HOME ABOUT PORTFOLIO CONTACT MY CV Click to see my Interactive Portfolio
JESS ROLFE DESIGNS


Final Year Project

C. The Lashes & Brows






For another one of my final year projects, I decided to create branding for my eye lash lady, Charlotte. Her lash and brow company is called C. The Lashes & Brows. She wanted more of a consistent brand on her social media (mainly Facebook) and possible designs for print based products such as a leaflet. I continued to design a website for her lash company due to her not having one, and hopefully in the future we shall take it forward so it becomes live.





Project Brief

I created a form for my clients to fill out, giving me an insight into exactly what they want. Below is the form:



Initial Ideas


I brainstormed ideas to start the project. This helped me to start my initial designs.







Time Mangement


I used 'monday.com' (link below) to manage my time wisely on this project.



monday.com


I also created a more visual timeline to put up on my wall to ensure I stayed on track.





Research

In order to continue with my sketch designs, I decided to research into local competitors. I also created a mood board with images collected from pintrest, to contribute to the logo designs and branding creation.

Please select the buttons below to go to the specific research section or just scroll through:


The Company

Logo/Branding

Competitor Research

Website Research


The Company



I firstly researched into the company to have knowledge on what she offers her customers, and the message she is trying to portray. Due to her lash company only being on Facebook, I used this platform to gain a further understanding into what she offers and certain designs shes already used.









Below is a link to the 'C. The Lashes & Brows' Facebook page. The Company did not provide me with branding guidelines so therefore, I had to create guidelines for future use, which can be found at the bottom of this page.



C. The Lashes & Brows



Below is the logo design she is currently using on her Facebook page.





As you can see, this logo is very blurry and bad quality. I want to ensure she is giving her clients a luxury experience in all avenues of her lash company. Therefore, I decided to put together a mood board of designs I feel would work well.





I decided to choose some of my favourties from my moodboard to explain further what I like about them.





All these designs I feel would add a sense of sophistication and elegance to her brand.



I also wanted to look into typography and see what fonts to use for my clients designs. I looked for sophisticated fonts as well as simplitstic designs.





I also asked my client if there were any fonts she particulary wanted to use and sent some examples from my research. She loved the Brush Script font alongside a thin, more plain font.



I also wanted to ensure I used the right dimensions for the Facebook Header when I come to design it. It says it should be 820px x 312px on desktop and 640px x 360px on a mobile, so I felt it was best to do it 820px x 360px but with white space to ensure it is compatabile on all devices.





Facebook Header Size

Competitor Research



Below are the main competitors for my client.





The Beauty Room



Lovely Lashes and Brows



Allie Ever Beauty

All the competitors have a consistent brand and live website. Eventhough these companies could do with improving their own designs, I feel my client "C. The Lashes & Brows" could really stand out from the crowd with my help for her brand. From my professional point of view, I feel 'The Beauty Room' is the only competitor that looks like it offers a luxury service (as the dark purple colours have connotations to royalty and velvet etc.). The use of a big image in the home page (of a woman looking relaxed) would also be something I could think about in my designs. 'Lovely Lashes & Brows' also uses imagery but with a white overlay. I like this effect as I feel it looks like a professional service and adds depth to the website. 'Allie Ever Beauty' has a more personal approach, using imagery of herself, which I like as the user may feel more comfortable seeing the face behind the company, but maybe the website in general could be more luxurious.





Website Research



I wanted to explore different website designs to give me inspiration. When creating the designs, I also remembered Gestalts theroy and took the theory into account, especially promimity and similarity. I also remembered that white space is nothing to be scared of and if anything is good. I created a moodboard which is found below. I love the bottom right web design, as the typography is displayed up the image to the left, and different fonts and styles have been used to compliment the design. I also like how the pink box is used as a backdrop for the text to stand out, and then the overlap of the text box onto the image. The middle bottom website is also a favourite of mine as I love the use of these bubbles/circles, and is a consistent design throughout. However, my clients favourite is the more boxy designs but using diffrent colours throughout such as the top middle and right designs.





I asked my client if she liked any specific web designs, and she liked the one below. She liked the colours, the box style and how the website flows.



Anna May Web Design Pintrest

Designs

I sketched many ideas before developing my designs digitally. This enabled me to get my ideas onto paper to view visually. I then continued to create digital designs, and kept in regular contact with the client before continuing to develop the designs further.




Initial Sketches

Digital Designs

Website Wireframes

Website Initial Digital Designs


Initial Sketches



Sketches of my first ideas for the lash and brow logo design.









Digital Designs



I started developing my designs digitally on Adobe Photoshop, taking inspiration from my sketches, and my mood board I created in my research. I wanted to create the lashes and brows myself so it is all authentically created by myself. I then wanted to ensure the eye looked realistic, and almost looked slightly sparkly. Therefore, I used an aqua colour (blue was mentioned as a colour to use in my clients form), to create this effect.





I also thought it would be a cool idea to have the logo animated with the eyes opening and closing. I started developing this idea on Adobe After Effects.





