Craft Your Brand Identity with Visual Identity Expert Ollie Johns

Hello, hello, hello, my salon friends. Phil Jackson here, your queen of salons, coming in your eyes and ears again with another dose of wise old owl wisdom. But you lucky, lucky people, it's not my wisdom, it's another guest episode. And today I'm joined by Ollie Johns. Ollie is a brand and visual identity designer. He's worked with some of the most famous names in our industry, helping them polish and refine the brands that we've all fallen in love with. Let's get him on the show, shall we? Build Your Salon So, Ollie, welcome to the show. Hello, Phil. How are you doing? I'm really well, thank you. And I'm really excited to have you on the Build Your Salon podcast because, well, two reasons really. One is, I first saw you speaking when we were up at a trade show up in London. And I was really interested in your take on branding, because it's not something that I think many salon and business owners actually take particularly seriously when perhaps they should. But the other reason I'm excited is you're the first person we've had on the show who's not a beauty therapist or a hairstylist. So I'm interested in your take. So why don't you start by telling us how you started rubbing alongside salons? How did you come across our industry? Oh, okay. So I've been a graphic designer for about 20 years now. Started up on my own about seven years ago. And I was just sitting on Facebook one day and someone I know said that a hairdresser was looking for an emergency designer. An emergency designer. I love that. Apparently there's no such thing as an emergency in what I do, but there we are. Like design triage. Exactly, exactly. And it was Sophia Hilton. Okay. And we kind of built up a working relationship and it's grown from there. Mm-hmm. And what would you, in layman's terms then, so we're talking about brand identity, you're a brand and visual identity designer. In layman's terms, what does that mean for a business? I try to separate brand and visual identity because branding, although people think it's a logo, when you say branding, someone thinks of a logo. It's actually not. I mean, a logo is part of branding, but branding encompasses your values, the positioning of your business, who your market are. And then the visual identity is what people think of as branding. So that is the way your business looks. Okay. I'm with you. And if somebody was starting to take this seriously, why should they? What's the business benefit for starting to look at your brand identity?

I mean, basically, if you've got two products that are exactly the same and exactly the same price, the one that looks the best is going to get the custom. Okay. And in these years of social media, where everything has become very visual, have you noticed people starting to take their visual identity more seriously or has it actually kind of gone the other way and started to cheapen brands? A bit of both. A lot of people are taking branding more seriously because there's a lot more education on the importance of branding. And I noticed a lot of influencer hairdressers will be selling branding as a part of the courses that they're selling. Okay. So yeah, the audience are all ears for branding at the moment. It's just, I'm not quite sure a lot of people understand what branding is. Mm hmm. And is it something that you can learn and do yourself or does it take an expert? I mean, it really isn't rocket science, but it took me a long time to know what I was doing. And I was a fecking awful designer for a long, long time. Um, it was only, it was only in the last sort of 10 years that I've really got, got into my groove, but it's more the, anyone can learn the tools. And I mean, at the base level, anyone can jump onto Canva, grab a template and edit it, but it's really the theory behind what you're doing. So rather than say, choosing a color palette with pink, because you like pink, you have to look at who your market are and what that pink will say about your brand. It sounds like bullshit, but it's actually already important. Mm hmm. And then how true to somebody's brand do you think they need to remain? Is it something that evolves or is it something that has a kind of refresh and review every few years or how cut and dry do these things once it's set? I mean, the, the traditional thinking is that branding should hold for about 10 years and you should remain consistent. There's a lot of temptation. I do it myself. I must have rebranded five, six times. And it's because you get bored of looking at it, but what you have to remember is your audience doesn't. So you have to remain consistent, consistent on your tone of voice, consistent on your messaging and consistent on your visual identity so that people get that into their heads. People have a very short attention span. So you need to keep things very simple and just plaster everywhere with it. Okay. And how do we know when we're getting it right? Your business will grow really, you should be getting a return on investment. That's the whole point of my job. It's not to give you a visual facelift.

It's to drive business and engagement with your brand. It's supposed to make your customers loyal to your brand and instantly memorable. So, yeah. Okay. And then what's that process of, so let's say somebody has seen the appeal, they understand the importance of getting some help and doing this thing properly. They've understood the business benefits that are involved. What does that process of working someone with someone look like for you? Okay. So I tend to just offer visual identity because before that you're talking about brand strategy and for the market, I'm in that fairly big budget stuff. So to keep it simple, what you should really look at before you come to me is who you are as a business. What is the personality of your business and who you want to attract? Who are the dream clients? What would they be looking for? And then once you've nailed that, I mean, I can help with that sort of stuff, but really you need to think about who your business is. And then you come to me and I do the pretty stuff. Okay. Okay. And are we always pitching for, are we always building brands for the market that we want or are we catering for the customers that we already have? Aim for who you want. Okay. Without, without, without alienating who you already have. Mm hmm. So it's a, it's a balance. Okay. And as far as, so you've been working with salons, I'm presuming at a certain level though, we're not talking about kind of, you know, low budget stuff. But as far as you can see, what are we getting right in the industry and where are we struggling? What do we need to look at? I mean, I would say the visual side of things is where you're struggling and the, the temptation to copy and to follow trends. I mean, a client referred to a group of people the other day as the pampas grass brigade. Okay. Where everything is beige. They have pampas grass or everything, uh, shadow overlays and everything looks exactly the same. The whole point of this exercise is that you stand out from those people. So if they've all gone green, go pink. Okay. Okay. And is that purely because we're doing most of our marketing through social media and we're looking to stop the scroll and stand out? Exactly. Yeah. You want to stop the scroll. And, um, the temptation now is to just grab a template on Canva, but you have to realize that a million other people are probably using that template and you lose any sense of uniqueness.

