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LoneStar Salon & Spa is a woman-owned salon & spa with two locations in Washington state. In addition to offering top-level salon & spa services, their strong belief in mentorship, education, personalized service and community makes them a strong leader in their industry.
They needed to take their existing brand to the next level and infuse their unique values and personality across all of their marketing.
We started our evolution with our Branding Discovery Session, where we learned of the owner’s original inspiration for the company – a compass given to her by her father. She also wanted to bring in elements of nature and nurture.
As we delved deeper we helped her and her team articulate their company values, identify their unique personality, clarify their offerings and get specific about their audience.
LoneStar’s existing logo was in need of an update, because it presented limitations for who they are and where they were headed, as well as limitations for use in marketing. Heavy and dark with a Western connotation, the black circle didn’t lend itself to other layouts, they had expanded into offering spa services, and the sense of LoneStar as a guiding light wasn’t coming through.
Using their values, story and pesonality, as well as the owner’s desire to focus more on nature as well as modernize their image, we developed an elegant star shape as the focus, pairing it with clean, modern type and an earthy color palette. We offered other variations for many uses, and the shapes and lines formed a base for patterns and treatments for use across the board. The logo story we wrote opens like this:
“Inspired by the uniqueness of every star in the sky, LoneStar’s role as a guiding light, and the four communities they serve (students, guests, peers, neighbors), this elegant diamond-shaped star evolved organically into a meaningful emblem of what they stand for.”
Our work evolves in tandem with each brand, both verbally and visually; as we got to the essence of LoneStar’s story, personality, ideal clients and values, we leapt from our foundation into exploring their unique way of communicating, how patterns emerge, shapes interact and elements work in harmony. The result was exciting, elegant, and filled with possibillity; above you can see the many aspects of the overall brand we defined and how it could be applied to numerous tactics.
We crafted each detail with care, speaking as LoneStar in every statement, even down to the earthy, natural color story that illuminates what is special and memorable about LoneStar. Cream becomes “Soft Light”, grey is “Night Sky” and green is “Ever Green”, each one a vital piece of their unique and personal mythology.
Bold shapes found in patterns, photos informed with LoneStar’s aesthetic, emotion and colors, along with line work to connect it all shows how seamlessly it translates to the LoneStarSalonAndSpa.com website:
To build anticipation of LoneStar’s new look, services and location, we created a series of social media posts for them to choose from and easily post on their accounts. We included some of the text from their mission statement and brand language, using their new colors, fonts and design elements with their signature personality of industry expertise, education, service and fun. The response to the posts was excellent, with a lot of “LOVE THIS” in the comments.
Sometimes referred to as a client avatar or customer profile, each Brand Persona is a representation of the ideal customer—the type of person that will likely want to purchase a company’s services or products. Using over a dozen types of criteria for each person, we articulate very specifically who they are (often as important as who they are not) and how they are likely to find and interact with a company’s product or service.
Clearly defining these five unique LoneStar Personas showed us the wide variety of clients they serve, how best to reach them and meet their needs, what they respond to. This work laid the foundation for many possible marketing strategies, aesthetics, price points and more.
“WOW! Steph, beautiful!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You made me teary eyed! Thank you so much for giving so much of yourself in this project. And being so open to learning about and understanding us.”
When we’ve gotten your story straight, have stretched ourselves to explore every aspect of what makes you YOU, we put it all together in a hard back book for you to keep with you. You can use it as a reference guide, a story book, a training tool and even a place to make notes for further brand evolution and inspiration.
Every client also receive the assets in a packaged digital format, to easily share with your web designer, graphic team or anyone who will be utilizing your brand identity assets.
We absolutely adored working on Lone Star’s Brand Evolution; handing the fresh copies to Lisa and watching her look through them to see the new vision of her company reminded us why we do this.
