Dan Graves Creative Direction

Work L'Oréal Professional Products Division

L'Oréal Professional Products

In-house art director across seven professional brands and roughly $1B in annual sales. Whole-brand redesigns, hundreds of SKUs per year, and regular press-floor visits.

Client
L'Oréal Professional Products Division
Year
Multi-year tenure
Role
Art Director·In-house
Sector
Beauty / professional CPG
L'Oréal Professional Products — hero image

The brief

In-house art director across seven professional brands, including Redken, Matrix, and Biolage, together representing roughly $1B in annual sales. Three things ran in parallel: keep the portfolio looking modern and consistently professional year over year, run periodic whole-brand redesigns to stay competitive in a crowded category, and guarantee that what was approved on screen actually showed up on the bottle.

Across 15 years, I was promoted from within: in-house freelancer, then junior designer, then art director.

The work

I touched every aspect of packaging across the seven brands. New product launches, full new lines, whole-brand refreshes, day-to-day SKU work in between, and close partnership with brand creative teams so each brand’s identity carried through onto pack rather than getting smoothed away in production.

Approximate scale, per year:

  • 4–5 new individual launches on the bigger brands; 1–2 on the smaller ones.
  • 1–2 new product lines on the bigger brands. Each line typically spanned 4–5 retail sizes plus minis and bulk formats.
  • Hundreds of SKU touches across the portfolio.
  • 3–4 trips to printers and producers for actual press checks, not PDF approvals.

Across my tenure, at least a dozen full-brand redesigns. Several brands went through more than one; the rough cadence on a given brand was every four to five years.

Precise, technical, almost editorial product photography. The professional shelf done right.
Redken Color Gels 10-min hero Precise, technical, almost editorial product photography. The professional shelf done right.
Redken All Soft on a warm gold ground with floating molecules. The brand world expressed through staging.
Redken All Soft on a warm gold ground with floating molecules. The brand world expressed through staging.
gloss
Redken Shades EQ Gloss in mid-splash. The "gloss" promise made literal in a single SKU shot.
Matrix "A Curl Can Dream": three hands holding three SKUs against marigold. A bolder, more pop-forward voice for the Matrix audience.
Matrix "A Curl Can Dream": three hands holding three SKUs against marigold. A bolder, more pop-forward voice for the Matrix audience.
Matrix Insta-Cure Build-A-Bond on hot pink with foam. Active care positioning, with the typography doing real work.
Matrix Insta-Cure Build-A-Bond on hot pink with foam. Active care positioning, with the typography doing real work.
Matrix "Food For Soft": overhead avocado and green water still life. Same brand, different mood: ingredient-led, playful.
Matrix "Food For Soft": overhead avocado and green water still life. Same brand, different mood: ingredient-led, playful.
Matrix Insta-Cure mask resting in swirls of its own formula. The texture shot that sells a treatment before the copy does.
Matrix Insta-Cure mask resting in swirls of its own formula. The texture shot that sells a treatment before the copy does.
Full regimen in teal and holographic. A redesigned line shown the way it'll appear at backbar.
Redken Acidic Grow Full System Full regimen in teal and holographic. A redesigned line shown the way it'll appear at backbar.
The whole SKU library staged together on celadon. Proof of the consistency exercise.
Biolage portfolio architecture The whole SKU library staged together on celadon. Proof of the consistency exercise.

On press, on purpose

The sleeper detail of the role was the press-floor visits. Approving a layout in a meeting room and seeing it actually print are two different things. There are days when the line can’t hit a specific color or pattern, and someone needs to be in the building to fix it. I made sure that someone was me. Medium-literacy is something you earn at a press check.

What I’m proudest of

Two things, weighted equally.

The diplomatic wins. Maintained good working relationships with management and teams with strong, valid opinions and sometimes competing priorities, often by gently coaxing them around to positions that were necessary but uncomfortable. Pushed back on choices that would hurt recyclability: advocacy for better outcomes within the constraints of CPG.

The craft wins. Taking brands with disjointed visual identities and pulling the broader portfolio to read both premium and professional, brand by brand, year over year. Most of that work doesn’t show up as a single moment. It arrives after a career built on consistency and trust.