Overview / The challenge
BeautySpot SPA is a premium salon in central Haifa, serving a multilingual clientele at above-market prices.
I first worked with the client as a content creator. When he moved into a new space, the project expanded into a full brand refresh — from signage and printed materials to the website.
Challenge:
The salon had only a logo — no colours, typography, printed materials or brand rules — and even the existing mark was not suitable for print or signage.
The main challenge was positioning: the salon charges above the local market, while the new space feels closer to an international beauty brand. Every customer touchpoint — façade, door, menu and printed materials — needed to justify that premium.
I first worked with the client as a content creator. When he moved into a new space, the project expanded into a full brand refresh — from signage and printed materials to the website.
Challenge:
The salon had only a logo — no colours, typography, printed materials or brand rules — and even the existing mark was not suitable for print or signage.
The main challenge was positioning: the salon charges above the local market, while the new space feels closer to an international beauty brand. Every customer touchpoint — façade, door, menu and printed materials — needed to justify that premium.
Role
Brand identity, print production, signage, web design and build, photography and video Delivered — Logo rebuild and lockups, visual system, storefront graphics across 17 windows, illuminated sign, multilingual menus, gift certificates, business cards, QR brochure, website, advertising Relationship — Ongoing
Approach
My first proposal was to replace the logo. The owner said no: the mark was his own idea and he wanted it kept. So the job changed shape — not replace, but rebuild.
That set the working method for the whole project. I worked on site, session by session, with the owner in the room: he has strong opinions about how his business looks and is constantly bringing new ideas to it. Every element was argued for rather than presented. It is a slower way to work, and what survived it is what the business uses today.
That set the working method for the whole project. I worked on site, session by session, with the owner in the room: he has strong opinions about how his business looks and is constantly bringing new ideas to it. Every element was argued for rather than presented. It is a slower way to work, and what survived it is what the business uses today.
The mark
The original drawing had a face that didn't read as a face — flat, uneven lines and a profile that dissolved where it should have been sharpest. I redrew it: a defined brow, nose and lip line, controlled line weights, a continuous curve that opens instead of tangling with the wordmark beside it.
The wordmark was rebuilt around it. I opened the letterspacing so the type carried the same weight as the drawing, and I removed the tagline — Where beauty comes alive — that had been crowding the baseline. In its place, one word: SPA. The name says what the business is, and stops explaining itself.
Two lockups came out of it, horizontal and vertical, so the mark works on a façade panel and on a portrait window alike. It is the same mark the owner wanted to keep — now drawn well enough to be cut, printed and lit.
The wordmark was rebuilt around it. I opened the letterspacing so the type carried the same weight as the drawing, and I removed the tagline — Where beauty comes alive — that had been crowding the baseline. In its place, one word: SPA. The name says what the business is, and stops explaining itself.
Two lockups came out of it, horizontal and vertical, so the mark works on a façade panel and on a portrait window alike. It is the same mark the owner wanted to keep — now drawn well enough to be cut, printed and lit.
The visual language
The original drawing had a face that didn't read as a face — flat, uneven lines and a profile that dissolved where it should have been sharpest. I redrew it: a defined brow, nose and lip line, controlled line weights, a continuous curve that opens instead of tangling with the wordmark beside it.The mark alone could not fill a building. What carries the brand is line-drawn botany: ginkgo leaves and feathered fronds, at a single line weight on a warm sand ground.
That choice does three jobs at once. On glass it fills a 2.18 m window without blocking daylight and without exposing the treatment rooms behind it — open enough to be translucent, dense enough to screen. At A4 it reduces to a menu page without losing anything, because there is nothing to lose: one weight, no fills, no gradients. And it gives the salon a register photography could not — calm rather than promotional, which is what the price point required.
That choice does three jobs at once. On glass it fills a 2.18 m window without blocking daylight and without exposing the treatment rooms behind it — open enough to be translucent, dense enough to screen. At A4 it reduces to a menu page without losing anything, because there is nothing to lose: one weight, no fills, no gradients. And it gives the salon a register photography could not — calm rather than promotional, which is what the price point required.
Three languages along one faсade
The salon's customers don't share a language. Rather than translate one message three times, the storefront runs Russian, Hebrew and English across adjacent panels: whoever walks past finds their own language somewhere along the glass. Menus are produced in all three; gift certificates in Russian and Hebrew.
Every layout had to hold with text set left-to-right and right-to-left, at lengths that differ by a third between languages, without redrawing the page each time.
Every layout had to hold with text set left-to-right and right-to-left, at lengths that differ by a third between languages, without redrawing the page each time.
Storefront
Seventeen windows, 218 × 123 cm each — around 46 m² of glass and nearly 21 running metres of façade on a corner site.
