The background
Jaimie J Hair Extensions has become an East London institution, offering
human and synthetic hair extensions to clients from far and wide. Having built
her business from the ground up, Jaimie has worked tirelessly since 2003 to
earn a reputation that is second to none for the quality of her products and
the attention to detail in her work and to her clients.
Jaimie has always centred her business ethics around providing a personal
touch and came to us because she wanted an equally personal service now that
she was the client. With the opening of her new high street salon, Jaimie
decided it was time to enhance the image of her business and offer information
and booking services via the web.
The image
Our brief was to create a logo for Jaimie J for use on stationery as well
her salon window and awning graphics, and ultimately on her web site. She told
us that her logo should be glamorous and sexy - exactly the way her clients
should feel - with an homage to the romance and elegance of the pin up models
from the 40s and 50s.
We used colours and fonts that echoed logos and promotional material from
the era. Working with Jaimie on the imagery, we found that the painted works
of Vargas offered a wealth of inspiration. The logo's focal point is a
Vargas-esque female model draped across the lettering, with her fiery red hair
tumbling down between the "Jaimie" and the "J". Our very own graphic artist
and Photoshop guru worked long and hard to create the high resolution artwork
that now features on business cards, appointment cards, the salon's frontage
and the Jaimie J Hair Extensions web site.
The technology
Content management
Jaimie's web site includes a WYSIWYG CMS that allows her to manage content
easily - leaving her time to concentrate on running the rest of her business.
The custom built system handles a two-tier navigational structure with the
ability to specify file and folder names. The content pages themselves are
published at the specific time and date chosen and consist of all the expected
SEO-friendly components, like page title, meta description and keywords, H1
and body. The body portion of the page can accept hybrid code that outputs
standard XHTML and custom controls, like photo galleries and contact forms.
Each page also includes an abstract short description for search results and
can be included or excluded from the in-built search engine.
As well as being able to determine the folder structure and individual file
content, the CMS has the ability to group pages. Page groups invoke a
secondary set of links to navigate between the pages held in the group and
draw the user's attention to the page currently being viewed.
Media management
In order to showcase her work, Jaimie records before and after photographs of
most of her clients, and often invites clients to professional photo shoots.
The Jaimie J Hair Extensions web site includes a tailor-made media management
module that allows digital photographs to be uploaded and organised into
galleries. The galleries collate thumbnail images and their corresponding full
size photographs. Jaimie can assign a caption to each image and manage the
order in which they are displayed. Any gallery can simply be dropped anywhere
on any page within the hybrid CMS using a simple placeholder - not even a
single line of code.