Good things inside: Seachange’s brand for TWYG honours the rare extract in their skincare products — The Brand Identity – Home of the Greatest in Graphic & Brand Design

The story of TWYG is closely intertwined with that of ancient Totara trees, native to New Zealand. The brand (pronounced ‘twig’) has launched the world’s first luxury skincare range powered by high-dosage BIOACTIVE TOTAROL™, an ingredient found in the heartwood of Totara trees. The Maori people used Totara to build their waka (canoe) because the trees are resistant to rot and decay, even decades after they have fallen. In the early 1990s scientists discovered that Totarol was preserving the wood. Each of TWYG’s products is enriched with this rare super-ingredient – found to be more powerful than Vitamin E and Manuka honey – sourced from fallen Tōtara trees, ensuring that no trees are ever harmed in its production.

The brand collaborated with Auckland-based design studio Seachange to encapsulate this rich history in a fitting name and identity, and the team, led by Partner & Creative Director Amanda Gaskin did just that. Initial workshops with the brand led Seachange to the name TWYG, “which represents the regenerative power of the product; just as a twig is symbolic of new life, TWYG products are scientifically proven to regenerate and renew skin cell turnover,” Gaskin tells us.

To centre the brand, the team custom-designed the wordmark, with soft curves in the serifs that evoke the forms of roots and branches. “We wanted to create a legacy mark that would stand the test of time, while linking back to the product’s natural roots,” shares Gaskin. The custom typeface is quietly supported by GT Alpina and Neue Haas Grotesk used in taglines and longer copy, which are peppered with certain words and phrases set in italics, to create moments of emphasis.

A unique challenge of the project was nailing the packaging, which was informed by the idea of ‘a forest of skincare.’ The totemic vessels, which Gaskins says are the “hero of the brand,” resemble a forest-like silhouette when grouped together. The dramatic forms of the lids, cleverly seen as concentric circles when viewed from the top, take notes from tree rings, which develop over a tree’s lifetime. “The custom lids required intricate engineering to achieve their unique shapes, particularly challenging given our commitment to using recycled plastic – a material known for its difficulty in manipulation,” shares Gaskin.

The founders of TWYG were committed to using recycled materials wherever possible. “We went through multiple rounds and iterations to get the lids just right, and landed on an interlocking solution to make sure the recycled plastic held its shape and strength.” Seachange designed the vessels to be keepsakes, and to ensure that customers can reuse and cherish the packaging for a long time, the TWYG team is currently developing refills for the full range of products.

The monochromatic outer packaging uses a textured stock to draw the mind to tree barks, and upon unboxing, it leads to a burst of the bright orange of the vessels – a colour that’s picked from the heartwood of Totara trees, and one that ensures that TWYG products always shine in your vanity shelf.