COLORGRAM: One Gram of Colour, Korean Style

COLORGRAM's name is a portmanteau of "color" and "gram" — one gram of colour, enough to change everything. It's a neat encapsulation of what the brand is selling: not the transformation of your face, but the pleasure of small, deliberate additions. A lip tint that makes your natural colour more vivid. A highlighter that catches light at the right angle. An eyeshadow that creates depth without effort. Korean makeup at its most playful, and most Korean.

From Olive Young bestseller to global brand

COLORGRAM started as an Olive Young exclusive — the large Korean beauty chain that functions as a combination of Sephora, a pharmacy, and a beauty discovery platform, operating on a model where emerging brands get shelf space to build a following before expanding elsewhere. Within Olive Young, COLORGRAM ranked number one in sales in the aegyo-sal (under-eye highlight) eyeshadow category — a specifically Korean beauty concept, the use of shimmer to make the under-eye area look fuller and more youthful rather than concealing it. The product that achieved this: the All-In-One Aegyo-Sal Maker, a dual-ended applicator that's become something of a cult object.

The brand has since expanded globally, partnering with the webtoon "True Beauty" (a series about a girl who hides behind makeup, which became a widely watched drama adaptation) and entering the US and Japanese markets. The collaboration makes cultural sense: the webtoon's audience and COLORGRAM's target demographic overlap almost perfectly.

The Korean makeup aesthetic COLORGRAM is built for

If you're new to Korean makeup, understanding the aesthetic context helps. Korean makeup has moved away from the contouring-heavy, high-contrast looks that dominated globally for much of the 2010s. The current direction is soft — blurred edges, gradient lips, skin that looks like skin rather than a surface, colour placed for natural enhancement rather than structural illusion. COLORGRAM's product range is calibrated for exactly this aesthetic.

The Fruity Glass Tint exemplifies the direction: a glassy, transparent lip finish with just enough pigment to add warmth and dimension without obscuring the natural lip colour. The effect is the opposite of a matte lipstick — it looks like you've just eaten something slightly glossy rather than like you've applied a product. The Nude Blur Tint achieves a similar result through a different mechanism: a blurred, matte finish that still reads as natural skin rather than applied lip colour.

Products worth knowing about

The Milk Bling Shadow — liquid eye glitter in a formula that applies precisely and doesn't migrate into fine lines — has developed a following among people who've tried and been disappointed by Western alternatives that crease, flake, or look glittery in an unflattering way. COLORGRAM's version manages the trick of being genuinely sparkly without looking cheap, which is harder to achieve than it sounds.

The All-In-One Over Lip Maker is worth attention for anyone dealing with the perennial Korean beauty challenge of making lip products look natural. A dual-ended product with a tint on one end and a blending tool on the other, it applies colour and blurs edges in one motion — the gradient lip look executed easily rather than requiring separate products and significant technique.

Written by Nora — Team Koolseoul, Seoul.