Salon Divine
Contact Name
Luis Anthony
Timeframe
6 weeks
Last Update
July 4, 2010
Design
The initial design was trying to convey the same colors used throughout the shop and its other branded materials. Their styling capes have a shimmering animal print, which I wanted to mimic in the background color. The brochures contain two shades of red/maroon that I also tried to use as accent colors.
The home page was going to be a basic single graphic with a vertical navigation to create a minimalist design. I thought about using buttons linked to social networking sites to fill out the bottom of the page and to give visitors some action choices on the homepage.
The original design was not approved and it looked very bland, so we went back to the beginning and came up with a totally different approach. I wanted to give visitors the feeling that they're standing in the shop looking around at the various products and stylists. This should inspire confidence to new customers that they can trust the stylist to know what they want, as well as give them a sense of security when they actually go to the shop for the first time.
This design eschewed the vertical navigation in favor of a horizontal main nav bar, with drop-downs for sub items. The main background color was switched to the cream/off-white color that's used on the wall's paint. Also, in front of each station there's a large mirror framed in mahogany wood. This same wood is used throughout th shop for most of the furniture and provides a nice contrast. Keeping with this, I framed the main content in a dark-brown, as well as using a light-grey color to mimic the chrome fixtures.
Since this is just a mockup, many stock photos are used in place of actual content that will be created later. Links to social networking sites are maintained, but moved to small icons on the lower-right. An area is reserved just above the footer for holiday and gift specials.
The overall design was approved for the website, but I only had ideas for the interior pages at first. Working on the homepage, I kept the idea of integrating social networks to give visitors some way to interact with the shop. They can quickly see new specials as soon as the managers have approved them, as well as get news of shipments or see comments from others.