With their second salon opening in Collingwood, Melbourne, Studio Work was engaged in 2020 by hair salon Alchemy to revolutionise their visual identity.

Following their alchemist philosophy, Studio Work developed an experimental progressive identity that is bold and sharp.

With carefully selected typography, we combined Albert by @monkey_type for the logotype and body copy, which sit alongside Apoc by @blazetype used for headlines and featured copy.

In the midst of justified copy, set in Apoc, we developed a series of alchemist inspired symbols to fill the white space, these icons play a role in adding a unique design element for the brand. Colour also plays its part in their brand recognition, yet is experimental on application. The palette is made up of black, white and ember, with spray paint and silver adding an element of grunge. Black and silver is mainly used for their Traralgon location, and ember and black for their Traralgon location.

Printing finishes play an important role, and act as a tangible extension to the colour palette. We used a combination of silver foil on extract pitch, black foil on extract ember and black letter pressed on wild. All print materials were printed at @hungryworkshop

The gift voucher was an important item in the series of print materials, and we really wanted to combine all of the elements together. We used a silver tear-open envelope, generally used for food handling, we re-purposed it to house the gift voucher, sealed together with black Alchemy tape.

Overall the identity can evolve in the future, it has that ability to add new, and interesting textures, colours or techniques that align with the existing architecture created.

The complete project scope for Alchemy included the brand evolution and was executed across salon signage, a-frame design, website landing page, print materials, digital materials, aprons and social media profile images. Website Development: JMR Codes. Collateral photography: Foliolio.