Year: 2016

In this modern world, websites have become a very big part of companies; often being the first look at the company that people get. As Le Barbe Magnifique is being rebranded to be a modern barbers, it is only appropriate that the brand has a stylish, sleek and modern website to represent it.

This is the final desktop website design

The website very closely follows the house style of Le Barbe Magnifique. The selected page is indicated by the box being extended downwards as shown on the previews. When the cursor hovers overs over an option on the menu, the selected will extend down half way rather than the full way.

 The background image is on a slideshow on a loop, showing off various interiors of the branches. Users can control it using the buttons right at the bottom. The page should always fit on the screen without the need for a scroll bar. This will be achieved by cropping and extending the background image to fit the screen size.

On pages where scrolling is needed, there will be a scroll bar available within the text element, so the user can scroll down the single text element, rather than scroll down the whole page.

Here is how the website would look in a browser:

After looking some more at the design I had, I decided that it wasn’t good enough; some people were confused as to what it was, which could have an effect on business if employed. I decided to start from scratch again. Below is a timeline of how I got to the final design.

Numbered 1-12, this is the progress of the logo – 1 being the first design and 12 being the final. I wanted the logo to have a modern, isometric style to the way it was drawn. I chose the design to be in a circle, to give it a warm, friendly feel. At one point,I chose a square to show strength and stability, however, I decided that this wasn’t very relevant to a barbers and I instead used the circle. I swapped to blue and black from brown for two main reasons: to reinforce the friendly feel – and that these two colours helped add to the more modern look and feel I was looking for. The white streak on the beard makes it look brand new.

Here is the final logo, combined with the logo text. The positioning of each of these two elements in relation to each other may vary – depending on where the logo is being used.

Designing the logo was tough at first; coming up with a design that is modern, stands out and shows people what the company does in one simple image is tough.

The design I eventually came up stemmed from this image that I saw when browsing online for inspiration:

More specifically, it was the red and blue isometric style lines that inspired me. I immediately got on Illustrator and started sketching up ideas.

Above is the design progression of the logo; 1 being the first stage of design, and 8 being the last.

1) This is what I came up at first, as it was a barbers specializing in facial hair, I wanted to base the design off that, and what better way to do that than to do a beard?

2) While I like the first design, it looked off; it didn’t look obviously like a beard, but rather a logo for some kind of IT/game development company. I decided to add a little more depth and connect both sides of the beard and mustache.

3) As it was a barbers, I decided to add some hair on top – this also made it even more obvious that the logo is meant to be a beard.

4) I changed the colour of the top hair to create a slight 3D effect to the logo. I also fiddled around with the positioning a bit.

5) In the the end, I decided to keep the hair in the normal place.

6) I tried adding some glasses to the design to give it more of a face and character. Ultimately, I decided to scrap this, as I wasn’t satisfied with the aesthetics of the glasses.

7) I fiddled around with the proportions of the logo, making it slightly thinner and taller. I also raised the hairline of the logo and the thickness of the joining part of the beard and mustache halves.

8) The final design: I decided to shrink it a bit and made the proportions of the mustache and beard when they cross each other’s paths. It’s a very subtle change, but it really helps with the aesthetic; creating a slight 3D effect on the logo.

This was the beard design I came up for the logo. However, it is no longer the final designer.

The logo is probably the hardest part of designing a corporate identity; once you have the logo, everything else tends to flow pretty easily once you have the logo, but it’s finding that design that can really stump people, myself included.

Here are some mood boards that I made to inspire me and help me come up with a design:

 I am looking to have a sleek, modern design for my logo. A lot of companies seem to be going for a “flatter” look when it comes to corporate identity; less shadows, more 2D and using a lot more curves in their logos, etc. As I am aiming to give Le Barbe Magnifique a more trendy and updated look, I will be taking on this style of design for my own work. As you can see above, I have looked at a lot of logos that follow this trend.

I also looked more into the technical aspects of creating a log too; for example, I looked at the shapes that could be used and the kinds of emotions that we associate with them to try and figure out which ones I should use. I noted some of my findings on an InDesign document:

On top of that, I looked at some colours and noted down some key words associated with them:

Doing this would help with choosing the colour scheme and shapes I would use for designing the logo. It would help with the kind of mental message that I want to send with it; I want the company to seem warm and approachable as well as being competent and seeming like they would do a good job with your hair.