Two Brands, One Foundation (Double Branding)
Intro
A healthtech mobile application that generates personalized skincare routines through AI-powered face analysis. The app needed to support two distinct brands: - One feature-rich and expressive - One minimal and editorial As a Product Designer, I focused on simplifying the existing system and adapting it across both brand directions, ensuring consistency while enabling a more minimal product experience.
Impact
Streamlining workflows and systemizing the foundation reduced inefficiencies, improved consistency, and enabled teams to focus on higher-value work.
↑
System Adaptability
One system now supports both a complex and a minimal brand
↓ 40%
Component Complexity
Reduced number of components and variations while maintaining full functionality
Problem
From Complex Product to Minimal Brand Experience
”The current interface feels too heavy for our brand—we need something simpler and more refined.”
The product started from Material Design as its foundation - a reasonable, well-established starting point that gave the first brand real structure and functionality to build on. That first brand was feature-rich and expressive, and Material Design's density and component richness suited it well. But when a second, minimal and editorial brand direction was introduced, the same foundation became a liability rather than an asset: Material Design's own conventions - visible elevation and dense component variants were inherently at odds with an editorial feel.
- 40-50 UI components in the original system
- 2× design and development effort required per feature
- 15–20 screens impacted per new feature release
Key findings
Auditing What Was Actually Brand-Specific
-
Most of the complexity lived in Material Design's own visual conventions, not the underlying function The core interaction patterns - how a form works, and how navigation behaves, were largely reusable across both brands
-
Component variations had accumulated ad hoc, on top of an already-opinionated base Many of the 40–50 components weren't just Material Design defaults - they were one-off adjustments made under deadline to stretch
-
The mismatch became clear through building, not just through auditing Rather than a purely theoretical audit, the first few screens for the minimal brand were actually designed and built directly in Material Design.
Solution
Designing Through Reduction and Adaptation
