You By Sally
A hair color brand campaign for Sally Beauty. Real cast, oversized swatches, and a system built to scale from influencer bio pages to retail signage without losing recognition.
Field Campaign Direction Brand System Digital Design Retail Signage
Author Jeremy Prasatik Published: 2021 Status: Live
Classification Campaign Direction Brand System Digital Design Retail Signage
Abstract
Hair color usually lives under fluorescent lights next to the toothpaste. The brief was to make it feel like something you choose, not something you grab.
Started with casting - real people across age, gender, and style, each paired with a signature shade. The portraits drove the campaign - saturated backgrounds, confident styling, personality leading and product following.
The swatch system turned shade exploration into a visual decision rather than a technical one. Oversized color blocks replaced tiny chips, and clean grids made browsing intuitive across mobile, desktop, and in-store signage. Avenir Next across weights anchored the type, pink and cyan held the primary chromatic register, and the system scaled from influencer bio pages to email to retail without losing recognition.
Real People, Signature Shades.
Casting drove the campaign. Real people across age, gender, and style, each paired with the shade that suited them.
Saturated backgrounds and confident styling let the portraits carry the brand. Product photography sat second to personality, which inverted the usual hair-color shoot order.
Color treated like a creative decision
Shade Exploration at Eye Level.
Oversized color blocks replaced the tiny chips that usually live on the back of a box. Clean grids made browsing intuitive across mobile, desktop, and in-store signage.
The grid logic carried the same way at every scale - from a 320px influencer bio page to a 6-foot retail sign. Same blocks, same hierarchy, just sized to the surface.
A Palette Tuned to Hold a Color Aisle.
Pink and cyan as the chromatic register, black for grounding, Avenir Next across weights. The same kit ran from influencer bio pages to retail signage without changing voice.
Chromatic brand circle
Hot Pink
#E91E63
Primary, personality
Cyan
#00B8D4
Contrast, accent
Black
#141414
Type, grounding
Cream
#F5F2ED
Paper, ground
Brand philosophy
Pink set the personality, cyan set the contrast, and black anchored every layout so the saturated palette never tipped into noise. The chromatic register stayed consistent across every surface, which is what made the system recognizable from a phone screen and from a 6-foot retail sign at the same time.
Type is one family. Avenir Next Heavy carried the wordmark, Demi Bold carried the shade names and CTAs, Medium carried the rest. The single family kept the system tight, and the weight contrast did the work that a multi-font stack usually has to.
YOU BY SALLY Wordmark
Avenir Next Heavy at scale. Set wide, locked tight, no italics. The wordmark sits as a block of type that reads as a graphic mark before it reads as a word.
Avenir Next Demi Bold Shade names & CTAs
Mid-heavy weight for the shade names, swatch labels, and SHOP NOW callouts. The structural voice that ties the catalog together.
Avenir Next Medium Body & captions
Standard weight for product copy, descriptions, and longer-form text. Quiet enough to let the photography and color blocks lead.
YOU BY SALLY
Wordmark
Hot Pink · #E91E63
Avenir Next Demi Bold
Shade names & CTAs
Cyan · #00B8D4
Avenir Next Medium
Body & captions
Black · #141414
A Brand That Treats Color as a Choice.
Casting, swatches, type, color - one kit running from a phone bio page to a retail sign without changing voice.
Services
Campaign Direction
Brand System
Digital Design
Retail Signage
Stack
Photoshop
Illustrator
InDesign
Studio photography
Links
A hair color brand campaign that took the casting seriously and let the personality lead. The swatch system turned shade exploration from a technical task into a visual one, and the type system held the same shape from a phone bio page to retail signage.
