I've just launched a custom website for Fitzgerald Co. Salon on the Gold Coast, and it's giving magazine. For a hair salon, a chic, editorial, fashion-magazine look just made sense. It started with a Pinterest board I put together for the client, and the favourites she picked from it. Here's how it came together.
Melissa, who owns the salon, didn't give me a design brief. She doesn't think in fonts and layouts, and she shouldn't have to. What she did give me, in our onboarding chat, was how she wanted people to feel.
She wanted it to feel like something new, not the same old. Luxury, but friendly and warm. A chic, editorial look, with a humble experience behind it.
That's a brief. It just isn't written like one.
Step 1
I saved 12 website designs to a Pinterest board, ones I thought suited her new brand and colours, and asked her to favourite the ones she liked.
She picked four. I drew inspiration from three of them. The fourth was lovely, but it was a completely different style to the others, and a website that tries to be everything ends up being nothing in particular.
Step 2
This is where it unfolded.
Melissa had just rebranded, and her new wordmark is big, elegant and very fashion. When I found a magazine-style hero section in my Pinterest searching, with a model's head sitting just over the letters of a huge headline, staring dead into the camera, my brain locked on. That was it. Her wordmark, behind a model with the gorgeous blonde the salon specialises in, just like a magazine cover.
I didn't just pick what looked pretty. I picked what worked with what she already had: her wordmark, her colours, her rebrand. That's the difference between a nice-looking website and one that looks like it belongs to the business.
New York magazine meets the Gold Coast.
Those three set the mood, and I designed everything from there. I wrote the direction down in one line: editorial, modern, like a fashion magazine. New York magazine meets the Gold Coast.
She approved the direction and a homepage concept before I built a single page.
Step 3
I don't have every design detail mapped out when I start. The structure and the look are signed off before I build, but the little touches come as I go. One idea leads to the next, and that's honestly my favourite part of the job. Once the magazine idea was set, everything else unfolded from it.
Little drawings of a hairdryer, scissors, a hair straightener, stars, a love heart and an Instagram icon, drawn in thin lines like a fashion illustration. They move, just slightly, when you scroll to them, and a ring circles the five Google stars around the F icon. Cute, but still sleek.
Hover over one and a sheen runs across it, like light catching a glossy magazine page as you turn it.
Instead of a standard "meet the team" row, each stylist gets a little editorial profile, laid out like a page in a magazine. Melissa wanted the salon to be about the whole team, not just her, so this section mattered.
None of that was in a brief. It came from living in the idea for a while.
And underneath all of that, it's fast. The site is built on Next.js, a modern web framework made for speed, because a beautiful website that's slow to load still loses people.
There are some incredible websites out there right now: pages that unfold as you scroll, sections that fly in, whole experiences built on motion. We can build those too, and for the right business they're brilliant.
But think about someone looking for a hairdresser. They want to see the services, find the salon, and book. If they have to scroll through an animation before the next section opens up, just to find a phone number, it gets in the way. Yes, it's cool. But your customer just wants to get where they're going.
What's out there
What a salon client wants
So on Fitzgerald Co.'s site, the motion is small and deliberate, to give people what they came for, quickly. The icons move just slightly as you scroll past. The Book Now buttons shine when you hover. It's enough to feel special, without ever slowing anyone down. That's the balance I aim for with a local business.
A little bit fancy, never in the way.
Step 4
Every website hits a roadblock, and photos are the usual one. Salon owners are busy doing hair, not taking photos of their salon.
So I didn't wait. I used what we had for now and built around it, so the site could go live in weeks, not months. Better photos come in December, when I'm at the salon.
When I sent Melissa the finished site for her final approval, this is what came back:
Smashed it out of the park… Thank you thank you thank you for doing this for me. The easiest decision making (you did it all) ever!
That line, "you did it all", is exactly how I want to work. Most business owners don't want another job on their plate. They want someone they trust to take care of it and make the right decisions for them.
A lot of business owners are. Here's what working with me actually looks like:
We talk through your business, and I write the content from that conversation.
That's the main thing I need from you. If you don't have them yet, I'll find a way to keep things moving.
You see the design direction and the first page before the whole site is built, so you're never stuck saying no to a finished website.
Some clients want to see everything. Some, like Melissa, would rather I just take the reins. Both work.
Making it look good is my job. You just tell me what you think.
Thinking about a new website? See how our custom website design works.