Bomb Balm
A passion-project packaging redesign for a friend's decade-old, homemade lip balm, turning a kitchen-counter recipe into a real brand.
The Brief
My friend has hand-made this lip balm for 10 years, gifting it at weddings, holidays, and care packages, after struggling to find a store-bought balm that actually healed dry lips instead of just moisturizing them temporarily. She wanted to give it a real identity: Bomb Balm, mint + vanilla, made from coconut oil, beeswax, kokum butter, shea butter, mango butter, and essential oils. The deliverable was a label for a standard .15 oz clear tube, with one or two colors to keep costs down.
Role
Designer
The Concept: Bubbly Brutalism
I built the direction around a moodboard I called Bubbly Brutalism, pairing the inflated, bouncy lettering popular in brands like Fool's and Nuud with the stripped-back, information-forward layout of brutalist packaging design. The idea was to let the logotype itself feel fun and hand-made (matching a product literally made by hand), while keeping everything around it—ingredients, flavor callout, usage line—clean and legible, almost clinical by contrast. That tension is the whole brand: a home remedy with the confidence of a real product.
Design Direction
Type
The logo is set in Mastone, a bold bubble display typeface inspired by "a mix of y2k culture, streetwear visuals, and brutalism plus an experimental touch of bubble graffiti styles." It felt like the perfect fit for the Bubbly Brutalism direction.
Color
Using a saturated mint green, similar to the nuud reference, playing off of the mint flavor.
Design elements
I used a contrasted badge to call out the flavor, so it's easy to catch at a quick glance. As I was exploring the logo, the uppercase B's in Mastone reminded me of a butterfly's wings, which felt like a fun extra element to bring into the packaging. "For bomb lips" became our tagline, giving the product a catchy line that makes it feel like a real, finished product rather than a homemade gift. Ingredients are set in a bolder but still legible typeface, Codec Pro, to keep that information easy to read at small sizes.
