quip made oral care a design object.

quip is a lesson in elevating a boring category through design. Founded in 2015 by industrial designers Simon Enever and Bill May in Brooklyn, it reimagined the electric toothbrush as a slim, beautiful, affordable object paired with a subscription that mails fresh brush heads and toothpaste on schedule. The pitch was simple: “good habits, not gimmicks.”

The design did the talking — a slender metal handle, gentle sonic vibrations, a built-in timer, calm pastel and metallic colourways — and it won a wall of awards (Red Dot, TIME Best Inventions). The lowercase “quip” wordmark, generous white space and deliberately un-clinical palette made oral care feel like a lifestyle product, not a drugstore chore.

(Honest notes: quip is private and venture-backed, and its founders no longer run it day-to-day — Simon Enever stepped down as CEO around 2023 and an outside CEO now leads it. After a pandemic-era peak, the company matured and diversified (retail, kids’, a dental-benefit plan). The toothbrush’s form is protected trade dress we describe but do not reproduce, and no official brand hex is published.)

quip lives in a calm mint-and-metallic palette. Click a swatch to copy the hex.

quip’s identity is calm, minimal and spa-like — a soft mint, a copper, a slate, an off-white, and an ink. The palette is a low-saturation set of seafoam mint, champagne-copper metallic and cool slate over warm white. It signals calm, considered, un-clinical self-care rather than a beeping tech gadget. The honest caveat: with no published brand hex, these tones are an original, unofficial interpretation, not first-party values.

The lesson is calm colour makes a chore feel like self-care. quip’s world is a serene bathroom shelf. For designers, it is a reminder that muted pastels and metallic accents — the opposite of aggressive “tech” colour — can reframe a functional product as a design object worth displaying. The takeaways: choose a calm, low-saturation palette; let one beautiful object be the hero; and treat any single hex as unofficial — using a deep teal for small text so the mint stays soft.

The wordmark spirit is a clean lowercase sans — calm and modern.

quip’s identity carries a calm, modern, considered spirit — a lowercase “quip” wordmark and a beautifully minimal object. A clean geometric-humanist sans captures the mood: it is quiet and precise, the register of a brand designed by industrial designers who care about every millimetre. Set against calm pastels, the clean type feels modern and un-clinical — exactly the design-object personality quip carries. It is serene rather than shouty, mirroring a toothbrush that looks like décor. (quip’s real wordmark and toothbrush form 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 clean lowercase spirit,” not the quip logo. The type behaves like the brand: calm, modern and precise.

quip stands for the beautiful object.

quip is a lesson in design as the entire value proposition. A toothbrush is a commodity; quip made it a design object — slim, calm, award-winning — and wrapped it in a subscription that removed the last friction (remembering to replace it). The look and the habit were the product. The differentiator is elevated, considered design in an ignored category.

For designers and brand-builders, quip offers a clear takeaway: you can win a dull category on design alone. The lessons: treat the object as the brand (form, finish, colourway); use a calm, un-clinical palette to reframe a chore; and pair the object with a subscription that makes good behaviour effortless. It is also a reminder to stay accurate: quip is private, its founders have stepped back (an outside CEO leads it since ~2023), and its pandemic peak has since matured — with the palette here an unofficial interpretation. quip made the toothbrush beautiful — proof that design can be the pitch.

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