About LiaLab

LiaLab is a local skincare brand that supplies the most premium hotels in the Krasnaya Polyana mountain resort. Its wholesale business into luxury hotels ran ahead of its retail: at retail it couldn’t read as a premium brand, and it wanted a stronger idea it could scale. LiaLab had been using ‘express branding’ from a well-known Russian agency — a service you aren’t allowed to edit — and had outgrown it. It is a small producer and not a cosmeceutical, so the goal was to bring together a scientific feel, a luxury level and natural ingredients, and to build the brand and its sales channels first and grow production under it later — the right order. Wave started with a brand platform and a small brand architecture that separated LiaLab from a sub-brand it kept being confused with. The idea: ingredients are gathered at different mountain altitudes, so the identity became a layered silhouette of mountains — each layer its own muted, monochrome color and its own abstract pattern devoted to a specific ingredient, turning a chemical formula into a graphic one, which became the core packaging metaphor. Wave delivered the brand platform, brand architecture, identity and the cosmetics packaging.