I prepared the artwork for all seventeen and took the job through print myself: the technical side with the print shop, proofing, and the production run. A storefront that size is where a brand either holds together or comes apart, and it is not a stage you hand over.
I prepared the artwork for all seventeen and took the job through print myself: the technical side with the print shop, proofing, and the production run. A storefront that size is where a brand either holds together or comes apart, and it is not a stage you hand over.
Colour
The palette starts with a constraint that was already on the building. The windows of the new space are framed in blue. The frames belong to the façade, not to the brand, and seventeen of them run the length of a corner site. Rather than fight that, I took the blue into the system as the text colour —
#1F2845, matched to the frames — which is why it reappears across the printed materials. The brand matches the building it lives in instead of arguing with it.
Around it: a warm sand ground
#ECE4D6, a deeper sand
#C7BBA4 for the botanical line work, and a dark warm brown
#44392A for text where the blue would read too cold. No fourth colour. Both text colours clear 8:1 against the sand ground, which is what lets the same palette work on a phone screen and on 46 m² of glass read from across a street.
#1F2845, matched to the frames — which is why it reappears across the printed materials. The brand matches the building it lives in instead of arguing with it.
Around it: a warm sand ground
#ECE4D6, a deeper sand
#C7BBA4 for the botanical line work, and a dark warm brown
#44392A for text where the blue would read too cold. No fourth colour. Both text colours clear 8:1 against the sand ground, which is what lets the same palette work on a phone screen and on 46 m² of glass read from across a street.
Typography
Avenir sets Latin and Cyrillic — a geometric sans close enough to the wordmark's proportions that the text reads as an extension of the mark rather than an accompaniment.
The Hebrew is set in a system face on purpose. This is a brand its owner runs day to day: a price change, a seasonal offer, a sign in the window. Typography that needs a licence, a font file and a designer does not survive that. The one that ships on every machine does.
The Hebrew is set in a system face on purpose. This is a brand its owner runs day to day: a price change, a seasonal offer, a sign in the window. Typography that needs a licence, a font file and a designer does not survive that. The one that ships on every machine does.
Website
The owner asked for one thing: put the menu online so customers could read it on their phones. I proposed a small multi-page site instead, so a visitor could see the salon as well as its price list — and designed and built it end to end.
It switches between Hebrew and Russian and carries an accessibility mode: in Israel a commercial website is expected to meet IS 5568, the national standard based on WCAG 2.0 AA, so accessibility is a requirement here rather than a courtesy. The photography is mine — interior, treatments and people — shot, retouched and placed, alongside video from the same sessions.
It switches between Hebrew and Russian and carries an accessibility mode: in Israel a commercial website is expected to meet IS 5568, the national standard based on WCAG 2.0 AA, so accessibility is a requirement here rather than a courtesy. The photography is mine — interior, treatments and people — shot, retouched and placed, alongside video from the same sessions.
Outcome
The façade now does part of the selling.
Legible from across the street in three languages, the storefront brings people in off the pavement: they come in to ask, or they scan a code on the glass and land in the salon's Instagram. That is walk-in attention the business did not have before.
And it cost a fraction of the alternative.
The bare windows were what made the frontage look unfinished, and replacing seventeen of them was the obvious fix — and an expensive one. Printed film on the existing glass got the premium reading for a small share of that budget. The design solved what would otherwise have been a construction bill.
Legible from across the street in three languages, the storefront brings people in off the pavement: they come in to ask, or they scan a code on the glass and land in the salon's Instagram. That is walk-in attention the business did not have before.
And it cost a fraction of the alternative.
The bare windows were what made the frontage look unfinished, and replacing seventeen of them was the obvious fix — and an expensive one. Printed film on the existing glass got the premium reading for a small share of that budget. The design solved what would otherwise have been a construction bill.
The price list stopped being a conversation.
Menus in three languages and a brochure of QR codes mean a customer can see what a treatment costs, join the wi-fi, open the service site and book a time without asking anyone. For a salon priced above its market, being able to read the price before you ask is part of the welcome.
And the brand runs without me in the room. Two lockups, a fixed palette and a print-ready set mean the owner can put the business on a new surface — a window notice, a seasonal offer, a post — and it still looks like itself. Three years after the first job, he is still commissioning the next one.
Menus in three languages and a brochure of QR codes mean a customer can see what a treatment costs, join the wi-fi, open the service site and book a time without asking anyone. For a salon priced above its market, being able to read the price before you ask is part of the welcome.
And the brand runs without me in the room. Two lockups, a fixed palette and a print-ready set mean the owner can put the business on a new surface — a window notice, a seasonal offer, a post — and it still looks like itself. Three years after the first job, he is still commissioning the next one.
