Wedge designs Bastét, an oral-care brand for the beauty counter

Bastét is an oral-care brand whose co-founders approached Montreal and Los Angeles-based design studio Wedge to turn a product idea into a complete brand world. The mission? To build an oral-care company that would ‘do no harm, only health.’ Launching with a high-performance toothpaste, they handed Wedge a remit spanning naming, strategy, narrative, identity, packaging and production. The guiding idea was to pair serious science with the pleasure of high design, turning a daily necessity into something restorative that the brand calls ‘Designed For Human Systems.’ “The opportunity is to see oral care as part of a beauty, wellness and self-care ritual, transcending tradition and norms,” explains Chief Design Director Justin Lortie. With integrity, beauty and protection set as Bastét’s foundation, Wedge went looking for a figure who embodied them and found the Egyptian goddess Bastet, whose duty, in the brand’s telling, is to protect, nurture and share beauty. “It is not uncommon to seek inspiration in gods or goddesses when it comes to brand naming. Nike is a prime example: the goddess of victory,” notes Chief Creative Director Sarah Di Domenico. The brand adds an acute accent that the goddess’s name lacks. The product beneath the name centres on 10% nano-hydroxyapatite, a mineral found naturally in human teeth and bones and used to support enamel protection and remineralisation. “nHA is the hero, the reason this product exists,” Lortie tells us. “So the hierarchy is simple: the name, then the proof.” The proof is a green badge, the one colour on the packaging, given to the ingredient claim – drawn to balance function with beauty. An unfamiliar ingredient has to earn trust, so Wedge kept some of the category’s established conventions. “We kept the No List and brushing instructions, because with nHA the method is part of the performance: spit, don’t rinse,” he continues.