Design Trends

Today, I looked at design trends on cosmetic websites. I'm forever shopping on these sites, but I never actually noticed their designs and how they're similar/different.

The first website I looked at was MAC Cosmetics, and I noticed how fancy their site was. For instance, they have snowflakes falling from the top of the screen for Christmas, so they're obviously keeping up with the holiday trends.

Also, I noticed they used black and white a lot, and flat icons. These icons are basically 'flat' and they don't have a shine to them and look like a bubble (like the old Apple iOS). However, when your cursor slides over them, they cause a shadow on the sides.

Maybelline was similar to MAC, in the colour theme and icon look, however they did differ.

Maybelline had bigger images, and more advertisements. It hasn't got any Christmas themes, either, like MAC does. Finally, Maybelline used the entire screen on their website, rather than MAC hadn't. This might make MAC's website more mobile-friendly, but Maybelline may have a mobile version, too.

Finally, I looked at Barry M's website. This website had similar traits to Maybelline, like how there are big images that pop out at you, and how it had a Christmas theme like MAC.

However, it was very different to the other websites as it used a pastel colour theme, rather than black, white and a splash of colour. There was also videos and blogs of 'How To', and etc, teaching people how to apply their products. This attracts a whole new target audience of young teens/adults, who wear makeup but aren't experts on it.


I also took a step further to look at the people who use these companies, and see if the styles of
websites match. For instance, MAC attracts the profile to the right.

Generally, it's an older audience shopping at MAC (according to a sample size of under 200 people), and they're mostly females. Well, that one was obvious. It also went on to say that the average person earns/works a lot so has, generally, a lot of money.


Next, I looked at Barry M's general customer, and found something very different. This time it showed a profile of a 18-24 year old, and I looked at the brands this person shopped at, as well as Barry M, and it was generally high-street shops, like Primark and H&M, etc. They also used social media a lot, like Instagram and Twitter.


Overall, I learned that there are certain things that work better for cosmetic websites (like the black colour theme and flat icons), but it only works for some. For instance, if Barry M followed the trend of the colour scheme, then it wouldn't attract the audience it does and it wouldn't be as successful because of that. So, target audience has a huge impact on your company and how it is presented.