Branding Case Study - Faith Hair Salon
Faith Hair Salon is a small, independent hair salon in the seaside town of Lowestoft. Their local area is highly competitive for hair salons, with a handful of good salons on the same road. Simply looking good isn't enough to stand out here, this brand really needed to focus on something.
We talked a lot about what the business is and where it wants to be in the future. The key thing was to provide a luxurious salon experience, but in as friendly a manner as possible. This is all reflected in the newly produced brand guidelines.
The Logo
Once we knew what we wanted the elements to feel like, we started with the logo. We spent about a week going through different ideas before we finalised the logo. In this time there were many discussions about what sort of colours we would go for and why, also about how the logo would affect the typography.
The scissors were photographed, then traced in Adobe Illustrator. to make them work as part of this logo I kept a certain amount of detail on the handle, but kept the blades solid. This lends a slight emphasis on the 'A' aspect of the image.
Without the scissors the logo is very square. By letting the handles rise above the text the overall shape is changed, making the logo more friendly.
Typography
The typography is lead by the logo. The heading font is Ambroise Light, with optical kerning. The body text is Proxima Nova Light. This combination was chosen as they bring a good sense of luxury and style while staying legible.
Colour Scheme
For the colour scheme a lot of ideas were discussed and tried out in various ways. What we settled on was a combination of monochrome and a deep green. The chosen greys have a little colour in them to warm them up a little for that friendly feel.
P350c
CMYK
82, 42, 81, 44
RGB
41, 81, 53
HEX
295135
Cool Grey 1c
CMYK: 18, 13, 15, 0
RGB: 217, 216, 214
HEX: d8d7d6
Cool Grey 7c
CMYK: 42, 32, 32, 11
RGB: 151, 152, 154
HEX: 979899
Cool Grey 11c
CMYK: 63, 53, 46, 39
RGB: 84, 86, 90
HEX: 53555a
Website
As an existing business, there were good reviews on google. We wanted to use this, along with active social media accounts to promote the business. A lot of the SEO was geared to take advantage of these things and encourage organic growth.
To see the site for yourself, click here.
Social Media Assets
Now was the right time to produce social media assets, profile and banner pictures for Facebook and Instagram.
Print Media
The next priority was to get the printed media in place, ready for a launch. This meant things like:
- Price lists
- Appointment cards
- Customer notices
The Salon
At the time of writing this, the salon is not quite complete. There are a few more bits to put in place. The proprietor of the business is handling this, using the brand guidelines as a guide. What you can't see in this picture are the little touches, like the green towels.
The staff here are aware of the atmosphere they are trying to create and constantly work towards this.
In Summary
Branding for Faith Hair Salon was much more than a facelift. Remembering that a brand is more about what people think about a business, rather than what the business looks like, we ended up making one or two changes to the way the business was run.
The hard work hasn't stopped. For this effort to pay off, Faith Hair Salon must constantly monitor how the business is perceived. With help from Coton Creative Branding Ltd, they will be fine.