Packaging designer Joe Duffy presents ‘a simple challenge’ to his peers.

By Joe Duffy, chairman and creative director, Duffy & Partners

I was struck the other day by the adage “beauty is only skin deep.” As I thought about it with regard to the world of beauty packaging, I pondered the irony: The packaging of beauty products is anything but.

I’ve been a practitioner of commercial art for more than a quarter century, and helped create and nurture some of the most iconic brands around the world. I’ve seen design that inspires action, seen images that provoke, and witnessed beauty that can stir the soul.

The world itself is beautiful, so here’s my challenge to the beauty packaging world: Raise your bar. Deliver design that’s more than skin deep.

What do I mean by that? I mean go beyond aesthetics. Look for inspiration beyond art and architecture. Stretch beyond the borrowed equities of famous faces or iconic entertainment properties. The ideals of beauty have evolved to be more thoughtful, deeper. With that, the approach to beauty branding and design should evolve as well.

It’s no different than designing a brand, package or website in any other category. It’s about creating relevance and differentiation, with a degree of substance. It’s about projecting a greater sense of being, and celebrating the “intrinsics”—the special ingredients that distinguish a unique fragrance or moisturizer.

And celebrating the “extrinsics” as well—those attributes surrounding a product. The stories about where they’re from, the cultures of their origin—the desired outcome or ultimate manifestation of how a product might make a person feel.

In my experience, it’s often a combination of these qualities that forms the most successful and enduring brand designs. At the end of the day, in most of the developed world, people are looking for more than just perfume or lotion or makeup. They’re searching for how those products will make them not only look better, but feel better—how their choices say something about them as individuals, with unique personalities. How, in a variety of ways, they might express themselves in life identifying with those brands.

If it is truly an experience we seek to deliver as branders, we need to continually challenge ourselves to think about full sensory beauty. We need to routinely think beyond how something looks or even how the product itself might smell or feel. How does the package feel? And how might that enhance the experience and heighten the emotions that surround a product or brand? Might there be sound cues, as something opens—a chip of music delights—or as a simple adornment caresses glass?

Much of the beauty packaging has become somewhat comfortable and—I dare say—trapped in its own paradigms. We’ve grown accustomed to the beauty cliché. But there is much more opportunity in exploring the unexpected—to design new and surprising cues that inform and delight in a rich new world of beauty.

It’s a simple enough challenge. A category that has so much potential ought to be so much more than just ‘skin deep.’

Go deep.