Decolonize the category. Reclaim the gaze.
Skincare conceptualized for a generation who shun borders and binaries
Project Services
- Strategy
- Branding
- Packaging
- Art Direction
- Digital
Harper
- Jeanne Bataille
- Jen Engevik
Creating a skincare line for Gen Z meant shifting the very category’s branding paradigm. Yes, the legacy of French cosmetic standards had to be accounted for. Yes, the Neue Minimal style that balayaged the 2010s had to be leveraged. But also, because this audience had more information – and opinions – at their fingertips than any before, the ethical baselines needed firm grounding.
When Harper co-founders decided to work with Otherness, it was to ensure their D2C startup could really speak to an, unapologetically, other generation.
These digital natives would demand a totally seamless experience between the products’ physical and online offerings. And being expert image editors themselves, they would expect all the visual language to index their own moral imperatives: intersectionality assumed, tokenism shunned, transparency nonnegotiable.
Liberation through layers
For Harper’s brand system, we made collage both the medium and the message.
Across digital and print, the mood board effect captures the 2019 zeitgeist in which the brand was conceived: a gritty optimism of radically hybridized sociocultural inclusivity pushing against conservative political mores and binary anything. Futurist headshots mix with vintage botanical illustrations. Bold colour blocks layer over textures of grainy print stock.
In black or white, the clean-lined typography signals clinical precision and purity. Yet, variations in the font’s weight express emotional range – that human inflection carries through every touchpoint, from product packaging and mailers to the website and social media squares. Wingdings weave in a utilitarian funkiness that collapses contemporary and retro sensibilities into one.
The aesthetic lens refocused
While many skincare companies evoke a faraway provenance – France, Australia, Korea – Harper wanted to embrace something closer to home. Theirs was not a Hollywood story, but a West Hollywood story, named for the WeHo avenue on which its co-founder lived.
Accordingly, the photo styling pursues a rougher aesthetic than cosmetics portraits of previous eras. We replaced the lab-white backdrops with late-afternoon sun-drenched skies and desert-adjacent landscapes. Models of varying genders and racial identities appear contemplative but committed to something deeper than being poreless or wrinkle-free.
Together, these palettes and personas refocus the lens through which skincare is viewed. Doing so, they decolonize the status quo of what beauty looks like and underscore that nothing is either-or but both-and-more.
