Hollen came to us needing a hair salon brand that didn't look like every other salon out there something distinctive, not another generic scissors-and-swirl logo lost in a saturated beauty market.

Here's what we built:

Look closely at the H in "Hollen." Instead of a straight bar across the middle, it's shaped like a pinchwide at the top, narrow in the center, wide again at the bottom. It reads like a single strand of hair looping between the two letters. So before anyone even reads the word "salon," the logo has already told them what the brand is about.

For color, we paired a deep burgundy with a soft blush pink. The burgundy carries the weight rich, warm, a little luxurious, the kind of color that says premium salon instead of drugstore aisle. The pink softens it, keeping the brand feeling gentle and welcoming rather than heavy. Together, they sit beautifully against real hair and skin tones, which matters most since this brand mostly lives in photos Instagram, in-salon shots, packaging in someone's hands.

I didn't stop at the logo on a screen either. I carried it across shampoo bottles, gift boxes, hairbrushes, and retail bags to make sure the idea still held up once it left the design file and landed in someone's actual hands.

Because a logo that just looks pretty and a logo that tells a story are two different outcomes. One gets a compliment. The other gets remembered.

If your brand's identity has never been checked beyond a logo file, that's usually where the disconnect with customers starts.