Behind the screens : Hair Witch rebrand

In todays blog, I will be showing the process behind my rebrand that I did a few months back for 'Hair Witch', a hairdressing business ran by Laura Jade. Again we find ourselves in these tough situations with COVID-19 so I also wanted to take this opportunity to share another independent business with you. So here is Hair Witch by Laura Jade..

Hair Witch is based in St.Helens. It is a hairdressing business ran by the lovely Laura Jade. Laura's business is based in a salon for two days of the week called The Secret Halo and the rest of the week she works freelance. She has been a hairstylist for over ten years and has always worked in a salon under another business, but finally went independent this year. When I asked Laura about her work and why she contacted me she said 'I like to be a little different when it comes to hair cause I'm a little different myself so I paint colourful. That's why I got in contact with yourself.. I loved your art. It was the style I was looking for and love what everything stands for.' It is so inspirational seeing other independent business women killing it so I will forever support Laura in her journey plus she creates the most BEAUTIFUL hair looks!! I think we all know just how hard hairdressers have been hit with lockdowns this year so it is so important that we keep supporting them, particularly freelancing hairdressing businesses such as Hair Witch. So when Laura contacted me on Instagram wanting a unique complete rebranding including a logo, business cards etc, I wanted to showcase her gorgeous individuality and personality through her brand.

Check out Hair Witch on Instagram - www.instagram.com/hairby_laurajade/

So here's how I created the rebrand...

First steps - inspiration & getting to know the brand

My first steps behind this commission was figuring out the aesthetic of the brand and what Laura wanted to capture within her brand. I decided to work on the logo first to develop a sense of the brand as logos are all about representing the personality and morals behind the business and decided to work from there. She decided that she wanted to stick to the brand name Hair Witch but wanted to include 'by Laura Jade' underneath for the logo. For key words behind the personality and aesthetic of the brand, Laura wanted it fun and quirky with punk flames, Dalmatian spots, confetti, lightening bolts, unicorns, mermaids and glitter - a very playful theme with a heavy influence of patterns. However, she also stated that she would rather have an edgy punky side rather than it be too 'girly' influenced.

As it was one of my more recent commissioned logo work at the time, I initially referred to the 'Amy Atmosphere' logo layout for inspiration.

My vision was to illustrate Laura Jade as she has iconic half and half hair and have the brand name either underneath like 'Amy Atmosphere's' logo or above depending on the outcome. So I asked Laura for a reference image of herself for the logo itself. I wanted to really capture the half and half hair as almost the feature of the logo, establishing brand identity. Also, I considered using the colours of her hair as a colour way for the rebrand.

Logo concepts-

Here is the beautiful reference photo I received to base my logo designs from. I wanted to really capture the hair as said before and she had just recently had it dyed that lovely pinky purple tone which was I found was a perfect blend of her description as purple tied in very well with the quirkiness of her vision but still had that femininity to it and wasn't as girly as having it pink. (I mean I might be biased because purple is my fave colour)

Below are the final line-work logo concepts and layouts that I came up with for Hair Witch. I wanted to keep the typography very gothic so that it tied in to the 'witch' theme of the brand because you can't have an amazing brand name like hair witch and not use it as inspiration!!

Laura approved the one on the right which was my personal fave too and actually happened as an accident... I accidentally placed a line tool on my Adobe Photoshop file just underneath the brand name and I thought it looked very visually pleasing so I played around with it and warped the 'by Laura Jade' to fit better with the illustration. But as the legend Bob Ross would say, 'We don't make mistakes, just happy little accidents” and this definitely was one of them aha!!

Adding Colour:

The next step was to add colour to the design using Adobe Illustrator. Also the idea hit me to remove the shoulders on the design as initially, I wasn't sure what colour to make it. The issue with making a logo and having a solid blocked out colour on the bottom is that when it is placed anywhere else it can sometimes look very strange.

Laura left the decision up to me and trusted my judgement so I decided to keep it without as it just flowed a lot better. So here it is...

Final logo-

The merchandise - price lists:

After the logo, it was time to work on the merchandise in the rebranding. *All products that I produced under the merchandise were requested by Laura for her brand.

So first were the price lists, after receiving a breakdown of the prices I decided to split the price list into two so it would look more visually pleasing and unintentionally it manifested her two toned hair. I decided to run with this idea and instead of having two of the same colour, to switch it up between the two price lists and create a colour way for the brand.

First, using the key words I created a lightening bolt pattern to overlay behind the background. I hand drew these on Adobe Illustrator.

I did originally create the two price lists in the same colour as well as providing the blue/turquoise alternative and used the logo with a different colour hair (Laura requested to change the colour of the hair on the logo on each merchandise item so it changed it up a bit which also helped it stand out). However, she preferred the idea of having them two separate colours so we kept this consistent throughout. I kept the typography for the title the same as the logo but switched up the actual body text to something more simple just so it is easier to read and remains modern with the background instead of looking too old school gothic. I also decided to incorporate the Dalmatian dots into the lightening bolts to fit her aesthetic more.

