Robert Preston is a legend in Swedish hairstyling and hair design. Half Scot, half Swede, Robert started his famous salon 20 years ago in Östermalm, Stockholm. We had the honour of creating their first ever website, and it was an amazing experience.
About Preston Hair
Not simply a physical salon, the Preston Hair brand is associated with styling excellence on the catwalk, in magazines, film and in creative direction for L'Oreal Professionnel. Robert approached us to build a web prescence which would reflect the many facets of his business and his personality. What he was clear about was that he did not want a 'traditional' hair-dressing site.
Robert Preston is a familiar face at L'Oreal Professionnel events, and we wanted to bring elements of this into the site experience. We discussed at length what the purpose of the new website should be, and we decided that it should have two separate functions: one to promote the salon and their staff and partnerships, and one to showcase their work on stage, in film and in print. The site should also be bi-lingual, with texts in both Swedish and English. The initial proposal had two separate language versions of the site, but we then took the creative decision of including both languages in one site layout.
The site map showing the two separate functions of the site: promoting the salon, and inspiring visitors with cool and creative examples of their work.
The salon is a young and vibrant environment, and the site design needed to capture that in its essence. It needed to express a deep commitment to the world of styling, and feel cool, professional and dynamic in its design. We carried out a photoshoot with photographer Johan Annerfelt to capture the spirit of the salon in action. We also created the tone-of-voice and wrote all the site copy.
Main salon website
The homepage was intended to be busy and filled with different types of content. English and Swedish texts were displayed side by side, but in negative, whereby English texts were black on white, and Swedish white on black. We took inspiration for this idea from in-flight magazines where local and international content is presented in one layout. Even the site navigation was bi-lingual. To the right was the link to the 'Inspiration' part of the site. More on this later...
Sub-pages contained page specific content for Partners, about Preston Hair and News, but also allowed for video pushes, product information, customer testimonials and news items to be displayed alongside.
Important functions like booking, prices and salon location were naturally presented as well.
Inspiration section of the website
The Inspiration section of the site was accessed from a top link navigation with a very different appearance from the other links. Once in this section you were presented with a second navigation comprising Film, Photobook, Magazines and Art Projects, and here you could view the creative work of Preston Hair across a range of media. Preston Hair's work has graced the covers of international fashion magazines, and their styling skills have been seen in many cinema productions. They have also featured in newsclips and interviews, and their collaboration in art projects shows another side of their creative dna. In the Inspiration section you could really get inspired before your own visit, knowing you were in the best of hands.
The site was designed to be totally responsive, of course. Built in the Perch framework, we also created a CMS to enable Preston Hair staff to easily update the site with new content. We wrote a guide on how to use it, and trained the staff.
