Inside Design: Hip Looks for Hair Products
For IV Cosmeceuticals, which is being marketed as the first cosmeceutical line for hair, clinical-looking packages help to convey the product’s benefits—as well as to provide a visual punch. Hair care packages get a touch of flair.
By Marie Redding, Senior EditorRecent launches show how skin care trends are influencing hair care and hair-styling products. Innovative formulations are also driving new product development.
An example of this trend is Jonathan Product, which launched in June. The line was created by celebrity hairstylist and salon owner Jonathan Antin. “In terms of trends, the marketplace is saturated with a lot of hair care brands in brightly colored packages. We wanted this line to have a more serious image. We always looked at it as if it were a skin care line,” says Tina Hedges, executive vice president of marketing and development of Jonathan Product.
Another hair care line, IV Cosmeceuticals, is being marketed as the first cosmeceutical for hair. Its white packaging takes many cues from the pharmaceutical industry. “We wanted it to look clinical to convey the medical and therapeutic properties of the products,” says Lotte Davis, cofounder.
New technologies involving new delivery systems for certain ingredients have inspired the creation of new skin care formulas. Now, hair care and hair-styling products might soon be considered to be just as innovative. Aveda’s Control Tape is a hair-styling product formulated and packaged as a dissolvable film. The idea for this type of product was first inspired by Listerine PocketPaks breath strips.
Profound’s new Desert Atmosphere styling paste is reminiscent of the dual-chamber package used for Mentadent toothpaste. Or, perhaps, of a package used for skin cream. Read on to find out more about the design of these packages, as well as a few packaging challenges these brands needed to overcome.
Brilliant Deco
Many hair care products claiming to be natural or free of sulfates have recently launched, and these benefits are sometimes conveyed through transparent formulas. The products in the Jonathan Product line don’t contain any sulfates, dyes, or colorants. They are also made with purified, deionized, botanically infused water. The transparent formulas are packaged in clear PET bottles.
“The line is meant to be a marriage of high-end formulas with products that are easy for the consumer to understand how and when to use,” says Hedges. The brand’s simple philosophy is conveyed through the choice of plastic bottles, tubes, and jars in classic shapes. Since Antin uses his styling products when working at events and on photo shoots, the packages had to be easy to use. The push-top caps don’t need to be unscrewed or removed, and the lockable pumps travel well.
The challenge for package designers is to decide how a clear bottle containing a transparent formula would be decorated in order to fit all of the necessary copy on a round bottle. Sometimes, users can see right through a formula to the back label, which can look unattractive. When designing the packaging for the Jonathan Product line, Zorbit Resources (Los Angeles and New York City) found a better solution.
A classic look was chosen for the Jonathan Product packages.
In order to fit the text on the front and back of the clear bottles, Zorbit Resources based the design of its graphics on a vertical layout. “We decided to treat the bottle as if it were split vertically down the middle, and half would be left clear,” says Scott Oshry, vice president of creative at Zorbit Resources. The Jonathan name runs up the left side of the bottles. On the back, the rest of the copy is written in a column positioned directly behind the Jonathan name on the front. This leaves one side of the bottle completely free and transparent. Opaque metallic inks were used in gold, bronze, silver, and copper. “Metallic inks are usually translucent, so figuring out how to make them opaque so they could be used on clear bottles was a challenge,” says Oshry.
Aside from styling hair, Antin stars in a reality television show currently airing on the Bravo network, called “Blow Out.” The show is about Antin’s stressful experience of managing two salons while at the same time developing his product line with Hedges and Beth Ann Catalano, executive vice president of sales and education.
Hair Care Prescription
IV Cosmeceuticals is a hair care line clearly influenced by the skin care and pharmaceutical industries. “We are one of the few hair care manufacturers to formulate all of our own products, in our own lab,” says cofounder Davis. “We started looking at some of the ingredients being used in cosmeceutical skin care products and realized they could be used in hair care products. These active ingredients are able to repair and heal the hair,” says Davis. The ingredients used act as a one-way barrier, driving moisture into the hair and forming a block to retain moisture.
Dossier Creative Inc. (Vancouver) designed the packaging, while TricorBraun (St. Louis) handled engineering and execution. White was chosen as the main color of the line to connect with the medical aspect of the brand, according to Don Chisholm, owner and creative director at Dossier Creative. The bottles were molded using a soft-touch resin. “Soft-touch is usually reserved for high-end cosmetics, but this allowed the line to feel luxurious and to convey the message that this product is positioned as a cosmeceutical for hair,” says Chisholm. A red cross is used as the brand’s logo, signifying the healing properties. A red tamper-evident seal with white crosses on it is used as a humorous design element, and also to convey the products’ benefit of hair protection. “Everyone seems to get the joke. The reaction has been amazing,” says Davis.
The bottles all have caps with dripless valve closures. A custom overcap was engineered with a shut-off valve by the team at TricorBraun Engineering (St. Louis). “We took the design concept and made it into a functioning package,” says Maurice Borras, packaging consultant at TricorBraun’s facility in Cerritos, CA. The display stand is cleverly shaped like a hospital IV stand. A tin case designed to resemble a first-aid kit contains 1-oz bottles and is used in salons as a display unit. The company is also planning to launch a similarly designed gift set this holiday season.
Film Debut
Aveda’s Control Tape is an innovative new concept.
