Liz Earle Naturally Active Skincare blog

Welcome to my first ever blog!  I love my job as Head of Creative here at Liz Earle… in fact I’d go as far as saying it’s one of the best roles in the company (but then I am a bit biased!).  You see it’s my job to ensure that everything you touch, view or read reflects our passion, values and vision; whether it’s our shop windows, a new product, our website or even a simple business card….so I’m certainly never bored. For me really good design should be instinctive, if it feels right it generally is…simple is definitely best.  Sometimes design can work so well we just take it for granted and don’t even notice it! – but in this instance I hope you do notice and more importantly enjoy this year’s simply gorgeous Christmas theme…

One of the things I like most about my job is that it enables me to look into the future, as my hardworking creative team and I work many months and even years in advance, carefully planning the words you read and the designs you see, down to the minutest of details… it’s the small things that can make the biggest difference after all… and simple takes time to develop.

We started looking at this year’s Christmas before last Christmas!…in November 2008, when we held a brainstorming session at our Isle of Wight office with key people from around the company as I wanted to try and capture what Christmas meant to everyone individually. What came out of that session was that it’s a very personal thing, meaning different things to different people…family time, time with friends, a time for reflection, fun, indulgence…and some specific family traditions that have to happen every year or it’s just not Christmas… such as the family walk after lunch to burn off the turkey or a closely fought board game tournament between the generations (we’ve had some mammoth Monopoly sessions at home sometimes lasting days!). But whatever it means to us as individuals, it is a time for giving and a time to celebrate. In essence, a time for joy – a simple word that evokes the feelings and emotions that make our personal, perfect Christmas so special.

So ‘joy’ became our Christmas theme and joy is the emotion we want you to feel when you receive a Liz Earle Christmas gift (UK, IE & US) …from the moment you slip off the tactile ribbon, open the lid and the fabulous smell of the products within makes you tingle, to when you peel back the tissue and see the layers of gorgeous individually wrapped treats inside. If you are lucky enough to receive one of our gifts (or even treat yourself to one) I challenge you not to smile as you open it…

When it came to visualising the joy theme, we wanted to create a clean, simple, timeless design which embodied the ‘modern tradition’ of the Liz Earle brand. Starting with our own signature blue colour for the body of the box we then added a beautifully tied signature blue ribbon, and a touch of ‘modern’ sparkle with a subtly reflective Joy gift tag. But it’s not just about how the packaging looks, as any good designer will tell you ‘form follows function’. So our boxes have been designed to be re-useable, just the right size to fit all the heavenly treats inside and best of all, manufactured in the UK; the ribbon has been custom-made and designed in such a way that you can have a sneaky peek at what’s inside without untying the bow! The Joy gift tag reflects our philosophy of reduce, re-use, recycle through a simple past, present and future message, and the tissue paper protects the products, while adding to the overall excitement of unwrapping the gift.

With the Christmas gift guide too we wanted to give you a small taste of the same joy and excitement you get when opening one of our Christmas gifts, from the foiled Joy gift tag and the ribbon-like texture on the cover (mimicking the box lid) to the warm, heartfelt messages inside.  And we didn’t want to forget our cult classic Cleanse & Polish Hot Cloth Cleanser either (UK, IE & US), so we’ve given it a little festive makeover with a sparkling new Limited Edition design especially for Christmas 2009 – giving it a real ‘wow’ factor on your bathroom shelf and making it an even more wonderful gift as well as a great way to introduce your friends and family to Cleanse & Polish…so you can see we’ve been busy.

One more piece of our Christmas jigsaw is sliding into place as I write…Today is an extremely exciting day, as we are transforming our London store in Duke of York Square into a giant signature blue Christmas box, which you’ll have to come and see for yourself! We’ve got lots of other festive touches planned in the run-up to Christmas so if you get a chance, pop in-store and let me know what you think… I’d better go now, as it’s high time I started thinking about next Christmas…!