The Ordinary’s new book Ingredients enters a beauty market built around speed and novelty — empowering consumers instead with ingredient literacy.
Walk into any beauty retailer today — whether it’s a flagship boutique in Manhattan or a neighborhood pharmacy — and the competition is immediate. Hundreds of bottles promise radiance, firmness, renewal. TikTok drives a new “must-have” every week. Somewhere between that swirl of new drops and trend cycles, skincare became an endurance sport. But The Ordinary’s first book drop, Ingredients, is a deliberate refusal of that pace.
The brand that rewrote price-points by putting transparency front and center is now formalising its ethos in print. Ingredients is a deep dive into formulations, ingredients and labels “using science-driven storytelling alongside full-colour photography,” the Deciem-owned company notes. The book explains what actives actually do — beyond marketing copy — and why concentration, compatibility and formulation matter.
“[T]his is so important to our brand identity,” The Ordinary’s co-founder Nicola Kilner told Cosmetics Business. This identity — founded on transparent actives and intelligible formulation — is especially urgent amid the rise of “fast beauty.”
The term “fast beauty” encapsulates what has become the defining contradiction of the global beauty market: rapid product turnover, algorithm-driven trends and an emphasis on novelty over nuance. A 2025 report by McKinsey & Company estimated the global skincare and beauty sector at more than $580 billion, growing at about seven percent annually — but warned that brands increasingly face “skeptical consumers” who expect proof, not slogans.
The need for ingredient literacy in a fast-moving beauty industry
In parallel, the trend of ingredient-rather-than-brand focus has accelerated. Vogue Business noted that a growing number of beauty consumers are shopping for hero ingredients — retinol, vitamin C, etc. — rather than by product or brand name, citing a nearly 700 percent increase in ingredient-related search queries since 2020.
Product development timelines can double or triple in some cases because brands are attempting to keep up with launch cadence. “A single viral post on TikTok can translate into millions of views and thousands of followers,” notes Vogue Business. “Marketing teams at beauty giants such as Estée Lauder now watch TikTok and other apps closely, ready to respond via appropriate ad strategies.”
That volume of launches, hype, and newness — creates a paradox: more choice, but less clarity. With hundreds of similar formulas on shelves, the consumer’s ability to evaluate becomes compromised. A recent analysis by Colipi found that 77 percent of consumers agree that brands that are sustainable or environmentally responsible are important to them, and 71 percent are willing to pay more for brands that disclose the source and impact of ingredients. Despite that, transparency remains uneven. Around 75 percent of brands publish ingredient lists online but do not provide clear information on quantities.
What does this mean for the consumer? It means you might recognize “niacinamide” or “retinol” on a label — but you don’t always know how much is there, how stable the form is, or whether the supporting formulation backs it up. That’s the knowledge gap Ingredients attempts to fill. By turning formulation into narrative, The Ordinary is effectively equipping the consumer not only to read a label — but to interpret it, and shift from “buying because it’s new” to “buying because I understand.”
In practical terms, this means that for the consumer, reading that new tube of serum with less anxiety and more agency is possible. When a brand publishes a book about how to read the label, you get to ask better questions: What form are the actives in? Is the concentration meaningful? Is the supporting formula robust? When a new launch arrives, you might still be tempted to snatch it up. But you’ll be more likely to ask questions and less likely to buy blindly. And as the beauty industry evolves, that skill might prove as useful as any serum.
The Periodic Fable
The Ordinary’s new book comes on the heels of The Periodic Fable campaign created with Uncommon Creative Studio. The effort confronts the beauty industry’s fixation on pseudo-science and misleading marketing language.
The dystopian-style film, directed by Olivia De Camps and produced by Smuggler, features a classroom of entranced students parroting skincare buzzwords like “fat freezing” and “medical grade,” a metaphor for how consumers absorb unverified claims.
The campaign replaces the symbols of the periodic table with 49 of these familiar phrases and pairs the visual with data highlighting just how persuasive jargon remains — more than half of U.K. shoppers trust products labeled “luxury,” and ten percent of US consumers are willing to pay $75 more for items marketed as containing “rare ingredients.”
Running across outdoor, social, and influencer platforms in the U.K., U.S., and Canada, The Periodic Fable extends online through an interactive experience that decodes each term’s real meaning — or lack thereof. It continues The Ordinary’s mission to dismantle hype through transparency and education. Uncommon co-founder Nils Leonard calls the work “a truth serum the beauty industry has been avoiding for decades.”
Amy Bi, The Ordinary’s VP of Brand, says the goal mirrors that of the new book, to help people “know what they’re purchasing — and what words are ultimately just marketing tactics.”
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