Own concept brand · Beauty

HYDRA

A skincare brand built from zero to test product consistency across a full campaign.

HYDRA began as a test of whether I could build a complete skincare launch from scratch. I designed the brand, bottle, label and serum, then carried the same product across water, glass, skin and macro imagery. I chose serum because transparent glass, liquid, refraction and application are difficult to make believable. Each frame was designed to reveal something different about the product while keeping the bottle and visual world consistent throughout.

Services

Creative direction
Product design
AI image production

What I made

Brand + packaging
Launch campaign
Macro + texture imagery
Skin + ritual imagery

HYDRA key visual: a pool of pale blue serum seen from above beside a smaller droplet, the name across it, AI concept work

HYDRA hydration serum in a clear glass dropper bottle with a white cap on a pale ground with a long shadow, AI concept work

HYDRA hydration serum: a hand draws pale blue serum into the pipette above the open bottle, AI concept work

HYDRA hydration serum: a round pool of pale blue serum and one small drop beside it on a pale grey surface, AI concept work

A freckled woman lets a drop of HYDRA serum fall from the pipette onto her cheek, holding the open bottle, AI concept work

HYDRA hydration serum: the glass dropper bottle half submerged in clear water, AI concept work

Next project: Aesop Virēre

The brief

The brief was to launch a serum that does not exist. HYDRA° is my own concept brand, so I set the brief myself and treated it as a real launch. It needed a full set of AI skincare product photography, from the bottle on a plain ground to the serum on skin.

I wanted a brand world that feels clinical and calming while staying soft and desirable. The images had to sell the feeling of hydration and keep the product story simple. I imagined HYDRA° for women aged 22 to 30, as a serum that fits into a simple, everyday skincare routine, priced to sit alongside The Ordinary on a UK shelf.

That meant a set with clean product shots, glass, pale blue liquid, moving water and close-up application. At its centre is the drop, because the way a serum moves and sits on skin is the nearest a still image gets to showing that it works.

Nobody commissioned HYDRA° and nothing was photographed. Every frame is made with AI, and there was no studio day behind any of them. The finished set is six frames: four portrait images and two square macros.

The direction

HYDRA° sits at the soft, luminous end of my range. Much of my work lives in warmer, shadowed light, and this set shows the other side of it.

The palette is short. A white to pale grey ground, clear glass, a white dropper and a serum in a pale, watery blue. The bottle is a 30 ml glass dropper, its label little more than HYDRA° over HYDRATION SERUM in small black type. Light stays soft and even, with a single shadow falling away from the bottle in the hero.

For the ritual frame I cast one woman, in a plain white T-shirt with her hair pulled back, and kept her freckles and the texture of her skin.

Each frame does one of the four jobs I think most beauty launches need. The bottle on its own is the hero. The drop and the pipette pull are the texture and macro frames, and the key visual sets the name inside the drop. The ritual puts the serum on skin, and the bottle tipped at the waterline gives it a world.

What was hard

Liquid was the hardest part. The drop and the pipette pull each took several attempts before the serum moved slowly and caught the light the way a real one would. The AI-generated frames were the starting point, and I refined them by hand to get the liquid looking the way I wanted. That finishing work was an important part of making the serum feel believable and keeping both macro images consistent with the rest of the campaign.

The colour drifted early on, with the first bottles coming back a saturated blue and then closer to mint before the serum settled at the pale blue in the finished set.

The label needed care too. Type on glass is where AI beauty product photography often gives itself away, so I built the bottle without text and set the label on afterwards. I placed it again on the bottle she holds in the ritual frame.

I tried the water frame several ways. Early versions floated the bottle in a bright blue pool seen from above. The one I kept tips it at the waterline against the same pale ground as the rest, with ripples and fine bubbles along the glass. Keeping one look across a set comes down to decisions like that, with each new frame checked against the ones already finished.