Sole designer: from an 8-person startup to a P&G shelf
I was part of This Is L.'s 8-person startup team as the only designer. At the time, feminine care packaging was clinical and kept the product hidden — we used bold botanical patterns and a healthy, no-shame message to deliver that clearly to customers on the shelf, and it worked: the brand stood out in a category where every brand looked the same. After Procter & Gamble's acquisition, I remained the sole designer, working with the brand director to extend the product family and develop new lines for retail at scale.
Clear Tampon Tube
Clear, not opaque, so the product is visible and color signals absorbency.
Resealable Pad Pouch
A soft resealable pouch, not a cardboard box, with room for bold botanical pattern.
Triangular Condom Box
A triangular shape, not a flat box, recognizable from across the store.
Feminine care packaging used to look apologetic. We wanted to change that.
Most period and sexual-wellness packaging used the same pastel colors and clinical language. It didn't say clearly what the product actually did, and it made the whole category feel a little embarrassing to shop. We didn't want to follow those norms. We wanted to break them.
Category convention
- Soft pastel colors, meant to look discreet
- Clinical, indirect language
- Opaque packaging that hides the product
- Most brands look almost the same on the shelf
This Is L.'s approach
- Bold botanical prints in strong, saturated color
- Direct, clear product language
- Transparent packaging that shows the product
- A shape you can recognize from across the store
The positioning behind the design
The brand's own guidelines define the purpose in one line: making beautifully-designed, organic products accessible to people everywhere. Everything downstream — packaging, tone, photography — had to serve that.
"By women, for women."— printed on every This Is L. pouch
The building blocks
Pulled directly from the brand guidelines: the mark, the color system, and the typographic hierarchy that had to hold together as the product line kept growing.
A bold, square-set "L" references the established rules of the category. The circular dot breaks that rigidity on purpose — a small signal of change inside a strict form.
Black and white anchor the system. Forest Green (#006F62) and two mint tones carry the botanical story. Copper (Pantone 876C) shows up on physical hardware — lids, foil, bag trim.
One botanical illustration style, recolored per product line — leaves and flowers for the core range, water for Super absorbency, night sky for Super Plus.
Bebas Neue for product names (shelf impact). Century Gothic Bold for ingredient claims (trust). Archer Book Italic for the small aside underneath (warmth, personality).
The same system, one more surface: thisisL.com
Packaging wasn't the only thing I owned. As the sole designer, I also set the typographic hierarchy, color tokens, and tone of voice for the website — documented in the same guidelines the manufacturer and buyers worked from, so the brand felt identical whether someone met it on a shelf or on a screen.
One typographic system, five weights of the same voice
Verlag Book carries the same warm, editorial tone as the packaging headlines. The impact counter reuses the bold display treatment from shelf callouts, and the give-back line ties straight back to the one-for-one model printed on every pouch.
- H1–H5 hierarchy specified down to exact font weight, for a team that would grow past just me
- Mint and off-white tokens carried over from the packaging color system, not reinvented
- Same one-for-one message that appears on-pack, repeated as the homepage's proof point
Welcome to a new period.
Award-winning organic products without the pesticides, chlorine, fragrances or dyes.
Tampons & PadsNew packaging system, from scratch
I was part of the 8-person team as the only designer, working closely with the CEO, buyers, and manufacturers. Together, we used packaging to communicate that the products were organic and to send a healthy, no-shame message to customers. Three changes made the biggest difference.
A resealable pouch that doesn't hide the product
Most brands used a stiff cardboard box. We switched to a soft resealable pouch, which gave us more surface area for bold patterns and clearer messaging.
- Botanical patterns replaced clinical color palettes
- Copy changed from clinical to more human and approachable
- Designed to stand out on the shelf, not blend in
Clear tubes that show the product instead of hiding it
Most tampon packaging is opaque. We made ours clear, and used color to show the variant and absorbency level.
- Clear tubes let customers see the product, which builds trust
- Minimal, modern labeling reinforced the transparency
- Changed the product from something hidden to something displayed openly
A recyclable paper refill box
Designed for sustainability and system thinking: a 60-count paper box that refills the 30-count tube.
- Reduced plastic through refill-based packaging
- Kept the tube’s look, so box and tube read as one system
- Extended the brand in a more eco-conscious direction
What the redesign helped scale
Public numbers from press coverage of the P&G acquisition — these connect the packaging redesign to the business result.
Sources: P&G acquisition announcement (Feb 2019); Forbes; Marketing Dive; Drug Store News. Deal value is a press estimate, not officially disclosed.
Being the only designer across both the startup and the acquisition taught me to design for people I'd never meet in the room — a manufacturer sizing a tube on another continent, a buyer at Target deciding whether a shelf color read as premium, a bigger team inheriting the system once P&G came in. None of them could ask me what I meant. The system had to say it for me.
If I did it again, I'd write the digital guidelines on day one instead of after retail was already moving — pack and web ended up speaking the same language, just later than they should have.