Pack of the Month: YUNGBLD Makes Us Thirst For Our New Shower Buddy, blond.

Sometimes girls just want to have fun, and with Blond, they absolutely will. 

blond, the female-founded St. Petersburg-based hair salon, offers a full range of services from cuts to hair-extension installation, but the upstart studio wanted to take their branding up a notch, which is why they hired YUNGBLD studio to help them with a full brand exploration. 

The CEO and founder of YUNGBLD, Laura Miller, believes that there is a fine line between minimalist and boring design. This philosophy was brought to the forefront when designing for blond owing to its striking design rooted in typography. 

But beyond the playful type and gorgeous design, Miller herself finds joy in working with start-ups and developing full-brand packages from scratch, which is why the collaboration with blond was such a natural fit; blond wanted the works. 

For this particular project, Miller helped oversee every phase of the branding from branding, print material, photography, website, and social media outlets. After finishing up these explorations, Miller was inspired to round out the design bundle with packaging design. As a result, she developed the shampoo and conditioner projects that inspired the client so much, and they moved forward with developing the product into something tangible. 

The blond bottles are striking in their simplicity, and evoke the feeling of being powerful, confident, and self-assured, creating an emotional connection with consumers. The shampoo comes in a vibrant red, while the conditioner product comes in a rosy pink hue, a distinct choice that sets them apart on the shelf. 

For the text-based logo, serif font is striking and memorable, with the "b" in blond serving as the framework for all other aspects of the branding project. The typeface used in the packaging design is a mixture of Avant Garde Bold and Avant-Garde Regular. By focusing on varying the weight of fonts, the result is a cohesive, straight-forward copy design that doesn’t distract from the striking colors of the bottles themselves. 

As for the other design elements, each bottle contains robust, feminist POV copy, such as “Sorry, I can’t hear you over the volume of my hair,” and “Long hair for short patience.” 

It’s a brilliant way to showcase the brand through bold messaging, an aspect of the project that Miller and YUNGBLD are particularly proud of. 

“I wanted the brand to feel like it was talking directly to you,” said Miller. In the oversaturated hair-care market, just talking to your customers through the packaging is an opportunity to differentiate yourself; having the copy be that sassy is a delightful bonus. It’s due in part to the YUNGBLD team wanting to capture the entrepreneurial spirit of the brand. “I wanted to design packaging that felt as honest and confident as the babes behind the blond studio brand,” she adds.

The challenge in creating the branding and packaging for Blond came from knowing when to trust that a project is complete and not over-designing. “For this brand packaging, I focused on refining when and where to apply solid color and how to pair that with cheeky copy, Miller said. "I think every great piece of work plays on juxtaposing elements. That is something I always consider when creating.” 

When deciding to build out a brand based primarily on color and font choices, the addition of one or two elements can make a design feel cluttered and busy. The test for YUNGBLD was to design something striking and unique without putting too much spice into the pot, and the results showed their refined, on-trend palette.

For the St-Petersburg-based hair studio, blond’s shampoo and conditioner bottles represent the final stage of a brand being born, and with YUNGBLD's playful, minimalist approach to their design and packaging, they've kickstarted what could be bold, un-beweavable future.