Packaging Designer

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What does a Packaging Designer do?

A packaging designer guides the design process of cosmetics packaging. They develop, design, and execute a concept for noticeable and engaging packaging materials. Packaging Designers use graphic design elements like shape, color, logos, and typography to create packaging that is practical and attractive to consumers.

How much does this career make?

According to Ziprecruiter, Packaging Designers maintain a national annual salary of $71,135, which is an hourly wage of $34.20. Entry-level producers start around $50,000 annually. In contrast, senior-level producers make an annual average of $105,000. The range in salary widely depends on factors including skill and seniority level.

What impact does this career have towards the beauty industry?

Packing Designers are responsible for communicating a brand’s story and identity. They allow brands to connect with consumers aesthetically and emotionally. Packaging Designers tap into current market trends to inform their storytelling. However, they also have to predict future shifts in consumer perception.

What is the job outlook for a Packaging Designer?

Beauty revenue is forecasted to be worth $480.4 billion by 2030. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), job opportunities in the field (including Packaging Designers) are expected to increase at a rate of 19% percent during the 2019-2029 decade (www.bls.gov).

Fenton Jagdeo

Learn from: 
Fenton Jagdeo
Beauty Business Essentials contributor, Founder & CEO of FACULTY

Related Careers:

Supply Chain Executive | Warehouse Operator | Health & Safety Engineer | Pick Packer | Material Handler | Inventory Analyst | Production Planner | Distribution Analyst | Supply Planner | Cosmetic Chemist | Microbiologist | Product Development Associate

Cosmetic Chemist

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What does a Cosmetic Chemist do?

Cosmetic Chemists work in beauty manufacturing developing beauty products. They create cosmetic shades and colors by experimenting with pigments. These scientists formulate ingredients for skincare, personal care, and color cosmetic products based on scientific research. They also work in product testing to ensure consumer safety and oversee the manufacturing process for compliance with health and safety protocols.

How much does this career make?

According to Comparably, Cosmetic Chemists maintain a national annual salary of $70,659, which is an hourly wage of $30.92. In general, entry-level producers start around $52,000 annually. Senior-level producers make an annual average of $161,631. The range in salary widely depends on factors including skill and seniority level.

What impact does this career have towards the beauty industry?

Cosmetic Chemists are important to consumer health and safety. They test ingredients before products reach the market to ensure consumer well-being. Chemists also keep product lines fresh and relevant by developing new, innovative products.

What is the job outlook for a Cosmetic Chemist?

Projections show that beauty industry revenue will increase to $480.4 by 2030. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), job opportunities for chemists and material scientists (including Cosmetic Chemists) are expected to increase at a rate of 6% percent during the 2019-2029 decade (www.bls.gov).

Ron Robinson, Cosmetic Chemist

Learn from: 
Ron Robinson
Beauty Business Essentials contributor, Cosmetic Chemist & Founder of BeautyStat Cosmetics

Brands He’s Worked With: BeautyStat, Clinique, L’Oreal, Revlon, and Avon

Related Careers:

Supply Chain Executive | Warehouse Operator | Health & Safety Engineer | Pick Packer | Material Handler | Inventory Analyst | Production Planner | Distribution Analyst | Supply Planner | Microbiologist | Product Development Associate | Packaging Designer

A New Influence: 5 Beauty Brands by Gen Z

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Gen Zers have impacted the beauty business more than any of the previous generations. They have a spending power of $143 billion. Their commitment to diversity and clean products has pushed the industry to modernize its marketing and transparency about manufacturing. They are true digital natives and tech-savvy, well versed in using mobile devices, and immersed in internet culture. 

Members of Generation Z use the accessibility of social media to advocate for authenticity. They champion products that are racially and ethnically diverse. As they come of age and go from buyers to makers, beauty brands focus more on inclusion and manufacturing sustainable products. Below are the best brands on the market created or influenced by Gen Zers.

ITEM Beauty 

Addison Rae founded ITEM Beauty in 2020. The brand is a cruelty-free, vegan line of makeup products developed in partnership with Madeby Collective. Rae wanted to build a brand that reflected her authentic self. Yet, is accessible for the 124 million followers across her social media platforms. 

ITEM Beauty Brands
ITEM Lip Quip

“When I think about beauty and what’s important to me, it’s putting something on my face that I can feel good about,” she said in an interview with Ipsy. “I wanted simple, unfussy products that are fun and don’t take themselves too seriously.”

Best Seller: Lip Quip, $14

Shop: https://www.itembeauty.com/

IG: @itembeauty

Kinship

Alison Haljun and Christin Powell launched Kinship in 2019. They aren’t Gen Zers, and both women have decades of experience in beauty. The pair came together. Their intent was to create the type of beauty products that weren’t available to them when they were younger. 

