Our Commitment to Calm

Our Commitment to Calm

We believe nothing is more beautiful than calm. But too often in our busy, 24/7 lives the natural capacity for calm we are born with is lost, leaving us overwhelmed and struggling with varying degrees of stress and burnout.

We found this too, until our research into how to undo the effects of stress in our skin led us to Psycho-Dermatology, and the power of science to restore the calm we’d lost. The revelations of Psycho-Dermatology and its ability to dial down the signs of stress in our skin were so powerful and so breakthrough we started to see the huge opportunity in the science of calm.

“Working with Dr. Tausk and discovering the science of Psycho-Dermatology was a huge breakthrough for our team” says Kat Bryce, LOUM’s Global Brand Vice President. “Too often stress can feel like a black hole that’s impossible to escape. Yet here was a science that could fundamentally dial down and reverse the effects of stress in skin, almost like switching the stress switch off. We realized that while many of us have lost our natural capacity for calm, via science we could re-discover it and bring it back, and that was hugely powerful for all of us”.

The team began to dig deeper and deeper into what science could do to help restore calm. “We realized the applications for how science could restore calm were endless” says Kat. “Via science we can understand in detail what happens in our brains when we’re stressed vs. when we’re calm. We can understand what sounds help slow us down, what visual codes and cues can do to soothe the mind, what smells help promote relaxation. The science of calm became the passion and obsession of the team”.

And the team followed through on their promise to create a brand grounded in the science of calm in LOUM. Every element of the brand, from the name to the visual identity to the execution is organically rooted in the science of calm.

“For instance for our brand name” says Kat “we wanted to create a name that would be scientifically calming. So we worked with an expert linguist to identify the most calming sounds in language. The International Phonetic Dictionary says the most calming sound in language is the ‘schwa’ sound (Ə), an unstressed middle vowel, so we built our name L-O-U-M around it.”

But the name was just the start. “The same was true when we came to our packaging” Kat continues. “We wanted to create a visual identity that could scientifically calm so we worked with a semiotician to identify the most calming colors and visual codes and cues to include in our packaging”. The LOUM world of gradients and softly-contrasting colors is the result.

“But we didn’t stop there” Kat says. “Our whole philosophy at LOUM is ‘Where there is stress we will bring calm’ so we apply the science of calm to everything we do. Whether its continuing to work with Dr. Tausk our Psycho-Dermatologist or more recently with Dr. Sanam Hafeez, a Neuro-Psychologist specialized in understanding the link between our minds and how stress and other neurological conditions make us feel, we are committed to using the science of calm to undo stress in everything we do”.  

And it’s not a commitment the team take lightly. “We believe calm is truly our beauty power because calm skin doesn’t just look better, calm is scientifically proven to make us feel more beautiful and better about ourselves” Kat says. “For every moment of calm we can help someone reclaim we’ve done a positive thing for both their physical and mental health and in today’s anxiety-ridden world that feels like the most important contribution of all”.

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