Signature Lipstick Matte

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Photography: meritbeauty.com. All imagery belongs to its respective owner.

What makes the design work

Merit brand study

Visual observations across the brand’s packaging. Individual formats and editions may vary.

Vertical wordmark

Widely tracked capitals about 30% of component height, running up the lower half in Engraved Gold (#b8975e) on black and cream or ivory on gold.

Polished cylinder

Straight-walled Mirror Gold (#c9a25a) case with a flush cap and no other decoration.

Product dome

The balm or blush formed as a dome rising out of the component, the only colour on makeup.

Reading the label

No label: decoration is printed directly onto the component in one colour, with generous empty surface around a small wordmark.

Vertical side: Wordmark running up the cylinder on sticks, tubes and mascaras
Bottle upper band: Horizontal wordmark printed over the frosted glass on skincare
Bottle lower half: Italic serif product name, bold format line and French italic line printed over the visible formula

Typography & hierarchy

The wordmark is the only element on most makeup, set small and tracked wide, reading vertically along the component. Skincare adds a short italic serif product name, a tiny bold tracked format line in English and an italic French line beneath it, all centred over the visible formula.

Label
Copperplate Gothic, custom wide capitals with hairline serifs
Wide classical capitals with tiny serifs, very open tracking
Uppercase · Regular
Headline
Caslon Italic
Transitional serif italic
Title case · Italic, Bold Italic
Body
Futura Medium, Neue Haas Unica
Small geometric sans, bold tracked capitals
Uppercase · SemiBold

Typeface suggestions based on visual similarity. These are not verified font identifications.

How the range holds together

Material, not colour, separates lines: gold for colour cosmetics, black for mascara and complexion tools, cream for balms and sticks, frosted glass for skincare. Shades are shown only by the product inside or the dome on top.

Shelf presence

Grouped together the range reads as a small set of gold, black and cream cylinders with the same tiny vertical wordmark, so the brand billboards through material and restraint rather than colour.

See the full Merit study