Kinship Beauty Brands
Kinship Glow Squad 4-Piece Skin Kit

“In my twenties, I was fascinated with plants and their power to heal our skin. I had really bad acne in my teens and early adulthood. I couldn’t find a product that worked without a lot of side effects. I’m not in my twenties anymore. But I have a daughter who’s thirteen and struggling with acne, and there’s still nothing,” Powell explained. 

What sets Kinship apart from brands backed by older generations is Haljun and Powell’s inclusion of Gen Zers in the development process. They established the Kinship Circle, a group of 20 young people. The Kinship Circle provided direct input in all aspects of the beauty brand, from packing to product testing. It has now reached up to 120 members.

Best Seller: Glow Squad 4-Piece Skin Kit, $36

Shop: https://lovekinship.com/

IG: @lovekinship

Morphe 2

Charli and Dixie D’Amelio are social media stars with 180 million followers on TikTok and 69 million followers on Instagram. The sisters’ marketing potential is clear, having already secured branding partnerships with Dunkin’ and Hollister during the Covid-19 pandemic. After posting about their skincare routines on TikTok, beauty brand Morphe partnered with the duo to launch their own sub-brand. Morphe 2 is an affordable brand that highlights a more natural appearance. 

Morphe Beauty Brand
Morphe Lippie Lullaby Lip Mask

Charli spoke on the brand’s message of self-acceptance during the line’s launch. “It’s so important, especially for teen girls, to have access to a brand like this. I love that Morphe 2 can be both colorful and fun, but also natural and affordable.”

Best Seller: Lippie Lullaby Lip Mask, $9

Shop: https://www.morphe.com/collections/morphe-2

IG: @morphe2

Skincare by Hyram 

Hyram Yarbro has emerged as a crucial influencer in skincare. His 11 million social media followers turn to him for his brutally honest product reviews. He combined his background in makeup with an economical approach to design Selfless by Hyram. 

Selfless by Hyram
Selfless by Hyram Salicylic Acid & Sea Kelp Pore Clearing and Oil Control Serum

“When I worked as a makeup artist, I was seeing people drop thousands of dollars on skincare products trying to get the best skin possible. It had me wondering if you need to spend a lot of money to have good skin. Once I started learning a lot about it, I realized that you don’t,” he said before launching the plant-based skincare line. 

Best Seller: Salicylic Acid & Sea Kelp Pore Clearing and Oil Control Serum, $24

Shop: https://us.selflessbyhyram.com/

IG: @selflessbyhyram

Topicals

Topicals is a skincare line specializing in acne, eczema, and other conditions for every skin tone. Claudia Teng and Olamide Olowe launched Topicals from their apartment in the summer of 2020. The brand boasts science-backed formulas that clinical experts create. 

Topicals Slick Salve
Topicals Slick Salve

“Everyone’s aspiration is to have clear skin. We want to take the focus off of having perfect skin and put the onus on making treatment more fun. I’m going to live with this skin condition for my whole life — I don’t want to dread taking care of myself,” Olowe explained. So far, their focus on well-being instead of appearance has resonated. Topicals’ hero product, an ointment called Slick Salve, is regularly sold out.

Best Seller: Slick Salve, $16

Shop: https://mytopicals.com/

IG: @topicals

To learn more about how diversity and inclusivity is redefining beauty brands and industry or how to have a career that can impact change, check out Yellowbrick’s Ultimate Beauty Career Guide and Beauty Business Essentials.

Color in the World of Cosmetics: Cosmetics Industry Perspective on Inspiration

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“Inspiration can stem from so many different places” explains Juliet Falchi, Director of Global Product Innovation for Mac Cosmetic. As an art history major, Juliet was encouraged to stay in touch with what’s trending in the world of art, design, and technology. Given that she works in the beauty industry currently, staying in touch with the competitive landscape and beauty trends is absolutely crucial. While working at La Mer, Juliet did exploratory research for a lifting and firming serum by attending a 3D printing fair. “[We] spoke to people there and came up with this whole new angle of how to talk about shapeshifting,” she exclaims. “Some of the best ideas come from things that are completely unrelated to exactly what you’re working on.” Out of the box thinking can play a key role in branding and growth. Strategizing new ways to tackle the same market can become mundane if you are brainstorming in the same environment. Getting out of your office and finding inspiration on the streets, at the movies, in museums, events, moreover through other brands–within and outside your market–can really pay off. It also pays off to have a mentor. Mentorship can contribute to the creation process in ways you never thought possible, as it offers the opportunity to connect with someone who has a diverse perspective and can give constructive feedback. Juliet suggests that a mentor “doesn’t necessarily have to be your direct boss or someone you currently work with.” Working with people from different departments can offer a mutually beneficial relationship where collaboration becomes more unique due to your different backgrounds. Unparalleled ideas will flourish organically. Juliet’s mentor, Jennifer Balbier, is Senior Vice President in Product Development and Artistry Brands. According to Juliet, Jennifer is “well-known in our company as being someone who really loves to take on young talent and foster them.” It’s important to shop around to make sure whoever ends up being your mentor is in it for the long haul; they should want to help you succeed. Furthermore, it’s never too late to find a mentor. If you are looking to expand your horizons and take your career up a notch, start reaching out to former employers or other people in your network at different companies. Find people that are willing to keep the door open for you (and help you open doors). It can make all the difference in your career.

