Case study · 2022
Skinord
A performance skincare brand built so sharp it got acquired.
- Client
- Skinord
- Location
- Toronto, Canada
- Services
- Brand IdentityPackagingCollateral
- Year
- 2022
Overview
Skinord came to us as a Toronto-based startup with a genuinely new idea — a pre-and-post workout skincare line for serious athletes — and the ambition to play at the level of the heritage performance brands. We built the entire brand system around that ambition.
The challenge
Performance skincare barely existed as a category, and what did exist looked either like supplements or pharmacy aisle. Skinord needed an identity that could sit credibly in a gym bag next to premium athletic gear — confident, technical, and unmistakably Canadian — without leaning on tired sports-brand tropes.
Our approach
We built a complete system around a custom monogram and a two-color thermal logic: deep red for the warming Pre Workout cream, cobalt blue for the cooling Post Workout cream. A woven geometric pattern at the base of every tube became the brand's signature shorthand, and the whole system was engineered to scale across packaging, collateral, and retail.
Process
Four phases, one retail-ready system.
01
Discovery & Strategy
Founder workshop, competitive audit across performance skincare and athletic brands, and a clear positioning brief: premium Canadian performance skincare, built for the gym bag, not the bathroom shelf.
02
Brand Identity System
Custom monogram, wordmark, thermal red/blue palette, and a woven geometric pattern that became the brand's signature. Built as a system the team could extend without losing the original logic.
03
Packaging Design
Pre Workout warming cream and Post Workout cooling cream — matched tube architecture, bilingual EN/FR labels, and a base-of-tube pattern so the range reads instantly as one family.
04
Marketing Collateral
Editorial campaign direction, gym and track imagery, and the launch collateral system that carried the brand from D2C launch through the acquisition conversation.
“They built us a brand with so much equity that within two years we were on the phone with the group that ended up buying us.”