Studio Lotta Nieminen has developed an elegant and sophisticated brand identity for Erly, a clean skincare brand, featuring carefully curated color combinations and a distinctive logo that embodies the brand's core philosophy of mixing and personalization. The comprehensive design system spans across packaging, digital platforms, and print materials, creating a cohesive visual language that balances playfulness with refinement.
Lotta Nieminen's design practice has evolved significantly since 2015, when her work primarily bridged illustration and graphic design. Over the past decade, aside from creating a children's book series for Phaidon, Nieminen has shifted her focus entirely to running Studio Lotta Nieminen, a graphic design practice that specializes in developing visual identities for furniture, fashion, and beauty brands. The studio operates with an intentionally small team and collaborates with a network of creative professionals based on each project's specific requirements.
Erly, the clean skincare brand that approached Studio Lotta Nieminen earlier this year, was founded by best friends Jamie Chandlee and Dr. Hallie McDonald. The duo created the brand to address growing concerns about the skincare and beauty industry's influence on their daughters. Erly's product range positions itself as a streamlined collection of essential skincare products that can be customized for all skin types and ages, emphasizing personalization and simplicity.
The visual identity development began with the concept of mixing and tailoring, which became the driving force behind the entire brand direction. This philosophy started to take concrete form through a single sketch of the logo. The brand mark was set in Herbus, a typeface designed by Eliott Grunewald, specifically chosen to mirror the gentle, circular motion of blending droplets into moisturizer. "The letters soften and merge in a way that evokes compounding," Nieminen explains. "I wanted to find something with that sort of circular movement, and found Herbus worked perfectly to convey that sense of motion."
The logo features purposefully stacked letterforms that flow seamlessly into one another, creating a distinct stamp that represents the brand's playful yet sophisticated personality. Recognizing the composition's inherent beauty, Nieminen made the strategic decision to position the logo as center stage in the design system. The logo appears at a scale larger than the product boxes themselves, wrapping around their edges in the packaging system to create maximum visual impact.
Nieminen and her team expanded this harmonious composition into multiple variations and scales, including stacked versions, horizontal layouts, and designs with layered colors that outline the letterforms. These variations subtly reinforce the personalization theme that runs throughout the brand identity. The flexibility of these logo variations ensures consistency while allowing for creative adaptation across different applications and formats.
Color played a central role in the design brief and significantly influenced Nieminen's decision-making process throughout the project. This focus on color is particularly evident in the studio's approach to packaging design. The product range features sophisticated, muted tones expertly paired with playful neon hues that create dynamic visual contrasts. "Like the earthy rust that balances the brighter pink on the serum cap," Nieminen notes, explaining how the color relationships were carefully considered to achieve both confidence and playfulness in the packaging design.
The studio's deliberately understated typographic approach resulted in what Nieminen describes as "an adaptable toolkit" that ensures brand cohesiveness across digital platforms. The skincare brand's website experience opens with the logo displayed at a very large scale, featuring an interactive color-changing effect when users hover over it with their mouse. Beyond this clever motion element, the brand's digital presence relies primarily on photography, typography, and controlled use of color, allowing the brand personality to shine through without overwhelming the user interface.
Designed to appeal to both young and mature consumers, the identity strikes a careful balance between playfulness and refinement. The system is intentionally adaptable, allowing the brand to evolve and accommodate new products as the line expands. "I wanted it to feel like something you'd be happy to keep on your bathroom shelf, something that sparks delight and encourages a daily ritual," Nieminen concludes. "My goal is always to create systems that are recognizable and distinct, yet open enough to allow for play, evolution and growth over time."
The comprehensive brand identity system demonstrates Studio Lotta Nieminen's expertise in creating cohesive visual languages that work across multiple touchpoints. From packaging design to digital experiences, the Erly brand identity showcases how thoughtful color combinations, confident typography, and flexible logo systems can create a memorable brand presence that resonates with diverse audiences while maintaining the core values of personalization and sophistication that define the skincare brand's mission.
