Brand Identity for Ozen Toothpaste
Mother promised serious science with humanity, no white coat in sight. Brand New’s reply: “I don’t think the Humanity is in the room with us.”
Mother Design created the identity for Ozen, an oral-care brand founded by Dr. Niall Kent and Harry Zalk, working with Ozen and Broody. The identity translates Ozen’s Aerograft™ sensitivity technology—developed from aerogels encountered through sculpture research—into the core idea of “The Creative Scientist.” It combines a dense, sculptural logo, a clear graphic device, type referencing scientific journals and modern minimalism, and clinically lit art direction with playful everyday imagery. Packaging uses dark green for shelf presence alongside mint to signal freshness.
Insights
- OZEN's identity rests on a stated tension — “The Creative Scientist”, medical credibility alongside unconventional ingenuity — and it comes out of the founding story rather than a positioning exercise: the technology exists because people were still avoiding cold drinks and hot food despite using the leading sensitivity toothpastes.
- Ozen’s technology, Aerograft™, came from University College London research and was invented by Dr Niall Kent, an NHS maxillofacial surgeon who encountered aerogels while helping his brother, an artist at the Royal Academy, research sculpting materials.
- Mother Design intentionally kept some category signals while rejecting the usual toothpaste clichés: no clinical blue, but a deep green for premium shelf presence and a brighter green for freshness, plus a vertical sculptural monospace/unicase logo set on pack.
