Shiseido makes each child's skin tone into a crayon

Shiseido wanted to teach children that skin color is not one default shade. The classroom setting required a tactile idea that younger students could understand without a lecture.

Scan every child's skin, match it to an individual crayon, then let classmates draw themselves and each other with many 'skin colors.'

In partner schools, Shiseido scientists measured each child's skin tone and matched it to a crayon. Art and ethics classes were combined so children could draw self-portraits, swap crayons and see classmates' differences as normal.

The One Show awarded the project a 2019 Direct Marketing Merit. ADFEST listed it among the 2019 Lotus Roots winners for work grounded in local culture and human behavior.

My Crayon Project began with a simple classroom problem: the default idea of 'skin color' often flattens real differences. Shiseido and R/GA Tokyo used the beauty company's skin-measurement knowledge to make that difference visible without turning children into a debate.

The program brought scientists into schools, scanned each child's skin and matched it to a crayon. Children used the crayons to draw themselves, then exchanged colors to draw one another, making diversity a shared art exercise.

The One Show's case page describes the project as a 2018 education program combining art and ethics classes. ADFEST later included it in the 2019 Lotus Roots winners, alongside work recognized for local cultural insight.

The creative strength is the object: a crayon is familiar, nonthreatening and impossible to reduce to one universal shade once every child holds a different one.

It converted Shiseido's technical skin expertise into a classroom tool.

The personalized crayon made inclusion concrete for children.

The lesson worked through making and swapping, not through slogans.

The brand's role felt credible because it came from skin research.

A sensitive social lesson can become easier to absorb when the abstract value is made physical, personal and playful.

The project continued to be cited in award archives, including The One Show and ADFEST. It gave Shiseido a social-design example that was closer to education than conventional beauty advertising.