So the, the, the one saving grace of things like templates is that it's definitely better than using a rubbish graphic designer because the templates are already built, but you should definitely try and put your own spin on those templates. Hmm. Okay. And as far as, um, who's getting it right in the industry that aside from the people that you've been working with, when, when you come across great, um, identity and visual identity, what, what, what are you looking at? What, how do we know when we're getting it right? What, what kind of catches your eye and tells us that we're doing something great? I mean, in the, when I scroll down my feed and I see all the hair brands, the ones that stand out are the ones that keep things the most simple. Okay. Uh, try not to over busy things. If I'm, I'm scrolling and everything's busy, busy, busy, same colors. And then I see, for example, a big white space with a small logo on it. My eye is going to know, uh, lock onto that. So it's all about simplicity. Okay. And then you talked a little bit about understanding what our business is all about. What kind of questions should we be asking ourselves then around, around what the brand stands for? I think my favorite way of phrasing this is if your brand was a living, breathing person, who would that person be? What would their hobbies be? So tell me a little bit about your background. So you said that you were not very good graphic designer for quite a lot of time. I've only got to grips with it. What was your path into your industry? So I started as a graffiti artist writing all over your houses. Um, and then I, I got an interest from there in, in letter forms, basically typography, uh, which is basically fonts for the nerds. Uh, I didn't do very well at school. Uh, and I decided I was going to get a job in graphic design, but no one would hire without a degree. So forced myself into uni, didn't do very well at uni either. Uh, left uni, got some really terrible design roles. And then I thought that's enough. And I got some drive. I went back and learned everything I should have learned. Mm hmm. And, uh, yeah, basically at the same time decided I wasn't going to work for anyone else. And I've just been building business up since then. Fantastic. And as far as your future is concerned, where, where are you taking your agency and your career next?

Uh, I think the, the intention is to stay quite small. I was previously in another business with some other people and we started to scale up and I'd rather just be doing good design work than having to manage 10, 20 people. So, uh, yeah, small, but good established brands. Yeah. Not so much startups. I'm happy to work with startups, but startups don't tend to be in the budget range that I'm in. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Okay. Um, I've got three quick fire questions that I will shoot over as we get towards the end of these interviews. So the first is what is the best thing I'm going to say working with the salon industry as you're not in the industry. What's the best thing about working with the salon industry? Oh, it's definitely the people. Yeah. They're my sort of people. You can swear. Everyone's relaxed. I don't have to send corporate emails that I have to sign, uh, sign off with kind regards. It's definitely the people. Yeah. If I'm a day late, they're like, fuck it. Yeah. It's a, it's a, it's a very unique characteristic of the industries. Really good bunch of people. Yeah. It's a, it's the only thing that I miss actually. So I do a lot of working on my own now. And I really miss being kind of in that salon environment with, uh, hangovers and too much makeup and the gossip. All of those brilliant things. I think it's the best of both worlds because they take their business very seriously, but the personality that comes with it is great. I think the shift over the last few years has been that, um, that taking the business seriously. And actually I think it's COVID that did that to us. I think we realized that we had to start making some proper money if we were going to stick around for any length of time. Yeah. What's the best piece of advice that you've ever received? Pull your socks up. Okay. I needed it. Okay. And if you were speaking to somebody right at the beginning of their career and they wanted to follow in your footsteps, what advice would you be passing down? Learn the craft, learn the theory behind the craft. If we're talking graphic design, um, I would learn the theory before learning the tools. And where do just incidentally, where do people learn that? Cause you alluded that school was not a great experience for you. Um, and equally university wasn't teaching you the stuff that you needed. Where, where do you turn then for that kind of knowledge and understanding?

I think I was more, not a great experience for the school. Um, but, uh, if I'd had the material online available to me 15 years ago, when I was going into uni, I, I never would have gone to uni. There's so many great courses out now that you can, you can find everything you need to know on the internet. Cool. Good stuff. And if people want to find out more about what you're doing or want to follow you, what's the best way to do that? So I've got a brand new Instagram account and it's Oli O double L I E agency. Fantastic. And I have to say, I've had a quick peek and it is a beautiful looking Instagram feed. I know there's not tons and tons on there just yet, but it does look absolutely slick. Very, very nice. Thank you very much. Yeah. I need the follows. So lots of people would be inspired by what you were talking about today. Super. Thank you so much for joining me on the build your salon podcast, Oli, and I look forward to speaking to you again soon. Thanks very much. So there we have it. My conversation with Oli Johns. I hope that's inspired you to take your visual identity just a little bit more seriously and give Oli a follow for some amazing content and inspiration on his Instagram feed. Just seven short days until I'm coming in your eyes and ears again. And until then, take care. Sit down and see what's going on with the queen of salons. Hair, beauty and more successful tips for business owners. All on build your salon.