Tiny Giants #1: Vacation® Sunscreen and the Art of the Branded Daydream

by | Sep 30, 2025 | Blog, Brand, Tiny Giants

Tiny Giants is a recurring series exploring micro brands — those sharp, niche, design-forward companies redefining what modern branding looks and feels like.

Each post unpacks how one small-but-mighty brand stands out through identity, storytelling, and disruptive design thinking.

What Is Vacation®?

Vacation® calls itself “the world’s best-smelling sunscreen.”

But it’s really a vaporwave vacation simulator disguised as skincare.

From their 1980s corporate parody website to the fake radio station you can stream while applying SPF, this brand is a masterclass in commitment. The tone is tongue-in-cheek. The packaging is dead serious. The experience? Unmistakable.

They’ve taken a clinical product and made it a sensory escape — equal parts Coppertone, Don Draper, and Miami Vice.

Why It Works

Because the sunscreen aisle is traditionally clinical, white, and boring.

Vacation® said: what if we gave it a personality?

Here’s what they’re doing right:

  • Design: Their visual identity is pure nostalgia — cream-colored bottles, serif fonts, grainy photo textures, and custom illustrations that feel like they were pulled from a 1984 resort catalog.
  • Tone of Voice: Satirical but smart — like if a copywriter wrote a commercial while sipping a Piña Colada on hold with their travel agent.
  • Experience Layering: A fake “company history,” audio branding, radio station, cocktail-scented SPF, and product blurbs that sound like resort brochures from another timeline.
  • Community: It doesn’t just sell. It winks. Fans are in on the joke — and that makes them part of the brand.

Design Takeaway

Vacation® proves that a brand doesn’t need to be loud or chaotic to be subversive. Instead, it builds a perfectly controlled aesthetic world, then lets you vacation in it.

The brilliance here is restraint: they don’t break the grid — they just make the grid look like it was printed in a 1986 Sandals brochure.

What You Can Steal (Yes, Steal)

  • Create a story-first system — one where packaging, language, and even audio or scent all reinforce a single vibe

  • Consider emotional nostalgia over innovation — familiar can be far more powerful than futuristic

  • Lean into absurd commitment — if your tone is ironic, own it with polish

I love watching brands like Vacation® pull off high-concept weirdness without ever looking messy. It’s a reminder that sometimes the boldest design doesn’t scream — it seduces.

If you want to bring this kind of lens to your creative strategy or event, you know where to find me.