handwritten/natural looking fonts that look a little more infantile and that can be found in the drugstore a lot (brands like Weleda, Sante, Lavera etc.) we wanted to take a different route to stand out from the crowd and to emphasize the high-quality of the products. Therefore, I chose a serif font that is sophisticated, chic, elegant and draws the connection to nature and the organic ingredients of the products by making use of the art nouveau style especially in the “a” and the “e”.

For the icon I wanted to create something that is strong on its own and that communicates high quality, trust, femininity and beauty. I chose the shape of an emblem to express just that plus tradition (trust) and reliability.

I also made sure to incorporate organic shapes and movement even in the sans serif font I chose for subheadings and body text (as seen in the “R”)

The Process

Final Brand Identity

Illustrations that embody nature in general

Illustrations that embody femininity

Illustrations that embody the ingredients

Website

Before

screencapture-maeli-naturecare-de-2021-08-04-13_48_33-Kopie

After

screencapture-maeli-naturecare-de-2021-09-30-21_00_11-Kopie

CREATIVE PROCESS

Website

The primary goal of the website was to sell the products. The secondary goal was to create an informational platform for people who want to learn more about skincare and make it feel personal and professional at the same time.

01 Wireframes

To figure out the overall structure and placement of information I drew a lot of wireframes with pen and paper (I like it that way the most because I don’t focus too much on making it perfect and rather focus on the content).

02 User Journey

While creating the wireframes, I started to think about possible user journeys and how the potential customer would navigate through the website and what questions could come up along the way.

03 Prototype

I used Adobe XD for prototyping the website and making it come to life and also to present it to my clients. During this process, I transfer my final wireframes to the program and use the brand colors and fonts to create a cohesive website.

04 Building the site

After everything got approved by my client, I started the building process with WordPress. Together with my brother who is a software developer (very practical!) I added over 100 lines of custom CSS.