Color in the World of Cosmetics: How the Pros Do It

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How does a color consultant find the best colors for a client? First, you look for relationships, colors that relate favorably to your client’s skin tone, hair, and eye color. You’ll go through a series of comparisons using drapes, makeup, or other diagnostic tools. To get the best results, your client usually is wearing no makeup and is under daylight balanced conditions. You’re looking at the value and the brightness level of the coloring, the undertone of warm or cool, and the contrast level between hair and skin. The goal is to select colors that favorably enhance your client. Colors in skin tones can be described as warm or cool. Warm colors are those with yellow in them and cool colors have blue in them. A person’s skin has a yellow undertone or a blue undertone, a cool or warm temperature – they’re interchangeable. You’ll look at how light or dark your client’s skin tone and hair value are. People with lighter coloring look better in lighter colors, and those with deeper tones favor deeper shades. Also, consider if they have brighter or more muted coloring. The result – your client knows which color palette is best for them and can use that palette to guide them. Everything will mix and match easily because it has natural harmony. This palette also applies to makeup and hair color. In summary, you observe the value level – the degree of light or darkness in the skin/hair; the undertone – how warm or cool the skin/hair is; the chroma level – how bright or soft the person is; and the contrast level – the degree of contrast between hair and skin. Like enhances like. People with warm skin tone and hair wear best warm colors, and those with cooler undertones will look better in colors that have more blues, lilacs, or rose in them. Most color consultants are entrepreneurs. If you want your own business, many people could benefit from a color analysis.

Entering the Industry: Empower Your Teams

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In the beauty business, it’s important to find a way to differentiate yourself. At some point you will get recognized and move up the ladder in your beauty career. Try to learn and listen as much the beauty professionals around you and really observe. At some point in your career, you’ll get to a place where it’s not only about what you do but also the other people around you. Once you start managing people, it can be a very difficult transition. When you go from producing things yourself to having to step back and kind of set the stage of what needs to happen, but not do it yourself, it’s a challenge. Empower other people to do the work and educate them on how to do it. Try to expose your teams to as much online beauty education and information as possible. Great companies have to set a culture and then attract people who are fully engaged and comfortable with that culture. This culture then nurtures the employees and is so symbiotic with their own personal beliefs that they feel fully realized in their roles. Having enough industry information and beauty education to be empowered to make your own informed decisions is key. If you don’t have full information, it thwarts you from being able to think fully about a situation. Try and make sure your beauty team has exposure to as many things as possible in the company. Full view of what the financials are, full understanding of who the retail partners are, and an understanding of what the three-year vision is for the company. Make sure people have the ability to see all of this information to make the best decisions for the company, team, and themselves with that context in mind.

Entrepreneurship vs. Intrapreneurship: Big Company vs. Entrepreneurship

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I worked for L’Oreal, where I began my career, and Estee Lauder, where I completed my “big company” phase. Working at a large corporation is, in my opinion, priceless. For me, it was like getting a second MBA. It was in an MBA program tailored to working in the beauty industry. I was also gaining exposure to global markets and working with some of the best tangential organizations in the industry. I worked with the best: * Manufacturers * Fragrance houses * Consulting organizations * Digital agencies * Strategy agencies These opportunities provide a well-established framework for considering everything from business planning to management. How do you get a product to market, and how do you get the most out of your partners, whether they’re PR firms or creative firms? Then there’s the strategy aspect, which involves exposing yourself to the industry’s best and brightest minds, both within your own organization and with your strategic partners. I can’t emphasize enough how much I believe that background prepared me to work in smaller organizations later on. Discipline and strategic thinking are two things I attempt to impart to smaller businesses. Take the best of what you’ve learned in larger companies and apply it to a smaller setting. Flex the structure as needed, but also be adaptable where necessary. You’ll need to consider the limited resources in a smaller workplace, the potential need to react quickly or function without comprehensive knowledge. I’d argue that all of my big-company experience prepared me for working in a smaller company.

