[NYC15]

2015 New York Design Awards

spaces, objects, visual, graphic, digital & experience design
design champion, best studio, best start-up & best supplier
plus over 40 specialist categories

accelerate transformation, celebrate courage
growing demand for design

[interview] the project story




Website

Twitter

LinkedIn

Gold 

Project Overview

Mucca partnered with Sephora to facilitate their rebrand, creating a highly functional typographic system that represents their brand aesthetic and values.

Project Commissioner

Sephora

Project Creator

Mucca

Team

Mucca, New York

Schriftlabo, Vienna

Project Brief

When the creative team at Sephora decided to revamp their branding system, they realized that a proprietary typeface was essential to communicating with a distinctive voice. Without an institutional typographic system, the global beauty brand’s myriad channels—including signage, packaging, advertising and digital—had an inconsistent, even chaotic, look. And that look wasn’t unique or ownable, since their primary typefaces were two well-worn favorites, Gotham and Didot.

Project Innovation/Need

The elegance of Didones typefaces give them an inherent connection to the fashion/beauty worlds. But their extreme vertical emphasis and high contrast can make them difficult to read, and their ubiquity in fashion makes them a predictable choice.

By tilting the axis of the letterforms and reducing the areas with high contrast, we made the font work even in hostile environments (e.g., over a photo or on low resolution screens). These meticulous strategic choices allowed us to retain the elegance associated with the beauty world, while making the typeface more distinctive and ownable.

We developed a complementary sans serif typeface that has a Roman capital’s proportions to add a sense of warmth to its clean minimalism. The simple geometric shapes makes it an extremely versatile tool for any of the brands’ applications.

Design Challenge

All projects have creative constraints, and ours was to ensure continuity with their current visual narrative, as well as a seamless integration with the current Sephora logotype.

Effectiveness

The simple geometric shapes makes it an extremely versatile tool for any of the brands’ applications.

A happy client is a repeat client and we are thrilled to be working with Sephora again on a special project—to be revealed soon!




This award celebrates creativity and innovation in the traditional or digital visual representation of ideas and messages. Consideration given to clarity of communication and the matching information style to audience.
More Details