New technology is now being sought for the development of hair-styling products, just as it has been in demand for the development of new skin care products. Control Tape, launched in February by Aveda, is one example of how hair-styling products might soon become more high tech. The product is baked and cut into strips. When water is added, the strips dissolve in the user’s hands and are ready for use.
The marketing team at Aveda works closely with a stylist advisory panel to stay informed of upcoming trends in hair styles, which drives the development of new types of products, says Amber Soletti, marketing manager styling/hair spray at Aveda. Consumer trends are also considered, such as the need for more portable types of packaging. “During one brainstorming session, we decided that we wanted to create a product able to deliver extreme hold that could be used to create trendy ‘wet-look’ hairstyles,” says Soletti. “It also had to be travel friendly and easy to use anywhere. One stylist at the meeting was using a Listerine breath strip and asked if we could make a gel out of that type of strip.”
Since Aveda products only contain naturally derived ingredients, creating a product that delivered extreme hold was difficult in the past, says Soletti. Aveda’s research and development team found a type of resin called pullulan, which is a starch derived from a grain. “It created more-extreme hold than we’ve ever seen before,” says Soletti. In order to incorporate this starch into a film strip, Aveda worked with Acupac Packaging Inc. (Mahwah, NJ).
“There were a few technical challenges the team had to work out,” explains Soletti. “We had to keep improving the way the strips were made,” she says. First, the strips weren’t dissolving quick enough. “Acupac Packaging discovered that by aerating the strips, it caused any added water to move quickly toward the air bubbles and the strip to dissolve faster,” says Soletti. Another challenge was to prevent the resin from cracking and breaking during the process of being formed into strips. “To correct this problem, Acupac used lower temperatures during the baking process,” explains Soletti.
The flat, square plastic case, which contains the strips, fits into the die-cut window of a 4 × 7-in. booklet called a Look Book. The entire booklet fits snugly into a polypropylene bag. “The bag is necessary to protect the strips from breaking down when exposed to the normal humidity in the air. It protects the product during the shipping process and on shelves before it reaches the consumer,” says Michael Maggio, executive director of package development at Aveda. After opening, the plastic case is designed to withstand normal bathroom conditions for a certain period of time.
“We decided to include the Look Book as a part of the package in order to educate the consumer. The Look Book shows consumers how to use the strips, as well as the types of hairstyles the tape can create,” says Soletti. Since it was developed as a trend product, Control Tape will only be sold for a limited time. “Sales were slow at first, but once consumers got past the learning curve, it really caught on,” says Soletti. The team at Aveda has indicated that they might consider revisiting this packaging format for a different product in the future.
Climate Control
A dual-chambered dispenser houses Profound Beauty’s Desert Atmosphere.
Profound Beauty was inspired by the weather when creating its new line of styling products. The Atmosphere collection is based on the idea that the climate controls hair behavior. The products are meant to replicate the effects that different types of climates have on the hair. The first launch in the collection was Tropical Dew. It is a gel packaged in an injection-molded plastic jar. Arctic Chill launches in September. It is a gel-like mousse packaged in a standard can. It even feels cold when it is dispensed. (Click here for a profile of Profound Beauty.)
Desert Atmosphere launched in July, in an oval-shaped, dual-chamber package supplied by Wiko. Its formula contains two substances that stay separate until the product is dispensed. One ingredient removes moisture from the hair (by removing its electrical charge) and the other adds texture. The package uses a metered-dose control system, so the two formulas are dispensed at equal rates. “It has individual pump chambers on each side, with a common center of distribution for the actuator,” says Mark Zolty, president, RPC Bramlage Wiko-USA (Exton, PA). (Coppertone Sunless Tanning Lotion first used this package.)
Future Directions
Convenient dispensing methods are important when it comes to hair care packaging and will affect future package designs, according to David Lapp, global category manager, O-I (Toledo, OH). One option is the use of a valve, which can prevent dripping and dispense product in a steady stream, reports Lapp. A valve must be custom made to fit a specific closure. It is molded and then dropped into a cap using special assembly equipment. “There is a lot of work being done with valve technology. It is becoming popular for the more- high-end shampoos and body washes. We’re seeing it come to the forefront of the personal care industry now,” says Lapp.
Foam formulas also promote ease of use. “They are easier to work through the hair than a gel, because they are immediately activated. We’re seeing an increased interest in foams for hair products sold and used in salons, because of the convenience factor,” says David Stob, director of business development at Airspray International (Pompano Beach, FL).
There will also be a trend toward more-natural formulas. “Preservative-free will become a must for market entry, and packaging will continue to evolve to make this possible,” says Hedges from Jonathan Product.
On the subject of design, consumers have become more enlightened and expect more when it comes to the look of a package, says Chisholm of Dossier Creative. “Any company that uses design as a business tool in the future will win consumer attention.”
Hedges agrees: “Traditional hair care has been a commodity-driven consumer good with little or no interest in design elements. As hair-care products begin to dominate the alternative upscale points of distribution, the approach to package design and the demand by the consumer for aesthetic excellence in packaging will dominate.”
New products are also pushing the limits of packaging, says Zolty at RPC Bramlage Wiko-USA. “Whether it’s the need for a two-component package or higher barrier properties for moisture control, it is clear that the hair care industry is expanding its focus to offer more products that reach far beyond the basic need to clean or style hair.”