Antinorm X Stratedgy

A comprehensive brand identity system that challenges industry conventions and creates a new category in Indian beauty

Background & Brief

India’s beauty and personal care market, while rapidly expanding, operates on a fundamental contradiction. Despite women becoming one of the country’s fastest-growing consumer forces, the industry continues to serve them with solutions designed for a life that doesn’t suit them—aspirational 10-step routines, vertical product categories and global formulations that fail in Indian climate conditions. The industry continued asking “What’s her skin type?” when the real question should have been “What does her day look like?”

Aparna Saxena, a former Silicon Valley investment analyst, returned to India with a product-first mindset rooted in tech investing. She created a multifunctional beauty brand with category-redefining solutions built at the intersection of data, functionality and beauty minimalism. She then approached Stratedgy to come on board as branding partners and bring her vision to life.

The brief to Stratedgy was clear: create a brand identity led by originality and research, which communicated what their value proposition could be. We need to visually communicate radical utility and multifunctionality at a glance, break through beauty industry noise with confidence and speak directly to India’s smartest, busiest women.

Strategy & Creative Process

Stratedgy’s approach began with diagnosing both the consumer’s mindspace and shelf space. The team conducted extensive consumer research that revealed some key insights:

Personal care is squeezed between daily obligations, not a leisurely ritual

Women are value-conscious, not price-sensitive—they’ll pay for products that genuinely work

Ingredient-based personalization misses the point; functional precision delivered with speed is the answer

If a product isn’t made for Indian weather, it fails the real-world test

The research methodology included activity mapping, time-use studies, and deep dives into how high-performing women actually make purchase decisions. The positioning strategy centred on lifestyle-first thinking. Data became the foundation for every strategic and creative decision.

The naming exploration was extensive, considering multiple directions before landing on Antinorm. The name needed to:

Capture the brand’s anti-establishment ethos

Be memorable and ownable

Signal rebellion without alienation

Antinorm achieved all objectives—it’s provocative yet accessible, clearly positioning the brand as the antithesis of beauty industry norms while remaining memorable.

Antinorm’s design approach follows the same path, challenging industry conventions and resetting expectations for how beauty brands should look and communicate. By proving that multifunctional products can have bold, confident aesthetics without defaulting to clinical minimalism or aspirational luxury, the work expands the design vocabulary available to challenger brands.

The bold, confident aesthetic successfully differentiates Antinorm from both mass-market and premium beauty competitors, creating distinct visual territory in an oversaturated market. The distinctive visual system creates immediate recognition across touchpoints. The bold colour palette, confident typography and sassy, rebellious messaging work cohesively to build brand memorability.

Results & Impact

Antinorm launched as a direct rejection of excess in beauty, and its packaging became its positioning. The brand crossed from product to mindset. Retail and marketplace expansion is now underway, led by brand pull rather than push.

The brand achieved nearly 5% conversion on its website and reached 4 million accounts in 5 months. Revenue grew a whopping 150% from month 1 to month 4, with an early ROAS averaging 1.5-2.5. Products sold out in 45-day cycles without heavy discounting, and over 80% of users rated products at 4-5 stars. The repeat purchase rate remained notably high for a young beauty brand—a clear signal of adoption and trust.

The design system successfully drove the intended shift: women switching from multi-step routines to single Antinorm products that replace anything from 5 to 11 beauty products. Consumer reviews consistently reflect the core strategy of speed, ease and efficacy, and the brand has become shorthand for no-nonsense beauty.

Strong organic creator support emerged without incentivized seeding and unprompted user-generated content emphasized the “luxury of less” positioning. Five new SKUs were developed post-launch while preserving the design system with no dilution. High Instagram save rates and story engagement around clarity and copy tone demonstrated that the visual identity resonated beyond aesthetics to communicate brand philosophy.

In a market built to sell more, Antinorm’s design solved better and became its differentiation. Commercial traction followed cultural relevance, and a research-led, behaviour-first approach ultimately created a brand that performs as intelligently as its consumer. This is what design achieves when strategy precedes aesthetic, and when data informs creativity.