The initial digital logos are shown below. I tried to pick out and use all the colours she noted down in the client form. I felt that pinks and greys really worked well togther, but with hints of blue and green for the colours of the eye etc. I liked the geometric design from my research so tried to design some logos based of that. As I loved the paint brush stroke designs from my research, I implemented it into some of my designs and experimented with various textures. I also played around with the typography but mainly used Brush Script and Helvetica Light or Myraid. I felt it worked well having the letter 'C' in a different font to the rest so it stood out more and added that personal touch as her name is Charlotte (hence the 'C'). I also tried the flamingo idea (found in my branding research) and felt this could work well as there could be a flamingo theme throughout her brand, although my client wanted a more fresh and clear design (eventhough she did like the idea). I also tried applying a theory I learnt (Law of Pragnanz) to some of my designs (by using just the eye, lashes and brows but allowing the user to fill in the rest of the face), and my client liked that idea of just using the eye and brows.





Below is the final logo animation design I created.







Website Wireframes



Sketched initial Wire Frames for the website design.





Developed webiste Wire Frames. From my research, I picked up on how my client liked the more boxy designs. I tried to create similar designs for her website.









Website Initial Digital Designs



I then developed my website designs on Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.







My client liked the consistent branding throughout. She preferred the white background used, although did not want it too dull for a user. She liked the lashes background used and found it was not too over powering. My research and theory shows that white space is good for a clear looking design. I also tried to follow the web design my client liked the best in the research, which I feel I have achieved by ensuring the page would flow well for a user.



Feedback

I gathered some feedback from my client before creating and developing the logo designs further.



My clients favourite designs are shown below.





She sent me this email that contains the feedback:

"Hi Jess, my laptop finally updated!!

I have completed the form for you.

Feedback from the logos:

Thankyou so much for creating these, I am very impressed with all of them. A few that stood out to me are:

10, 17, 18 & 20: I really like these, my eyes were drawn to these straight away. I am a fan of geometric designs anyway and the colours are very me, its a nice touch with including an eye colour and blue, green brighten it up nicely. Number 20 – the ‘& brows’ is too light so its not clear straight away, for number 18, I like the variety in the font sizes.

17: I like the side glance of the eyes and the light grey shadow around the font and the pink eyeshadow. (maybe a splash of green or blue as eye colour would really set it off.)

I am not overly fussed with an animation, great idea though. (thats just personal preference).

Charlotte x"



Developed Digital Designs




Logo Developments

Website Developments




Logo Developments



After recieving the clients feedback, I continued to develop the four choosen designs. I created the brush stroke effect shown throughout my logo designs on Adobe Photoshop (see below).





I created the gradient effect in the geometeric logo designs using the blending options in Adobe Photoshop and apply a pink gradient I found already made.





The results below.





I then sent these designs off to my client and she responded with:

"Morning,

I love all of these, they are so lovely. It’s really hard to choose just one! Such a wonderful job and you have incorporated all my input and colours.

Thankyou so much! X"

I therefore, created further variations of the logo design she liked the best. I used images found on Google and various paint brush strokes Adobe Photoshop has to offer (see below).







Website Developments



I continued to develop the website design, trying to make sure it would appeal to the user and the client would approve. I used Adobe InDesign to use a website template and to ensure the positioning of the website elements were in order.





I then continued to make further ajustments to the designs.





Below is the website design my client liked best. She loved the lash background I created in Adobe Photoshop using a white overlay (the background is shown below also). I also used my research to refer back to as insiration when developing my designs. I kept this box look but using a grey shadow on the images etc.







Further Ideas

The client also said how she would like leaflet and further branding designs. I therefore did a bit of research on leaflet designs. Below is a moodboard I created on designs I felt would suit her new logo and branding. I liked the right hand side leaflet design. This design would also continue on with the boxy design my client likes. The bottom left design was also a favourite of mine as I like how the design continues as the leaflet is opened up.





I also found these websites which gave advice and possible content to use in the leaflet designs. 'Luxe Lashes London' gave good points on how to care for your lashes. I felt this could be in the form of bullet points on one of the pages of the leaflet. As I don't want to make the leaflet design too cluttered, I thought bullet points would work best. 'Superdrug' also gave me an insight on "5 Tips On How To Keep Your Lashes Looking Lush" and 'The Lash Lounge' gave further top tips, which could be used alongside the care for your lashes as further content.



Luxe Lashes London

Superdrug

The Lash Lounge

Continuing with the clients wishes, I created leaflet and Facebook header designs (using the logo she prefered so far).



Facebook Header Designs:





Leaflet Designs:





I also thought it would be good to have buisness cards created too, for potential clients to keep, with her contact details on. I created a moodboard of designs I liked and I feel would work well for my client. The general design always have a logo at the front and then contact information on the back.







I used Adobe InDesign to create the designs. The Business Card Designs are found below.







Final Outcome

I was very pleased with my final outcome, and the clients testimonial is below.



Below is the final logo design.





I also created a final leaflet design on Adobe InDesign. My client prefered the more simplistic design.





Alongside the final Facebook Header Design.







Below is the final Buisness Card Design.





The final website design can also be found below, alonside a working prototype.





Website Prototype





Key Sotware Used




I used various software I knew already and have learned from my last 3 years at University. It is important in third year to build on the skills we already know rather than trying to teach ourselves something new. This makes us more advanced in our specific areas of design. I did however learn Adobe Animate, but as I was already familiar with all Adobe programmes, alot of the controls and tools were the same.







Target Market




My clients target market was addressed in the client form. My client said her client base is very broad but usually female, 14-60+ years old. She also has a range of professionals, students, housewives etc. that use her service.













Acknowledgements



I would like to thank the following people:



Charlotte Toms, my client for the project. Thank you for being co-operative



Paul Wilson and the DMD Team, for always giving feedback and providing support throughout projects








Branding Guidelines





Thank you for checking out this project. Please go back to the portfolio to see some more :)