For girls who love to spend their time outdoors, there are either too many
or too few makeup options that support their adventurous, on-the-go lifestyles. There weren’t many brands explicitly catered to those girls, so our team set out to create a cosmetics brand that would merge the gap between an outdoors and makeup brand.

 

Over the course of three months, DIRT Cosmetics was created and refined to create that happy medium. We created a brand identity and built out elements of the brand by establishing it through a website, social media, marketing graphics, merchandise, and products.

The palettes were designed with a mirror inside. They only consisted of four eyeshadow colors, keeping it compact and simple for users to take along with them as they travel and do outdoor activities. We chose the eyeshadow colors to reflect the landscape on the front of the palette as a special edition line of landscapes. 
 

We refined the palettes after the team, and our mentors gave feedback to simplify the designs and bridge the inconsistencies between them. We kept the topography lines inside the palette to reflect the pattern of our original line of products.

The project manager presented the team with colors for the brand, making the designs more stylistically consistent. The colors began with browns, yellows, and oranges but transformed into a brighter selection. Widening the range of colors for the brand allowed the designs to be similar in tone and consistency.

The challenge of aligning our ideas stemmed from our individual opinions of what an “outdoorsy person” is. We struggled to be on the same page with many things, and eventually, we had to decide on a brand purpose and target audience to achieve consistency across the brand.
 

We hustled and got everything done, executing at an alarming speed so we could look at our work side by side and decide what fit the brand and what didn’t. Our mentors suggested revisions, and we went back to work fixing the things that needed to be revised. We refined our style even more and made sure our design decisions made sense.
 

We were able to create a brand that was a happy medium between makeup and the outdoors–something that has never existed before! We learned how to hustle, work as a team, fill in for each other, and rise to the occasion. We learned about the dynamics of teamwork.

Working as a team is hard–people are different and have different backgrounds and points of view. But we achieved something beautiful that we wouldn’t have without different opinions and revisions. We learned to take critical feedback to make refinements. We learned to bring concerns up to our leaders. 
 

But most importantly, we learned how to sacrifice our personal opinions for the benefit and success of the brand. We learned that it’s not about specific things we want; it’s about the general goal of the team. We’re grateful for what we’ve learned from this project; we know this experience will help us in our future careers.