WS ACADEMY
Creating a new visual identity
Creating a new visual identity
Project
WS ACADEMY is a professional hair care brand built on the experience and expertise of master hairdressers. The project focused on refreshing the brand’s communication to better reflect its expert character and the values that have shaped its history.
Challenge
WS ACADEMY is a professional haircare brand created by master hairdressers Andrzej Wierzbicki and Tomasz Schmidt. It had an authentic professional DNA, but its existing visual identity was increasingly failing to communicate it.
The marble-inspired aesthetic that once set the brand apart gradually became a disadvantage. It felt less contemporary than its competitors and failed to reflect the aspirational nature of the products.
The challenge was not to reinvent the brand, but to make its visual identity finally match its expertise. This meant translating WS ACADEMY’s professional DNA into a more contemporary and competitive visual language — one that would preserve the credibility of a professional haircare brand without alienating existing customers, while also appealing to new ones.
The rebranding also had to account for the new portfolio architecture of Fale Loki Koki, a company with over 35 years of experience in the hairdressing industry and a long-standing history of working with salons and professional brands. Its portfolio includes both WS ACADEMY and FLK.
WS ACADEMY needed to clearly communicate its position in the mid-market segment while establishing a distinct identity from the mass-premium territory occupied by the new FLK brand.
execution
We began with a category analysis, exploring trends, visual codes, and the ways contemporary haircare brands communicate professionalism and quality.
At the same time, we revisited one of WS ACADEMY’s strongest brand assets: the two distinctive, contrasting personalities of Andrzej Wierzbicki and Tomasz Schmidt. Their different approaches to hair, style, and hairdressing became the inspiration for a more confident brand language.
The new visual identity therefore does more than simplify the existing aesthetic — it sharpens it through the contrast of black and white. We refreshed the logo, typography, and packaging system, replacing decorative marble with a simpler, matte, and more distinctive design.
Our goal was not simply to make the brand look more modern, but to create a visual language that combines professionalism with character and captures the tension inherent in the brand itself.
RESULTS
WS ACADEMY now boasts a refined, contemporary brand identity that brings its professional heritage into sharper focus and strengthens its positioning within the competitive beauty retail landscape.
