The Brand: Langehair.com
The Mission:
To rebrand the 5 years old Brand in order to give it a fresher look, more aligned with the “air du temps”, so as to attract a new pool of customers.
The Process:
Rebranding is very different than building a Brand from scratch. Even though the process may seem very similar from a creative standpoint, the actors, the emotional baggage, and history, as well as its existing customers, must be entered into the equation.
In the case of L’ange, I wanted to keep the pink, which is a loved attribute of the brand by its community, I also wanted to keep the ultra-feminine that goes with it. What I decided to do, was to rough the edges out by adding some unexpected elements, like a “stacked” logo, a rather unconventional choice in logo design, brutalist material and colors, and minimalism, sometimes at the limit of pharmaceutical influences.
All that in order to elevate it from a friendly drugstore label to a cool-relatable Brand.
The Identity:
L’ange identity is feminine in a soft pink type of way, embarrassing the baby-doll hair look, with shiny unbothered curls. This is a rather old-school vision of hair and is relatively niche in the industry landscape.
The new logo had to embrace that girliness, and yet, give it a contemporary feel and design relevance. The curly serif font, edited in a stacked version, gives that modern take on the existing brand.
The Palette:
L’ange’s palette was about that powder pink on tools, and black on white for the liquids.
I didn’t want to depart from it, as that palette works with the customers, but a way to “water down” the Barbie feel that comes with it, was to add in a contrasting color.
Cement, later renamed Shadow, a slightly warm grey, was the neutral answer to that mission.
The Fonts:
We needed to completely depart from the legacy fonts of the Brand. The challenge was to pick a lyrical typeface that would hint at the new Logo, but still be a compatible Google or Adobe font. Libre Baskerville was the option that filled all the boxes.
In parallel, we were seeking a Sans Serif option font, DM Sans and its extra clean look was a perfect balance to the strong personality of the Logo and lead font.
The Photography:
The Brand’s photography is probably one of the main departures from the existing identity. With a more editorial approach, I wanted to elevate the overall look of the Brand. Adding diversity of hair types, hair colors, and more interesting styling direction.
To evoque the idea of Quality, I added some focused close-ups to exacerbate the textures and feel of the liquids, as for the tools, clean lines, and mechanical close-ups, almost in a tech, apple-looking way.
Product Development:
A part of the Identity revamp, of course, passes by the Packaging design. In a worry of timeline, we started by updating the Deco Design of the existing packaging before starting to revamp the entire line and change the actual packaging components.
Adding the new Shadow Grey color into the landscape made a big impact on the overall look and feel of the line. As well as adding a few notes of metalization for some of the more premium items.
We also took a bit of a departure for the launch of the Body Line, with an illustration added to the minimal bottle design, this particular design actually won the Design Award.
The Website:
We couldn’t apply much changes to the website design as the rebranding took place, but with the simple application of the new color palette, fonts and illustrations, it still made a world of difference.
Added to that the new photography style, and you “almost” have a brand new website.
Social Presence:
Social media is your actual Retail Window. This is how you introduce your Brand in one glance to your potential new customers, and keep contact and relevancy with your existing ones. It must ultimately carry the Brand Indenty while bringing the campaign storytelling are wanting to push.
Online Ads:
The online ads look had to reflect the new direction of the entire web presence, which means applying palette, fonts and updated photography.
A lot of the online ads are sale and promotion focused, what I wanted to do with the Product Focused ads, was to give it a minimal, elevated look, treating each product as fine jewelry.
Illustrations:
A major part of L’ange marketing and branding is dedicated to tutorials and more broadly “Education”, with that clear intention in mind, Infograph had to be considered at the center piece of the re-branding.
To create simple, yet delicately feminine illustrations very quickly became an evidence, for both hair and logistical needs.
L’ange IRL:
A part of the required vision was also the application of L’ange into the retail world. I was asked to imagine what the retail presence could look like, physically, but also customer experience wise.
I imagine a space divided into 5 concepts, Shoppable Display, Styling Bar, Interactive Concierge, Hair Salon and a Media Room for live experience and streaming. All of it linked by a powerful and playful app.
the app:
The vision for the Brand’s retail presence was to be as connected to the digital world as much as possible. the best way for this was to be navigated through an app.
We drafted a quick app concept, which would allow both online shopping, retail navigation allowing to scan each product and see if they fit your hair profile, if not, suggesting alternative products more adequate to your hair type. The app is also a place for social connection, where you can watch, create and share reels and lives, as well as connect with your favorite creators.
