Hye Jun Ahn
Graphic Designer & Photographer
Fiona's Hand-Crafted Soaps offers artisan-made beauty soaps for everyday use. Each soap is created with well-being in mind; soaps are crafted from scratch with organic ingredients, which are raw and whole food. With my knowledge of photography, I was asked to take product photos for the store's online catalogue. I extended the opportunity to conceptually stylize so that the health benefits of the fragrant soaps are best shown in each photo.
When you hold Fiona's hand-crafted soaps, a few things come to mind: the fragrances of certain foods and flowers and the traces of the artisan's craftsmanship from their organically cut shapes.
In the saturated crafty soap markets, the elegant pairing of sans serif and calligraphic typefaces and the soaps' organic ingredients inspired the staging of the photos to differentiate and stand out. Using a few key ingredients sourced directly from the maker, each soap was carefully studied and placed to create an ensemble, primarily to give it an air of freshness, beauty, and everyday quiet luxury.
As with any entrepreneurial journey, a new business needs much work to establish its first community base. To connect with new customers and maybe even make some fans, candid portraits and documentation of parts of the soap-making process from scratch told the story behind the business.
