Client Spotlight: Hairy Jayne

I had a product photoshoot with Jayne from handmade hair care brand Hairy Jayne earlier this year. I wanted to share a bit about her brand and an insight into why photography is important to her biz & how we came to create the visual identity for her product photography.

You can check out the Hairy Jayne shop here: hairyjaynehandmade.co.uk

Tell me about your sustainable hair care brand?

I started Hairy Jayne back when I was a hairdresser in London, and now I make all of our products full time in Bristol. The products are sustainable hair care – they’re all vegan and packaged in either plastic free or reusable packaging. I make everything by hand in my dedicated kitchen in an ex-bakery using natural ingredients and essential oils, so the kitchen always smells amazing!

The name Hairy Jayne came to me back when I was hairdressing because I would go home every day covered in other people’s hair.

In terms of branding, our core value is sustainability which is quite a serious topic. But I wanted Hairy Jayne’s visual branding to be friendly, fun and upbeat – positive rather than all doom-and-gloom. I wanted to steer clear of the kraft paper look for the packaging so used a Pantone postcard pack that I had to choose 8 colours for my main products and fragrance variations. The colours loosely form a pastel-hued rainbow, which I love.

Why is photography important for your biz?

As a small indie brand, we sell more of our products online than in shops, so product photography is so important for us. The two main ways we can convey to customers what we sell is through photographs and text, so the photos need to be eye catching and clear. Text in the listings is often secondary (people don’t always read things!) so having strong imagery of the products is super important.

Having a catalogue of good photos of bundled products is important too. We are members of various online directories and marketplaces, and often need brand shots for those in differing formats. So having a bunch of lifestyle shots featuring different combinations of products is helpful.

These are great for banners on our home page too, which we like to rotate for to the seasons, product launches or other special times in the year.

Not to mention social media. Coming up with content for Instagram is a constant task. I usually schedule posts, so whenever I have a shoot with Diana I have lots of still product shots to mix into the schedule.

How did you choose the style of your product images?

When I first worked with Diana, she tried out a couple of styles. She experimented with some more muted backgrounds using marble and some foliage, as well as the bolder colourful backgrounds that we use now. The toned-down backgrounds can be useful when I work with other sustainable businesses and retailers that don’t have such colourful branding, but ultimately the pastel rainbow inspired shots are more “us” so we use those on our website and in our branding.

I love that Diana uses shapes or simple props within the compositions to make the images even more interesting. Quite often the products in shot are totally different sizes, so her skill is in making the photograph look balanced as well as crystal clear and well lit.