about-face Brand Guidelines: The Ever-Changing Identity

about-face made a remixable, ever-changing identity.

about-face is a lesson in an identity that never sits still. Launched in 2021 by Halsey (the musician Ashley Frangipane, she/they) with beauty veterans Dineh Mohajer and Jeanne Chavez, it is a “multidimensional makeup” brand built for creative self-expression — “makeup for everyone, everywhere,” under the ethos “no one is just one thing.”

The design, by studio Concrete, embodies that idea literally: an “ever-changing identity” whose core elements are remixed and rearranged with each product drop, so the brand feels dynamic and futuristic rather than fixed. The palette is bold, shifting and multi-colour, with iridescent product accents; hero products include the Matte Fluid Eye Paint, Fractal Glitters and the Light Lock glow line.

(Honest notes: about-face is private and independent, with Halsey as founder and chief creative officer; no funding or valuation figures are public, so we won’t quantify its size. In the US its brick-and-mortar retail is an Ulta exclusive (not Sephora). No official brand hex is published — by design, the identity has no single fixed colour.)

about-face lives in a bold, shifting multi-colour palette. Click a swatch to copy the hex.

about-face’s identity is bold, shifting and art-forward — an electric blue, a magenta, a chartreuse, an off-white, and an ink. There is no single fixed brand colour by design; the palette is deliberately multi-colour and variable per drop, with iridescent and holographic product accents. It signals artistry, expression and boundary-breaking rather than a tidy, single-hue brand. The honest caveat: with no published brand hex, these tones are an original, unofficial interpretation, not first-party values.

The lesson is an ever-changing system can be the identity. about-face’s world is a remix. For designers, it is a reminder that a deliberately flexible, multi-colour system — rearranged with each launch — can express a brand about multidimensionality and self-expression better than any fixed logo colour. The takeaways: build a remixable system, not a frozen one; use bold, shifting colour to signal artistry; and treat any single hex as unofficial — using a near-black for small text so the bold colours stay the pop.

The wordmark spirit is a bold display sans — expressive and modern.

about-face’s identity carries a bold, expressive, art-forward spirit — a lowercase “about-face” wordmark inside an ever-changing, multi-colour system. A bold display sans captures the mood: it is strong and contemporary, the register of a brand about makeup as artistry and expression. Set against bold shifting colour, the heavy type feels expressive and modern — exactly the boundary-breaking personality about-face carries. It is bold rather than tidy, mirroring an identity that remixes itself. (about-face’s real wordmark and system — by studio Concrete — are trademarks and trade dress we describe but do not reproduce, and the exact typeface is not published, so we don’t assert it.) Because the specific mark is not ours to use, the honest description is “a bold display spirit,” not the about-face logo. The type behaves like the brand: bold, expressive and modern.

about-face stands for multidimensionality.

about-face is a lesson in designing a system, not a logo. Its whole thesis — “no one is just one thing” — is expressed by an ever-changing identity that rearranges itself with each drop, refusing to settle on one look or colour. The flexibility is the message: multidimensional makeup deserves a multidimensional brand. The differentiator is a deliberately remixable, art-forward identity.

For designers and brand-builders, about-face offers a clear takeaway: a flexible system can carry a brand’s meaning better than a fixed mark. The lessons: match the identity’s behaviour to the brand’s idea (multidimensionality → an ever-changing system); use bold, shifting colour instead of one hue; and let each launch reinvent within a coherent framework. It is also a reminder to stay accurate: about-face is private (no public figures), Halsey-led, and an Ulta exclusive in US stores — with the palette here an unofficial interpretation. about-face built an identity to change — proof that a system can be the difference.

Keep about-face’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.