Featured image for Crown Affair & Placeholder Urge You To 'Take Your Time' With New Hair Care Line

Crown Affair & Placeholder Urge You To 'Take Your Time' With New Hair Care Line

by Bill McCool on 04/08/2020 | 2 Minute Read

After thoroughly convincing us that plastic bags can also be art, as well as creating an alternative made from biodegradable bamboo fibers, Placeholder decided to let their hair down a bit, and collaborate with a pal for their new beauty line.

Crown Affair promises to be a brand that makes hair care a daily ritual, one that instructs you “take your time,” and they applied that overall premise to the branding and visual identity. Dianna Cohen founded the brand because she cared about the routines people undergo to take care of themselves, especially when it came to all things hair. Having known Placeholder founder Sho Shibuya after they both worked for a stint at travel brand Away, she knew she had the perfect designer to help her imagine the brand from the ground up, and they began a collaborative process for visualizing what that meant.

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Early on, they identified some of Dianna’s influences like Ed Ruscha and Constantin Brâncusi, and from there, they started to engineer the brand, from its early strategy and launch campaign to the packaging itself. The boxes and containers are minimally executed, and all of the packaging components are either compostable (like the paper-based materials) or recyclable as they bottled in glass containers.

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Editorial photograph

The brand turned to Colophon Paper for the outer paper packaging, as well as Grilli Type for a bespoke typeface dubbed Crown Affair Sans. The whole of the packaging, while calm and so seemingly uncomplicated, revels in the idea of “taking your time,” as even some of the type on the packaging stretches out across multiple panels.

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Additionally, for the launch of the brand, seeing so many people struggling because of the Coronavirus pandemic, Dianna and the company decided to donate 10% of all purchases to No Kid Hungry.

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Crown Affair is now available for purchase over at their site, and they even have a perfect introductory set, featuring one of their beautifully-designed combs, a brush, hair oil, microfiber towel, silk scrunchie, and a 3-minute hourglass, just so you know what kind of commitment you’ll be making to this daily ritual.

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