Why a narrower focus has made Orchidea Agency a stronger agency — The Brand Identity – Home of the Greatest in Graphic & Brand Design

Orchidea Agency designs for beauty, wellness and supplements – and nothing else. The branding agency started in 2019 to work with the next generation of direct-to-consumer brands, then narrowed as beauty and supplement clients kept arriving. That focus is what built the rest of it: Orchidea works the industry’s trade shows and knows the packaging suppliers and manufacturers well enough to tell a founder where a custom shape is possible and where an existing mould will do the job, and Founder & Creative Director Valeria Shaposhnikova reads the scientific research on the ingredients herself. In this interview, she tells us what specialising changed, why brand guidelines have to do more than set rules, and what has to be true for an identity to stretch across a range that keeps growing.

TBI Hi Valeria, how are things with you at the moment?

VS At the moment, I’m focused on how we connect creative direction with business decisions at Orchidea. As founder and creative director, I’m always asking what our work will do for the client. Will this packaging work both on shelves and on screen? Will this bundle still be profitable once you factor in delivery? Will this page convert? Those conversations are becoming a bigger part of how we work as a team.

Last year felt a little scary in terms of what was happening to our profession. Right now, though, I feel much more certain that people still need people. And taste matters. With so much information out there and the internet flooded with AI slop, it becomes even more important to be someone a client can trust to choose, curate, and make decisions.

And by curating, I don’t just mean choosing pictures for a moodboard. I mean making decisions that shape the brand. You see so many brands at the moment that feel a little blank, that don’t really catch your attention.

That’s what we’re focusing on at Orchidea. How to send the right signals to the right audience through brand identity. For the beauty, wellness, and supplement brands we work with, those decisions really matter. We’re learning all the time, and I think that’s what makes this moment interesting.

TBI Four years ago, you narrowed the agency to beauty, wellness and healthcare. What did the first year of that look like?

VS Actually, it happened quite organically. When we launched Orchidea seven years ago, our idea was to work with the next generation of D2C brands – brands that were part of a new wave of culture. We started attracting more beauty and supplement brands, and our focus grew from there. By the time we narrowed the agency’s positioning four years ago, we already had some projects in those categories and a clearer understanding of why we wanted to go further.

And honestly, these are things we love working on and love as customers, too. I have plenty of supplements at home, and I’m quite a geek about them. I read scientific research to understand the ingredients and how they work. As a team, we’re obsessed with beauty, discussing each new launch, reviewing packaging materials, testing new serums, blushes and so on. There’s a lot of personal curiosity behind the work.

Another thing about beauty is that the process of bringing a brand to market is quite long. Founders and their teams are developing formulas, and that can take a year or more. By the time the product launches, six months, a year, or even longer may have passed since we created the packaging design.

That really pushes us to think beyond trends. We want the design to feel fresh when it launches and stay relevant over time. Balancing freshness with timelessness is one of the main pillars of our approach at Orchidea.

TBI How has that narrowing changed what you can do for a client?

VS One of the most interesting changes has been custom packaging. We explore shapes, look for inspiration in older product designs, and work through the practical requirements. How does a vessel work with its cap? What does the surface feel like? Those details shape the whole product.

We also attend Cosmoprof and build relationships with packaging suppliers and manufacturers. That helps us understand where we can create something custom and where an existing mould can work.

For the beauty brand Annadea, we thought about how the brand could express the products’ benefits through every detail. How would the identity work on something as small as a blush compact or an eye pencil? Could the finish of the plastic communicate the same idea? We chose a glossy surface for the Glow serum, and it became a signature finish for the brand.

In that project, small details carried the idea. We wanted people to feel drawn to the product, to want it in their bag or on their bathroom shelf.

So the specialisation has changed what we notice and what we can anticipate. That thinking runs through everything we create, from the packaging to the website and launch materials.

TBI What does healthcare work ask of you that beauty and wellness don’t?

VS For me, it comes down to one word – trust. When we work on healthcare or supplements, we have to keep asking whether the packaging feels trustworthy. Even if we’re creating something warm and approachable, closer to wellness, people still need to feel confident in the product and understand what it’s there to do.

We borrow a lot from beauty and wellness, and those industries increasingly overlap. You see supplement brands launching beauty lines, and the other way around. There’s room to bring those visual worlds together, but that sense of trust has to stay at the centre.

There are also different regulations to work through. Beauty has its own requirements, and supplements and healthcare have theirs. That affects what we can communicate and how we present information on the packaging. So trust is both in how the brand feels and in how clearly and responsibly it communicates.

TBI Your core team has at least six or seven years of experience each. Why hire that way?

VS We want a core team of strong, multidisciplinary designers who can take a task, own it, and deliver something truly different. Our work spans brand strategy, identity, packaging and custom packaging, websites, and launch materials, so we need people who understand how those pieces work together.

We have very high standards for quality, and experience helps people make decisions independently and carry an idea through to the final execution. Of course, we also bring in mid-level designers. But the core team stays more experienced because we need people who can take responsibility for the work and keep that standard consistent.

We need people who can take responsibility for the work.

TBI How do your trend reports show up in your work?

