Traditions & vernacular · 1950–present · Sub-Saharan Africa

West African Barbershop & Hair Salon Signs

Also known as Hair salon signs, Barber boards, Coiffure signs, Extra 'O' signs, Kinyozi signs (Kenya)

Hand-painted boards advertising barbershops and braiding salons across West and Central Africa, made by self-taught, often anonymous sign painters since the mid-20th century. Unlike lettering-led shop fascias they work as a picture menu: rows of naive, frontal heads, each modelling one named hairstyle, are laid out like a specimen chart under the shop name and boasts such as 'Extra O' (extraordinary).

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A hand-painted-style sign headed “CROWN STYLE” displays eight numbered portraits of Black women with different braided, twisted, waved and updo hairstyles. Blue grid lines and a decorative border with yellow comb-and-crown motifs, white stars, dots and red-and-yellow ribbons surround the portraits. — AI-generated by Stylogeny from the style’s design choices. Not a real or historical work.

How it works

Give each hairstyle its own cell and lay the cells out in rows and columns, so the board works as a menu a client can point at.
Paint every head at the same scale and in the same frontal or three-quarter pose, so the hairstyle is the only thing that changes.
Label each head with a painted name or number ('Boeing', 'America Boy', 'Sweet Banana', 'Top Secret').
Put the shop name and a boast such as 'Extra O' in a top or bottom band, in outlined, shadowed hand-painted capitals.
Set the heads on flat single-colour grounds or flag backdrops, in enamel or acrylic on plywood, hardboard, metal sheet or flour sacking, or straight onto the façade.

Barbershops and braiding salons in West African cities (Kumasi, Accra, Abidjan, Ouagadougou, Lomé, Cotonou, Bamako), spreading to Cameroon, Congo-Kinshasa and Nairobi

Its design choices

From Stylogeny’s vocabulary of design choices: defining choices make the style, characteristic ones are usual, occasional ones turn up now and then.

Layout & composition: Modular grid defining
Framed panels characteristic
Central symmetry characteristic
Isolated object occasional
Space & hierarchy: Repetition & rhythm defining
Flat hierarchy characteristic
Horror vacui occasional
Typography: Hand-lettering defining
All caps characteristic
Ornamented display occasional
Eclectic mixing occasional
Colour: Flat fields defining
Full polychrome characteristic
Light ground occasional
Form & shape: Stylised figuration defining
Naturalistic depiction occasional
Surface & texture: Painterly brushwork characteristic
Flat characteristic
Hard offset shadow occasional
Ornament: Restrained accents characteristic
Borders & frames occasional
Emblems & badges occasional
Imagery: Painterly illustration defining
Icons & pictograms occasional
Found & vernacular imagery occasional
Medium & production: Hand-painted defining
Architecture & signage defining
Tone & intent: Communal & popular defining
Warm & approachable characteristic
Playful & witty occasional
Avoids: Visual tension, Distortion & exaggeration, Diagonal axis, Collage & layering, Straight photography, Desktop publishing

Palette

#2f7fc1
#f2c230
#c8232c
#5a3220
#f4efe6
#151515

Typefaces

Outlined, drop-shadowed block capitals by sign painters
Brush-painted style names and numbers as captions
French and English shop lettering (Coiffure, Salon, Barbing Saloon) in painted sans and slab capitals

Known for

BP Konan, 'Défrisage' sign
Côte d'Ivoire, late 1970s–early 1980s
Rasmane, barbershop sign
Burkina Faso, c. 1980
Lébéné, hairdressing sign
Togo, signed 1994
Esger Duintjer collection, African barbershop boards exhibition, ASC Library Leiden
2013–14
Extra 'O'
African Barbershop and Hairdressing Signs, SFO Museum, San Francisco (2020)

Make something in this style

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What is it?What is it for, or about?

The words on it No lettering at all

Anything else?

Rule out a choice, read the prompt, or blend in another style: take this brief to Mix styles.

Where it comes from, and what it’s close to

Before it

The style it grew out of, and the styles it borrowed from.

Grew out ofHand-Painted Signage & Vernacular Lettering1800–present

This styleWest African Barbershop & Hair Salon Signs1950–present · Sub-Saharan Africa

After it

The styles that grew out of it.

No later style in the atlas grew out of it yet.

Alike in its design choices

Styles that make many of the same choices, related or not, besides those above.

Real works

Artefacts in museums, libraries and archives that show the style, linked at their source.

Barbershop sign with twelve braided hairstyles (kappersbord)Unrecorded sign painter (painted inscription 'Adjanor-H., B-P-34, Agbodrafo') · before 1983 (museum: donated 1983) · Wereldmuseum Amsterdam (formerly Tropenmuseum), inv. TM-4808-1
Hairdresser's sign with fifteen hairstyles (kappersbord)Unrecorded painter (front inscription 'Jardin des Beaux Arts, Fiango Market – K'ba') · 1978 (back inscription '500 francs 22/6/78') · Wereldmuseum Amsterdam (formerly Tropenmuseum), inv. TM-4739-1
Hairdresser's sign with four women's hairstyles (kappersbord)Tallo (signed 'Aimé décor Tallo') · 1980–1985 · Wereldmuseum Amsterdam (formerly Tropenmuseum), inv. TM-5723-6

Sources

https://indigoarts.com/node/5194 (Indigo Arts, notes on the SFO Museum exhibition Extra 'O': makers, dates, style names)
https://ascleiden.nl/news/exhibition-extended-asc-library-african-barbershop-boards (ASC Library Leiden: countries, materials, makers)

How Stylogeny researches and checks a style: where the facts come from.