Introduction
Originally a trial one-week prerequisite part of a job application in late 2021/ early 2022, an agency requested a full rebranding, re-titling/naming, and website refresh as a home page visual deliverable for a well-known distributor for the hair & salon industry professionals.
Branding Identity
including Titling & Naming ideations, (2022)Website Concept Design
High-fidelity prototyping with Atomic Principle Design System in Figma®. (2022).As additional incentives within this 2025 Case Study revisit :
Brief re-auditing on the current 2025 website (across two sighted iterations early and late July 2025)
Revised visualization plus partial build demonstration in Shopify®.*
* Regretfully, due to the Shopify's Trial Plan expiry that has elapsed, the store's URL is currently inaccessible. Please contact me for a confidential Figma® Prototype showcase.
Problem Statement
A well known & respected supplier to the hair & salon industry requested website redesign, re-brand/re-title proposition, and refined e-commerce experience to reflect the 50*-long year proud history.
Predominantly a B2B model, the company requested a customer-centric/customer-friendly front-facing ecommerce to be present at its home page.
*Previously the original brief was erroneously advised as twenty-five years of history, as opposed to fifty / "50" (evidence on this initial brief available upon confidential request). Hence here throughout this 2025 Case Study, fiftty (50) is used for factual consistency.
AI / Automation / Generative content usage
The only deliverables I had to resort to using generative tools in order to overcome parametric limitations of Shopify® were the following:
Custom Blog Posts Collection
For context, many Shopify default themes offer unique / proprietary set parameters including features not congruent with others, e.g., the ability to show Posts collections on any stand-alone pages, and/or adding pictures to mega menus, to name a few; without resorting to additional plugins. Here, I prompted (within Sidekick®) a custom blog posts collection viewer at the home page with an array of options including adjustable layouts between carousels and/or grid before many other editable specifics.Blog articles
Since this is a very large e-commerce site comprising hundreds of products and many dozens of thought-leaderships content pieces, I had to rely on the built-in generative writing(s) to portray the required amount of literatures.Custom Breadcrumbs
At the time of this writing, implementing a breadcrumb involved some coding proficiency which impairs the timeliness delivery. Hence, in this instance, and given Shopify's many limitations in its native offering, a custom Block was generated with various options to assist and may potentially be of use for other projects.
Full Video Case Study
A twenty-five minute fully narrated, edited and cut (FCPX) Case study video presentation is provided below. Here I outlined the history of the original briefing (late 2021/2022) before then the 2025 personal revisit (redux) and upskilling initiative.
Demographics
(B2B) Males and female ~ existing industry professionals in the hair & salon industries.
(B2B) Business owners and/or contractors in the industry.
(End clientele / front facing audience) Male and female, median income, already fashion and grooming-conscious segment.
20-45 years of age.
Mr. Michelo Rossi
Archetype ~ “The Jet Setter”
32 Years old
Perth, Western Australia
Chief Clients Liason
Auditing
The brief auditing revealed accessibility and design decisions that could have been optimized, on top of addressing the general accessibility on the colour scheming.
Naming and titling brainstorming soon began after the audit.
Having examined options then shortlisted to just a few ~ Comb.Direct was chosen for both simplicity and utility as the intended domain URL. Interestingly, the domain name was in actuality, available at the time of project's timeline (late 2021/early 2022).
Research, Moodboarding & Stylescaping
General brainstorming on both existing fiction and non fictional ideas were sought, eventually forming a branding Stylescaping encompassing colour scheming and general design decisions; reflecting more on the conservative side of the long, fifty 50-years of servitude for the hair & salon industry.
Naming Decisions Design and brandmark based on Letterforms C and D
The Concept name(s) "Comb" and "Direct" were considered as they immediately hint the company's long history for delivering and supplying for the hair and salon industry. As well, combining them together conveniently forms the desired URL/domain name.
Hence, in light of these connotations symbolic visualizations on tools the trade (the comb, and the razor) were explored in their most minimal presentation.
Further, integrating the letterforms C and D also stems as an idea to retrospect the company's initials (C)omb (D)irect.
The Shopify® prototype - customisation & indicative content migration.
As major incentive in this 2025 Case Study is a fully (on-brand) build on the pre-set theme Atelier. Spanning throughout two and half months development as part of upskilling, including battle testing limitations, constraints as well as frequent technical / troubleshooting enquiries.
Identical to Wordpress® decentralized ecosystem of plugin(s), over-reliance may encumber the entire process from reaching towards MVP/Minimum Viable Product. Hence for timely deliverability in mind but also as added challenge ~ only very few, select external plug ins (on top fo those that came pre-installed natively with the stock theme Atelier) were allowed.
Nevertheless as stated earlier, the limitations within each stock themes themselves cannot be understated. The use of Custom AI generated block to display curated blog articles, and basic breadcrumbs all with adjustable layout parameters; soon became necessary.
Further incentives includes a hero video banner. Using various free to use public footages, these were cut/edited with Apple® Final Cut Pro X to promote vibrancy and emotive story-telling.
Post Project Outcome / Criterias
I humbly disclose that at the time of industry conduct of this NDA project ~ any or all impact statements were strictly forbidden for me to query and/or simply unobtainable. The following criterias below are therefore what I would raise soon after a Project surpasses their service period; akin to hypothetical "Retrospective"
About this Case Study
Unless otherwise explicitly specified - all artworks, including naming, titling, sample content-writing including this Case study, and the entire front-end development ~ have not been resorted through Automation, Artificial Intelligence, or generative tools.
All hours expended on each NDA re-creation(s) were conducted out of limited, personal and voluntary capacity on top of / during full time tenure.