Black and White Design

[AdamSayer]

I've just been commisioned to do work on a website for a hair salon, but they want it in black and white, and im just struggling to come up with a design that will pop and serve it's purpose at the same time....has anyone else had any experience with black and white on web?

[steve2112]

Hmmm no color is going to make you really rely on a strong design and good illustrations/photos. I would suggest creating a bookmark folder and going through a lot of sites that you like and see what happens. Maybe have a good interview with the owner to get to know what exactly they expect. If they hate illustartions then at leats you don't get to involved with doing that. A good interview will always help out the best.

steve

[MD]

Does it have to be ONLY black and white or can you add a splash of color somewhere?

[Mynock]

Excuse me MD do you know how expensive color is?

[Typically]

especially those RGB colors

[AdamSayer]

I normally do create bookmark folders for projects, and have ben doing so on this project for the past day or so. I'm just having trouble translating elements that I like to a two color scheme, I seem to lose a certain amount of depth. It's certainly the first time I've struggled with the design so much, usually the struggle comes in figuring the code to support the design.

[Typically]

yea black and white doesn't give you much to work with. try talking to the owner and asking if you can use color to highlight areas like menus. have it be black or white and when you roll over it has a bit of color. it'll be interesting to see what you come up with just using black and white though.

[marshdesign]

I think you need to rely a lot on great photography. Does the client have any good photophraphy? You can always use some headshot photos that are stock that are very high quality. hmm that is a toughy.

[AdamSayer]

i just shot the client an email, asking that earlier. She said she had some at a previous point, but has yet to supply me with them. Right now I'm just trying to let the design and typography support the site. Hopefully I'll be able to rely on some images to flesh it out a bit.

[thelob]

take a look at firstdirect.com It's mainly made up of black and white and has an apple feel to it

[steve2112]

Hmm hair salon's with no good photos = a bad representation of whatthey do. In that business pictures ARE EVERYTHING.

steve

[Quirk]

if all you have to work with is black and white, remember to use strong shape and maybe focus on typography

[longboy]

The guy who cuts my hair is associated with the marketing arm of American Crew. Dot Communications used to do all their graphics, but I'm not sure if they're still around or not.

Anyway, a quick look at American Crew's site shows a solid use of B/W with crisp, clean photography with some color here and there. I looked for my barber's site (Al's Barbershop), but he doesn't have an online presence.

http://www.americancrew.com/

[urstwile]

I actually think that a hair salon site could look spinkity-spank with just black and white. Ya know, cool silhouettes, contrasty duotones, stuff like that. Nowadays, it purveys an "edgy" look, isn't that at the heart of the demographic? (I buy the "whatever's on sale shampoo, so I might not be the best judge :rolleyes: ).

[Typically]

i need no shampoo now! =]

[bigmedia]

I'm guessing since it's a hair salon they wont be demanding a lot of content or pages, so I'd be thinking of going with something very simple but elegant and modern. Maybe some black and white photography, their logo, a simple menu and a bit of easy to read content.

[AbiJ]

I don't know how to link to these but it may work,

http://www.chanel-mobileart.com/?lang=en_eu
mainly black and white, slight use of blues

http://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk/features/index.cfm?featureid=1571
I remember this edition of computer arts came out a while ago, not exclusively websites but a couple are featured

[Cooper]

especially those RGB colors

Trees don't grow on light you know.

Wait, I mean...err :confused:

That american crew site doesn't really do it for me. I feel like my monitor is broken when I look at it, like when the scart cable half falls out of the back of my telly and the picture looses colour. The First Direct one is pretty sharp though, I reckon a black and white only website can be done well. You're going to run into problems with semantic aspects of the web such as highlighted links and stuff though.

[AdamSayer]

Thanks for some of the helpful links. I'm still working on the design a bit. The client is being lazy with the content. I'll post the design when I'm done with it. If anyone has any more links that might be of any help to black and white, then keep'em coming. The article that AbiJ posted was especially helpful. Thanks again, guys.

[bigmedia]

Show us what you've got when your through, I'd be interested in seeing where you went with it, there's obviously a few options out there.

[longboy]

That american crew site doesn't really do it for me. I feel like my monitor is broken when I look at it, like when the scart cable half falls out of the back of my telly and the picture looses colour.

You know, I was thinking that it probably wasn't the best after I posted it. I think years ago they actually had a better site, and very good design in their printed materials. Maybe they've changed their agency?

Good luck with the design, I'd like to see where you end up as well-

[vexartstudio]

at first black and white sounds like a tough one but since a salon really needs that sleek edge it would allow for some really artist use of head shots if the client can get them to you.

[urstwile]

^^I was thinking the same thing. :)

[bigmedia]

Sorry to muscle in, but here's a sneak preview of my band's website I'm working on, it's black and white, and very simple and quite similar to my own design site layout wise, but we're in a rush to get it up and running, so it'll do for now.

www.bigmediadesign.com/lmd.htm (http://www.bigmediadesign.com/lmd.htm)

Matt x

[AdamSayer]

So i talked to the client, and she let me work by including the colors from the logo. The page is now black, white, pink, and shades of grey. It went through a few revisions and this is the best she liked it. The design came out ok, customer is always right I suppose. Here is the site as is. I'm still waiting on images and some content. I am having a bit of trouble with the css in IE, however. It's making the black bar that the nav bar is on huge. It's only off slightly in IE7, but the size of the bar is crazy in IE6. Any help maybe...the link to the style sheet is:

http://www.adamsayer.com/final_touch/finaltouch_style.css

and the link to the page is:

http://www.adamsayer.com/final_touch/index.html

Forgive my css for being a bit messy. I'm still learning.