Armando Villarreal was on track to be an aerospace engineer. Today, he puts his engineering degree to good use as director of Rare Beauty’s Packaging Development team. You might recognize his work in our new—and accessible—True to Myself Natural Matte Longwear Foundation, a streamlined bottle that prioritizes ease of use.

I sat down with Armando to chat about how this accessible design came to life.

Rare Insider: Where do you start when designing an accessible foundation bottle?

Armando: When we first committed to making our packaging more accessible, we built relationships with packaging designers in the beauty space that really understood Selena’s vision and needs. We worked through eight different design directions, then iterations based on feasibility of the designs to ultimately focus on a large push button and curvatures.

What do you mean by curvatures?

How the bottle fits in your hand, how your fingers wrap around it. Traditionally, we’d create what’s called a pilot tool. It’s like an official test sample of the bottle just to see it in real life, but once you do that, you really can’t make many changes; a lot of the pre-production work is done, and it would be too expensive to pivot. Now, we do a lot of 3D printing, prototyping, and fine-tuning in the office so we can test how we like a design and evolve it quickly and cheaply.

We had a prototype of this foundation bottle, but Selena asked to make it a little wider, so it was more comfortable to hold (especially for someone with dexterity issues). That’s something we explored with the 3D printer. Selena will come in and test the final samples, and that’s how we landed on this bottle.


I didn’t even realize we had a 3D printer in the office!

Oh yeah, it’s in the Product Development area. The technology was really pioneered by the dental and jewelry industries, but beauty picked up on it. The sooner you have something in your hands, the quicker you understand how it will feel and function—and the quicker you can make decisions.

What’s one small detail in a bottle that most people wouldn’t notice but actually makes a huge difference?

The lock definitely makes a difference. Not all foundations have a lock, but it has two benefits: you can travel without it getting messy, and it doesn’t require a separate cap. Having the cap as an extra piece requires two hands to open and close, which creates unnecessary challenges for someone with dexterity issues. Replacing the cap with a lock was very important to Selena, and we saw how positively our community responded when we did the same for our Rare Eau de Parfum.

And you probably haven’t noticed, but even foundations that do have locks typically design them as a little dome shape. You really have to push down to get it to work. We did the opposite; the lock has an ergonomic curve so your finger fits and the shape does the work for you.

How do you balance aesthetics with functionality?

We work with industrial designers who focus on design, shape, and aesthetics. And then there are engineers, like me, who have to make sure a design can actually be manufactured to the highest quality. The designers prioritize form over function, and we do the opposite—we’re always butting heads! But we all have to compromise. A designer might not like that I have to change a bottle’s wall thickness or curve, but if there’s a manufacturing limitation, we’re at the mercy of that.


As someone who sits on the Creative team, I think that’s a common challenge: unfortunately, our big, cool ideas have to translate from paper to the real world.

Yeah, it’s a bit of give and take on both sides. Now I’m part of Rare’s Product Development team, so I sometimes take off my engineering hat and focus a prioritizing a unique design—like this foundation. I mean, you’d never guess it’s incredibly hard to manufacture.


In what way?

It’s got this half-moon shape, and most filling lines [the automated systems that fill the containers] are created for round bottles. Everything from the packaging parts to the manufacturing process is completely customized, except for the pump—what we call a pump engine. That’s just like what you’d see in your liquid hand soap at home. Overall, this seemingly simple design has about nine custom parts paired with a standard pump.


They say one sign of a great writer is the ability to translate really complicated ideas into simple writing. This sounds similar.

Most people have no idea how much work goes into packaging, but if you look at what’s actually in this thing and how many moving parts have to work together, while still accounting for the fact that there are natural, miniscule variations in even identical parts...

INSIDER NOTE: At this point Armando walked me through all the technical—and proprietary—details of the foundation bottle. We had to go off the record, but I can confirm it looks very complicated.

How do you feel now that it’s out in the world and your work here is done?

My work isn’t done until every influencer does a TikTok video about how much they love it [laughing]... but I’m feeling good about it.


What advice would you give to other brands who want to make their products more accessible?

From my perspective, I think it’s just a lot of trial and error. That’s why I’m such a proponent of 3D printing. It’s been the biggest gamechanger for us in testing out how designs look, feel, and function, which are all equally important to our community.