Design trends: What’s the latest in Asian beauty packaging?
2023/12/11
In Japan, China, and South Korea, minimalism and maximalism create a design dialogue that bridges modernity and tradition. This makes for a mighty laboratory for innovation when it comes to beauty packaging. Spotted a trend? Somewhere, in Seoul or Shanghai, it’s surely already morphing into something new.
Distinctive cap design
In Asia, caps are breaking ground with new formats that range from oversized—atop fragrances from To Summer and Documents in China—to twisted formats as illustrated by Orbis in Japan. For Kanebo’s black ranges, revamped for a rebranding campaign (Kanebo I HOPE) by Tokyo’s Curiosity studio in 2020, the Kao Group brand opted for caps that are off-center in relation to their jars and bottles. This slight asymmetry is meant to convey a desire for inclusivity; emphasized by a streak of white, it symbolizes hope for a better future. Kanebo has a long tradition of attention to cap design. Its Fresh Day Cream SPF 15 and other items in the range, for example, is based on a cap that appears to be cast from molten metal.
Kanebo’s Fresh Day Cream SPF 15 and Orbis feature asymmetrical jar caps ©Kanebo; Orbis
In Asia, caps are not an afterthought designed exclusively to bear a logo. Florence Bernardin, Director of consultancy Asia Cosme.Lab, refers to a cap created for Orbis’s Cream for Cleansing: “Made of matte, soft-touch plastic, the primary pack features an excessively tall cap. Its surface is delicately curved, mimicking the trace a finger leaves in the cream formula – an irregular, sensory and delicate mark, a sensory hollow.”
Text games via typography
Loquacious typography has attained the rank of decor in its own right: it is fluent and expansive at Pola (Japan), where the brand mimics a hand-signed product promise. Typography is more classic but omnipresent on primary packs from Yoseido (Shanghai), on bottles and tubes for Bulk (Japan) and features on boxes and coffrets at Bulk (Korea). Alternately, it might also be simply screen-printed or heat-gilded, and/or embossed.
Bottles and tubes for Bulk feature a myriad of different types of typography ©Bulk Homme
Minimalism takes center stage
White on white, white on gold, silver on white (spectacular at The Ginza/Shiseido), or with a touch of red or yellow (at Pola, which recently revised its color palette): in Asia, and more particularly in Japan, white is a hit in the cosmetics segment. It is presented with minimalist efficiency in matte rather than glossy versions, and on frosted rather than transparent glass.
Evocative of the science on which Japan has built its cosmetics reputation, white is associated with notions of purity and integrity, as well as efficiency. This is evident in the ever-futuristic variations of Ipsa, Shiseido group’s iconic signature, but also at Sekkisei (Kosé), Iope (Amorepacific) and Uka, a recently launched brand created by nail artist Kiho Watanabe. The organic hand creams feature only the bare minimum: the time of day for which the reference, and its fragrance, was developed.
