HEARME
Brand Identity
Brand Strategy, Art Direction, Visual System, Packaging Design, Typography & Illustration System
Created a hybrid brand repositioning system for children & tweens skincare—spanning brand architecture, age-based product lines, logo hierarchy, packaging, illustration, and print assets—ensuring a clear, coherent experience across physical and digital touchpoints. Guided the full creative workflow from market and user-context analysis through system strategy and production-ready execution using Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, and Procreate, translating Haiermian’s inherited emotional equity into a contemporary brand system built for long-term trust, recognition, and sustained use.
Built on a legacy nostalgia brand, this project repositions Haiermian into HEARME and transforms inherited trust into a growth-oriented skincare system for children and tweens.
The project’s objective was to rebuild Haiermian into a contemporary, long-term brand system that can be clearly understood and continuously chosen today. This was achieved by establishing a clearer age-based structure, modernizing its visual language, and aligning product logic with children’s real growth stages.
Haiermian is deeply tied to childhood memories of “safety, gentleness, and reassurance” for a generation of Chinese consumers. Yet in today’s retail and content landscape, it has become nearly invisible, rarely noticed, discussed, or actively chosen by young families. Rather than treating this as a product problem, I framed it as a brand-system gap. It remains emotionally remembered, but no longer functions in contemporary decision contexts.
Through research into the brand’s history and current product structure, I found that its offerings remain concentrated in early-stage infant basics and seasonal hero items. Meanwhile, the market has split into two extremes: children either mimic adult skincare too early, or remain confined to simplified cleansing products with limited function and a single aesthetic. My approach was to rebuild HEARME as a balanced growth-oriented care system that connects parental trust with children’s emotional acceptance. The repositioning focuses on system clarity, including an age-specific architecture, a skin-change-aligned ingredient strategy, and a unified visual and packaging language, so the brand can be seen, understood, and continuously chosen again.
Centered on HEARME, I developed three continuous sub-lines based on rhythms of skin development and shifts in daily scenarios. Pureme focuses on early-stage care and barrier support through formula purity. Dearme supports habit formation and everyday protection. Growme responds to more visible oil–water fluctuations and early concerns in the growing stage, such as initial oiliness or mild breakouts.
Rather than separating products by age only, the structure integrates skin condition, psychological changes, and user initiative into one logic. This allows the system to extend naturally as children grow, avoiding abrupt transitions into entirely different care frameworks. “Growth” becomes a legible and sustainable product narrative that supports long-term use.
The logo system avoids both cartoon stereotypes in children’s brands and overly adult-coded symbols. It serves as an entry point for the brand’s character, emphasizing stability, softness, and openness. This keeps the identity approachable for children while maintaining parents’ trust in professionalism.
The HEARME master logo uses a twisted display type to express the emotional qualities of listening, companionship, and growth, and it aligns with the illustration system’s line rhythm. The sub-line logos combine the twisted typeface with a regular sans serif, retaining emotional warmth while strengthening readability and structure. The hierarchy is clear: the master logo builds recognition and memorability, while the sub-line marks support information clarity and long-term consistency.
The typography system is designed as a mediator between parents and children. It supports parents’ sense of professionalism while shaping children’s emotional comfort through soft strokes, clear structure, and a steady rhythm. I avoided both sharp commercial letterforms and overly childlike styles to maintain a balanced, long-term tone.
The system combines two related type styles. A slightly twisted display sans serif is used for the logo, product line names, and key visual text. Subtle irregularities in letter connections create a hand-drawn rhythm that aligns with the illustration language and helps attract children’s attention without losing credibility. A simplified body sans serif is used for descriptions, ingredients, and usage guidelines. It refines the display type’s proportions for long-form readability and supports clear information delivery. Together, the pairing functions as a built-in balance between affinity and trust.
The visual system uses bright but non-irritating colors to match children’s intuitive preferences and improve recognition across digital touchpoints. At the same time, it maintains restrained typographic order, clear information hierarchy, and generous whitespace to prevent the brand from feeling entertainment-driven. This creates a consistent baseline in which color draws children in, while structure supports parents’ trust across packaging, posters, and printed materials.
Illustration is treated as a functional bridge between ingredients, children’s perception, and parental confidence. Visual elements are said to come from real ingredients such as aloe vera, oats, shea butter, betaine, zinc oxide, witch hazel, and chamomile, translated into simplified plant and biological forms to communicate a natural, safe, and legible impression. A slightly twisted rhythm keeps the language approachable across age groups, while the mushroom motif carries forward brand memory as part of the ingredient ecosystem rather than a nostalgic decoration.
As a communication extension, the poster system follows a dual-reading structure. Parents assess credibility through text, while children connect emotionally through illustration. A consistent layout separates information and imagery across product themes, strengthening system clarity and recognizability.
An information booklet is included inside the packaging as a supplement to hierarchy and understanding. It follows the three product lines and their color cues to improve recognition and help children build stage awareness. Through illustrations and concise text, it explains age suitability, key ingredients, core benefits, and usage scenarios, supporting shared understanding between parents and children without manufacturing functional anxiety.
The packaging system uses a unified eco-friendly paper structure that forms through folding and interlocking, avoiding glue to reduce safety risk and material waste. The usage design is based on children’s real behaviors. A squeeze format helps control dosage, reduces waste, and prevents backflow contamination, making daily care easier to manage and easier to sustain as a routine. A shorter shelf life further reflects a restrained formulation approach, reinforcing trust through safety and transparency rather than heavy preservative dependence.
HEARME helped me see more clearly that children’s skincare is a complex system shaped by skin science, family dynamics, psychological development, and cultural perception, rather than a simplified version of adult logic. The value of design lies not only in amplifying efficacy claims, but in helping different users build shared understanding and trust. This project responds through an age-specific structure, a restrained visual language, and a habit-oriented product logic. It also clarifies my research direction: across different cultural and age contexts, I aim to use system-based design and emotional expression to translate “being understood” into sustainable experience structures and brand value, building credible relationships through long-term use.
SOURCES(COMPILED & CITED)
(1) China Parenting Cost Report 2024; National Bureau of Statistics
(2) National Bureau of Statistics of China; Cinda Securities
(3) Ministry of Civil Affairs of China
(4) Ministry of Civil Affairs of China; Cinda Securities Research Center
(5) iResearch Consulting; Industry Reports; Cinda Securities
(6) Kantar–JD Engine, China E-Commerce Data, Cinda Securities Research Center
(7) Kantar × Ocean Engine; China E-Commerce Research; Cinda Securities Research Institute
(8) 2024 Mobile Internet Parenting Industry Report; Aurora Mobile (MoonFox) Survey, 2024; Qinbaobao User Survey
(9) Magic Mirror Insights
(10) EasyView Analytics; Consumer Report (Public Channel); Cinda Securities Research
(11) Jigua Data, aggregated from Douyin, Kuaishou, and Xiaohongshu