The merchandise - appointment cards :

When I asked Laura what she envisioned for her appointment cards, she sent across a reference image of an existing card and specifically asked for a section of the cards to have a loyalty section for stamping each time. Within the stamp circles, she requested to make it a bit fun and unique by adding mermaids and unicorn type designs. So with that in mind, I came up with this concept:

We decided to keep the two colour idea and have one purple and one turquoise as well as the background pattern. To keep the stamp circles relevant to the brand, I incorporated some mermaids in but also decided to incorporate some more hairdressing relevant designs such as a hairdryer and scissors as an option, which Laura loved. I think I was just scared of it becoming almost too random so I wanted to make sure to tie it back to the roots of the brand's service. I think out of all the merchandise these appointment cards are probably my favourite. I gave Laura two formats of these as she initially wanted an appointment card that was foldable but I also provided files to make it like a regular appointment card with double sided printing just for options on her behalf.

The merchandise - vouchers:

The next requested merchandise was a voucher, almost like a gift card. To incorporate the two colours in, I decided to make the front and back designs into the two colours. I didn't want to over complicate the design of this as Laura initially said she just wanted who it was to, who it was from and the amount of the voucher. I left blanks for this to be filled in by hand rather than having multiple amounts printed. I also managed to incorporate the mermaid design into the design to tie it back to the appointment cards.

Digital Rebrand - Instagram highlights

Upon contacting me, Laura said she wanted to rebrand her Instagram and particularly her Instagram story highlights. She wanted to have highlights for the following

- Price list (more in depth)

- Extensions

- Client feedback

- Smartbond (ended up changing to Olaplex near the end of the commission)

- Products (she was unsure on this one)

You will see how these ideas got edited. She gave me creative control over this one so here's what I came up with...

The price list:

The highlight logo-

I gave Laura two ideas for the price list and she chose the '£' design which I much preferred also as I found it stood out more with the pop of white. I must also mention, the circle is to fit to the circle format of the story highlights.

This is the same as the prices before but I had to change the format so that it would fit the screen. This was something I had not really done before so it took a few of trials. I had to also be wary of obstructions when viewing an instagram story at the top and bottom.

Extra information slides:

These designs were a combination of all the previous merchandise designs together, incorporating the same patterns, colours, designs and typography. I really enjoyed playing with the layouts of these.

Extensions highlight:

The highlight logo-

For this logo, I decided to take the actual brand logo and simplify it as details can get lost anyway when you shrink an image. You can also see I used this design throughout the slide designs as I found it fit really well.

Extra information slides:

*displayed as shown on Hair Witch's instagram highlights

I have just included some of the extension slides from Hair Witch's instagram because how gorgeous are they!! Also just included the extensions slide again.

Merbabes (client feedback):

The highlight logo-

For this one I provided two options again using two different effects as the less saturated one matched the money price logo better but in the end Laura chose the more saturated version. I hand drew this logo design on Adobe Illustrator using my signature nails design. It was a way in which to replicate the client taking a selfie without having another highlight with a silhouette of a girl.

This highlight includes all the client selfie feedback so I didn't have to make an information slide as its full of beautiful hair pics. Also can we just mention her naming of this 'merbabes' HOW CUTE!!

Custom colouring:

The highlight logo-

This logo again has the signature nail design that I use on my designs and flows perfectly from the other hand design logo. I found myself a bit stuck on what to make for this one but after thinking it through more, I decided on a hair dying brush dripping in hair dye.

Extra information slides:

I finally got a change to incorporate her punk flames into a design! Also just included a play on words with top up 'potions' using the witch theme again.

The overall intention with these highlight slides and logos was to have the interchanging of colours throughout again, reflecting the merchandise. Which I think looks amazing when all together.

Now Laura is so talented when it comes to adding colour so I'm going to use this to just showcase some of her beautiful work she has done that is on her instagram page.

I hope you enjoyed looking at this rebranding I did for the fabulous Hair Witch, make sure to check out their instagram page here . This was such an exciting project to work on, I love being able to work with such boss bitches. Laura is absolutely killing the game with gorgeous hair looks and I'm so glad I was able to give her a rebranding that matches her aesthetic. Thank you so much for sticking through this blog post, I hope you enjoyed seeing behind the scenes of one of my commissions again.

Just going to take this opportunity as you're reading this to tell you that this year I've decided to use the little platform I have to help raise money for Barnsley Hospital Charity, to give back to the NHS staff as a thank you for their hard work over this difficult year. Please donate if you can to my gofundme page HERE or check out the NHS DONATION tab of my website. Every donation over £10 receives a free limited edition print and the first 15 receive badges (make sure to fill in the form over on my website to redeem your free print)

Olivia x