VS We started our newsletter two years ago, and it’s become a great knowledge base for us. Every time we prepare an edition, we learn something. We analyse what we’re seeing, draw our own conclusions, and discuss interesting projects and ideas internally. We really enjoy that process.

The trend reports bring together what we’ve researched and discovered over time. We’re preparing a new one this year, too. For us, it’s a way to get on the same page and put our observations into words. Through that process, you start to see more clearly what’s a meaningful signal and what’s just a one-day trend.

That feeds directly into our client work. It helps us build clearer presentations, bring more strategic thinking to the conversation, and better understand what’s happening in beauty, wellness, and supplements. When we’re making decisions for a brand, we have more context to draw on and can cut through the noise.

Honestly, I’d recommend the practice of analysing and summarising your thoughts into some piece that you can share. Having to explain what you’ve found really helps you understand it.

TBI A client arrives with a moodboard. What do you do with it?

VS We try to ignore it. I’m joking! We always take a client’s moodboard into consideration, but we start with strategic questions. Where is the brand going to launch? Is it DTC, retail, or both? Does it need to stand out on a shelf? Who is it for, and how should it make them feel?

We try to imagine the person who will actually use the product and explore what might interest them. So alongside the moodboard, we ask clients to work through quite a detailed brief. Some of the questions are strategic; others are almost existential, about their ambitions and dreams for the brand. We want to go deeper because that’s what helps us create something more precise.

Then we create our own moodboards to explore the nuances. Different directions might all work for the brand, but small differences can change how it feels and what it communicates. We use those boards to make those distinctions visible and discuss them together.

For us at Orchidea, it starts with understanding what the beauty, wellness, or supplement brand needs to communicate, who it’s for, and where people will discover it. That strategy guides the brand identity and packaging. Then we begin shaping it through images and references.

TBI What has to be true for an identity to work across a product range?

VS The products need to feel like one brand, but people also need to understand the difference between them. At Orchidea, we consider five things when designing a product range – scalability, differentiation, memorability, how clearly each product’s benefits come through, and how everything holds together. We check every design decision against those criteria.

When we rebranded haircare brand Remilia, we moved from a vivid mint colour to a more grounded palette. That gave the range a more elevated feel and set a direction for future products. We kept the cork cap as a recognisable part of the brand’s heritage, connecting the new design to what already existed. For each new launch, we consider how its colour expresses the product’s benefits while fitting into the wider palette.

We start by understanding each product’s purpose and what the brand plans to launch next. If you have three products today, the system should have room for a much bigger range later. Otherwise, something that looks beautiful at launch can quickly become confusing.

For me, a successful range is one where customers can recognise the brand, understand which product is for them, and still recognise you when something new arrives.

TBI Do you work with founders preparing to launch, established brands entering retail, or teams planning a rebrand?

VS We work with brands at all three stages. For an established brand planning a rebrand, we look at how to preserve its heritage while refreshing it for a new audience without losing its existing audience.

We also work with brands preparing to enter retail. We did the full rebrand for Remilia, and now they’re entering Target Beauty Studio. Seeing a brand we’ve worked with reach that stage feels like a big win for us too.

For founders preparing to launch, we help bring the brand to life, from strategy and design to working with packaging manufacturers and preparing launch campaigns. There are so many decisions at that stage. We help founders avoid unnecessary mistakes and focus their budget on what they actually need now.

We’re honest about what we think will help. We care about how the brand performs, whether people buy the product, and whether the decisions we make support its growth.

TBI What do you do differently when the client has an in-house design team?

VS We start by listening. The in-house team knows the brand deeply – what they’ve tried, what works, and what challenges they face every day. That knowledge is our starting point. We want to build a long-term relationship with them – and honestly, a bit of a friendship too. You need that trust to work well together.

Our role is to become an external creative partner, bringing fresh eyes and more tools for them to work with. Because we move between beauty, wellness, and healthcare projects, we can bring ideas from different categories and help the team explore possibilities they might not have had time to consider.

The approach depends on the task. For a rebrand, we start with strategy and decide together what to keep, what people already recognise, and what needs to change. For a visual refresh, we explore how much more the existing identity can do.

We also think about the handover from the beginning. The team needs clear guidelines, practical examples, and room to create. They’re the people who will use the identity every day, so we want them to feel involved, excited, and confident building on it.

In both cases, we want the in-house team to feel involved and excited about the result. They’re the people who will work with it every day, so we need to give them something they understand, can build on, and feel ownership of.

TBI What are you seeing in beauty and wellness that hasn’t reached shelves yet?

VS In supplements, longevity is a big direction, and we’re working on an NAD booster brand right now. I think we’ll see more products positioned around cellular health reaching shelves. For us, the interesting challenge is how to make that complex science feel clear, trustworthy, and approachable.

I also expect more brands to bring topical and ingestible products into the same range. What happens when one brand offers both a serum and a supplement? The identity needs to connect them while making it clear what each product does.

In beauty, skinification is extending into body care and makeup, which we’ve explored in our own brand work. These shifts are already happening, but I think we’ll see them become much more connected.

That’s what interests me most – we’re designing for brands whose next product might belong to a completely different category. We have to leave room for that from the beginning.