Baude is a scent-centric bodycare company that launched Jan 11, 2024 made by three NYC creatives that have been friends for a decade. Bootstrapped and self-funded, our brand and packaging were ‘home-made’ by the core founding team, with the help of freelancers.
At the heart of our company lies an unwavering commitment to creativity. We’ve meticulously crafted a brand where creativity sits at the heart of everything from concept ideation to fragrance development and packaging. Clean body care has long been a staple and the industry gravitates towards monotony, often presenting products in a minimalist manner, but there’s a desire for a more maximalist approach. In today’s beauty landscape, there’s an obsession with control and achieving perfection, often manifesting in smooth, unblemished packaging. But why adhere to such a rule? Life isn’t smooth; it’s rich, textured, and beautifully imperfect. Just because bodycare is clean doesn’t mean it can’t be the most fun product in your bathroom. Clean doesn’t have to mean mundane, and Baude stands in stark contrast to the typical perception of clean body care, with our packaging serving as a testament to this ethos.
That’s precisely why our bottles boast striking forms with a tactile texture inspired by cellulite—an aspect some might consider a ‘flaw,’ but one we wholeheartedly celebrate and accentuate. Texture, in its simplicity, intrigued us profoundly. Our aim was to create a product that engages all the senses—pleasing to use, delightful to behold, and a joy to touch. Picture yourself in the shower, water obscuring your vision, yet you effortlessly recognize our distinctive bottle by its unique texture.
Baude is all about delivering maximalist experiences with minimalist formulas, setting out to make you feel better, in an industry primarily focused on making you look better. Our packaging design mirrors this aspiration, standing out amidst a sea of uniformity. We consider ourselves post-gender, crafting body care for all body types. We designed our product so that the cap and base seamlessly complement one another, transforming it into an artful objet d’art. Because of our broad audience, our packaging needed to fit a wide swath of peoples taste, bathrooms and other products. To solve this, we set out to craft a distinct form that doubles as an art piece, not fitting everyone by blending in, but by standing out. Why shouldn’t the items in your bathroom be objects of beauty in themselves?
For us, artfulness entails a unique form that blurs the boundary between a beauty product and a work of art. Our logo, with its reverse italic styling, reminds people to lean out (not in) and do less, while epitomizing our commitment to being both familiar and refreshingly unconventional. It stands bold, yet rebels against the common typographic norms. Admittedly, there were challenges in figuring out how to print on a textured surface without distorting the typography. Yet, we welcomed some distortion, as it is inherent to our brand’s identity.
We despise the fussiness associated with removing a product’s cap with wet hands, so we set out to create something that was easy to use by eliminating the need to remove the cap. We decided to not use pumps because they require multiple materials to function, and are therefore not recyclable. Today, our entire packaging can be recycled, and we have big aspirations to introduce a non-plastic packaging option as soon as we are able.
The lush green color of our packaging corresponds with our first fragrance collection, ‘Darkwave Utopia.’ This fragrance journey starts green with fresh cut stems, turns sweet like orchids, and ends with a touch of smoke and leather. Each new collection will feature a distinct color and a unique ‘B’ logo mark on the secondary packaging. Our scent bursts forth with brightness, and we wanted the green color to mirror this vibrancy. The ‘off yellow’ text color was chosen precisely for its unexpectedness, a departure from the ordinary.
We draw inspiration from the repetition theory of design, envisioning our packaging in a kaleidoscope of colors, creating a captivating display for collectors. Every package will sport a different secondary text color, a nod to the dynamic palette of magazine mastheads.
Finally, for our secondary box, we extended our passion for texture by introducing embossing on three panels—the logo, the logo mark, and the collection name.
At Baude, we believe that creativity knows no bounds, and our packaging embodies this belief, offering a sensorial experience that transcends the ordinary. Prioritize pleasure, always.
