Wedge’s Bastét toothpaste brand design makes absolutely no sense for its category – and perhaps that’s what makes it so utterly gorgeous

The useful part

"Their mission was to build a premium, high performance oral care company that earns its place on the beauty counter," Wedge adds. This led to the central brand idea "A Ritual for Renewal" – something which absolutely that idea of a brand with functionality at its core, but the beauty counter in its heart. The name itself is also very much in the realm of high-end beauty: the accented 'é' alone connotes "French" to even those with sub – Encore Tricolore language proficiency – and what does French connote?

How it works

• So this is stylish in its truest sense – like a well-worn tooth-gap, it's the barely perceptible quirks and strange bits and things that downright shouldn't work, but absolutely do, which makes this project...
• Branding & Packaging for toothpaste Bastét by Wedge – BP&O BP&O Brand Archive ↗ Logo Archive ↗ Articles Collections Logos Motion About BP&O Plus Login Search Menu Brand Archive ↗ Logo Archive ↗ Articles...
• Sure, that work was nice – but Bastét is a whole new level of nice.
• Apparently it was nHA's proven ability to support the remineralization of teeth that really got Wedge going in terms of how to consider the brand's positioning as something "restorative," based around the...
• "We see daily oral care as a restorative moment of self care through the same lens." The copy continues to say that the toothpaste is "designed with integrity to work in harmony with our whole body and...

What to take from it

What first made me adore this work, however, is the main brand typography: it's absolutely incongruous to its category – sort of Art Deco in its gentle ornamentation, all antiquated like stone-carved letters – but it works not in spite of being outlandish compared to its peers, but most likely precisely because of it. Well, high-end beauty products, among other things (wine, berets, baguettes, and so on). The packaging itself gets rather poetic in its copywriting style – arguably a little too wanky, for want of a better term: "Inspired by the goddess Bastet whose daily duty is to protect, nurture, and share beauty," it states.

Example or evidence

• Daubenton, a high-contrast serif display typeface designed by Olivier Dolbeau of Paris-based type foundry Velvetyne.
• The typeface is a revival based on the lettering found carved into the stone sited on the façade of the Great Evolution Gallery (and surrounding streets like Rue Daubenton) at the National Museum of Natural...
• I'm also a huge fan of the art direction: in places it's downright ridiculous, in the best possible way.
• If it weren't so camp, it would almost be sexy – but if it was sexy, tbh I'd be fine with that.

Details worth keeping

Said brand identity design was created by Los Angeles- and Montréal-based creative studio Wedge (Matheson Food Company, Ami Ami), which has a decent history in reinventing the wheel of nasher-care: earlier this year we covered its vibrant take on dental floss with Cocolab. Earn its place on the beauty counter it certainly does. Indeed, "clean" is a rather loose, amorphous, and flimsy promise at best (especially considering the fact that 'hero ingredient' nHA is itself synthetic), but it's hard to care about what the hell that means when the brand looks this good.

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