Hiuspuoti Alkemisti

2023-02-26

I got almost a completely free playfield with this case. I was to build complete branding including the brand name and the website for a new hair salon for hairstylist Elina Sorri.

She wanted her hair salon to look like straight out of Diagon Alley from the Harry Potter universe and so it needed to look a bit vintage with a touch of magic.

The logo is a lot more detailed than most of today's logos, but that was the idea because it was supposed to look like a vintage boutique.

Because she is specialized in colourful hair dyes, my first thoughts were around alchemy and so I end up checking through the internet if the brand name Alkemisti was already reserved or not. There was some sort of media company that had reserved the domain alkemisti.fi, but it seemed like they either had never got into the business at all or had already shut down. Currently, their site is completely down.

To add more Diagon Alley style for the brand, I suggested calling her little salon as "hiuspuoti" which gave a bit more magical vibe. And so she registered her company as Hiuspuoti Alkemisti.

The philosopher's stone symbol worked nicely as a favicon on the website.

Because she wanted to have a darker-looking website and branding, I decided to go for the proper brand color with nice contrast and antique feeling suitable for alchemy and that is of course gold. I tried tens of different variations, but the top five were all art nouveau style with tons of extra elements I could use on the website and on her boutique windows.

On top of the colors, I decided to add the philosopher's stone symbol below the logo and use it as a favicon. This also added the Harry Potter universe vibe because the philosopher's stone symbols look a lot like the Deadly Hallows symbol.

alkemisti symbol transparent 2048px — On top of the logo I also made tons of these extra elements which were used as window taping, signs, stickers, etc.

Alkemisti advertising assets

After Hiuspuoti Alkemisti was launched I also made her some social media and Google ad banners. For most of these, I used stock photos and she wanted me to find photos with alt-style people with colorful hair and I used all I could find for either ad or for her blog.

After a few weeks, she started getting a lot of messages about how much people liked these ads and that really inspired me to design more of them.

I do not usually make copies for the ads, but this time I wrote all the copies as well, and especially the "Pakkasmyssy" campaign rocked the boat really well.