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Serious Studio Seriously Fools Us All With Serious Face Cosmetics

by Casha Doemland on 07/15/2019 | 5 Minute Read

When it comes to the world of beauty and cosmetics, the possibilities are quite endless. Hello Ava has an entire quiz determining what beauty products are the most suitable for your skin's needs. It also asks what type of brands you prefer, from the heavy hitters like Neutrogena, organic, homemade brands, and even Korean beauty companies. Voila, just like that, you have curated products designed specifically for you.

Guess what? They're not the only company that will help find your Cinderella fit. BareMineral's has MatchCo. Technology that aids you in finding the right shade of foundation, as does Lancome and Sephora

So when Manila-based design agency Serious Studio introduced Serious Face, a future-forward cosmetics company that lets you create your own signature shade, of course, we believed it! It's not that far off the beaten path in the industry. 

You can only imagine our surprise, and disappointment, when we discovered it was all a clever hoax for April Fool's Day. 

Intrigued, and also secretly manifesting that they would tell us it's in the works of becoming a reality, we reached out to Deane Miguel-Cruz, co-founder of Serious Studio to learn more. 


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What sparked the start of conceptual beauty line "Beauty The Way Hue Want It?" Did you want to deliver a believable collection for April Fools? 

Everything started out as a joke over a team lunch—somehow the ideas just kept pouring out as soon as the initial one struck. We can't even remember who on the team initiated the thought, but it gave us a lot of good laughs. At some point, we looked at each other and said, "this is really good, we'd be crazy not to do something with this."

"Beauty The Way Hue Want It" was our way of communicating the concept, and it was built around the idea of allowing anyone to create their own shades of makeup. Through our so-called patented technology, we can mix and produce your color in a multipurpose beauty stick called the Magic Wand. It's a "pigment” of your imagination come to life! 

What was one of the biggest goals you set out to achieve with this project, sans tricking the world, and how did you accomplish it? 

The biggest goal, if we're being honest, was just to amuse ourselves. Simple as that. We just wanted to have fun, and to do something purely creative – not limited to any client brief, budget, or anything. 

It was our way of showing the world what we're capable of if given the freedom to call the shots. Anything else that came as a result of the project was an added bonus. 

With all the laughs we had, and the sheer happiness we felt upon launching, the project made it all worth it. 

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Were there any cosmetics or beauty companies that you looked to for inspiration when creating this full line? 

We were inspired by a mix of makeup companies, especially the very millennial beauty brands of today. I don't think we need to mention them. Being paraben-free, cruelty-free and whatever-free are the beauty buzzwords these days, so we also wanted to include these benefits. Ultimately though, the concept was something we'd like to fully credit to ourselves as there's nothing quite like it available today. 

You created an entire website that only revealed the prank when you clicked "Add To Cart." How much fun did the team have creating product images, as well as the names for products?

We did everything from scratch and on our own! The shoot was very DIY, and we asked favors from friends and family to pull off the photos. We mixed paints to achieve the colors we wanted and deliberately made sure to come up with ridiculous shades/names to communicate the "fakeness" of the concept (in case the joke wasn't clear enough). 

Since the brand is all about allowing you to be able to come up with the shades of your choice, we deliberately wanted them to evoke everyday items that would be so "covetable" as a beauty product. Funnily enough, Tang Orange ended up having the most number of add-to-carts. People really want that orange powder aesthetic! 

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What was the inspiration behind creating your own technology to allow consumers to create their own shades? 

Personalization is one of the key factors that our market (the millennials, and younger!) actively look for when choosing a brand to patronize. It stems from this desire for identity and self-expression that older/more traditional beauty brands have a hard time keeping up with. 

We think that our concept empowers the consumer by giving them the freedom to choose, instead of having to rely on what the market is currently (and redundantly) offering. 

While our tone for this project was very humorous, I think that something like this would make beauty more inclusive for people of different colors too, which again, goes back to empowerment. 

We also think that its quite forward of us to offer a multipurpose beauty stick, instead of labeling something as "just lipstick" or "just blush." We know its possible to have an all-purpose beauty paint product, and we wish more companies would go this route instead of making customers buy separate/ individual cosmetics.

 

Even as an April Fool's joke, are you pitching this around? 

No, because we like to choose our battles. People have come to us saying they wish it were real (don't worry, us too). We'd be more than happy to work on beauty brands though, and Serious Face is a testament to that. But hey, if anyone wants to really make this happen, we'd be more than happy to be on board. 

Is there anything else we should know about this project?

No animals were harmed in the making of this brand, and Tang, please don't sue us. More to come soon.