Beauty Business Then & Now: Beauty Industry Evolution

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Like all other consumer-based industries in recent decades, the beauty industry has undergone an enormous change. There are a lot of reasons for this. The internet has impacted every possible business on the globe. This is partly to blame for the changes within the beauty industry. But I think the beauty industry is also very cyclical. It goes through periods when larger brands and corporations are very powerful. Then it switches to periods where small businesses dominate the industry. Until around a decade ago, the beauty industry was all about the big companies. We’re all familiar with Estee Lauder, L’Oreal, Avon, and Revlon. They’re the most well-known beauty brand across the world. But we’re now at a point in the cycle where the beauty industry is much more consumer-driven and customers are much more excited about smaller businesses. And it’s not just the beauty industry. It’s also the fashion and food industries too. The small players aren’t faced with the same challenges that they use to be. The Internet has enabled any business, no matter how big or small, to become global. They can create a stunning website and build their social media accounts to grow an audience quickly. The internet has given businesses the chance to grow but that doesn’t necessarily mean they will have the resources to keep up with this growth. But this is much less challenging than it used to be. It’s less expensive and requires fewer resources. The barriers to entry are much smaller but you usually need a large volume of resources to keep your business going. The biggest shift in the industry is the move towards smaller businesses. The second biggest shift is the shift in consumerism. The beauty industry is now more personal and consumer involvement is tenfold what it was just 15-20 years ago.

Formulation Process: Highlight: FACULTY

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Beauty companies have a choice when it comes to formulating. Here’s an inside look on the different processes beauty companies can take in the beauty business. The formulation can be a stressful journey for a founder because there are so many different logical paths that you can take to get there. You can be as extreme as doing it completely in-house, purchasing a lab, hiring a chemist, purchasing all the material, doing it yourself, or self-production. The other extreme is white labeling something that exists. Which for some brands that work, for other brands it doesn’t. You’re pre-purchasing a formula that already exists, slapping your logo onto it and then you are bringing it into your distribution channel. FACULTY is in the middle. What we do at FACULTY is work with some of the best suppliers and formulators in the industry to put together custom formulas. Have them tailored to how we want them in a way that we believe is going to add value to the customer. Now, what does that mean? That means working with our advisors who have spent almost 30 years at some of the biggest makeup brands, who have created some of the makeup brands and skincare brands you probably use today, and determining what makes sense for the skin type we’re going after. When we think about the differences, the male skin type is much more porous, which means that grime, dirt, dust, debris get into your pores, clog them, and give you acne and all other skin problems that come from that. What we’ve realized is that the makeup products that exist on the market, do the same thing because they’re made with comedogenic ingredients and comedogenic ingredients clogs your pores. What we’ve said at FACULTY is whenever we get the chance, we will always make it with non-comedogenic ingredients. This means the products are better for your skin chemically, and leave you feeling good about what’s on your face and not worried about getting acne or any other skincare, irritations, and problems. We take all these design principles from trying to build a premium formula to thinking about the skin type we’re going after to the experience of pumping a product into your hand or taking it out of a bottle. We triangulate all of those together to come to a formula that we believe works for the market and our customers.

Beauty Industry Perspectives: How to Be Successful in this Industry

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The beauty business is quite competitive and fast-paced, but there are three important traits that will help you succeed. Jihan Thompson, the co-founder and CEO of Swivel Beauty, believes persistence is number one. Persistence means not giving up, whether you’ve heard no a million times or you’ve tried and failed. Keep figuring out solutions, advance your online beauty education, hone your craft, and keep improving. This level of persistence and not taking no for an answer is incredibly important. Number two, be a risk taker. Be willing to say yes when others say no. Be willing to put yourself out there, even if it feels a little bit scary. Your willingness to take risks helps get you to that next level in your beauty career. It will put you in a position for massive opportunities for growth. Put yourself out there. Take those calculated risks. No matter how scary they are, those are the ones that are going to really help grow your career. Lastly, Thompson says to focus on being business-minded. While the beauty industry can be such a creative field, it’s also super important to have business acumen. Think about how you’re going to strategically grow your business and invest in your ongoing beauty education. Contemplate how you’re going to get from where you are to where you want to go, your dreams and goals, and the steps you’ll need to take to get there. Don’t be afraid to think about the business side of things too at the start of your beauty career. When you put all of those traits together – you’re persistent, a risk taker, and understand the business side of what you’re doing – it creates a triple threat and helps you grow in your business.