Flosites

For today’s brand board, I just could not help but collect and show off  samples of my favorite styles of illustration. Everything from vintage Mary Blair (the genius behind classic walt disney’s look) to edgy pen and ink- Illustration is seriously one of the most fabulous ways to execute expression. Ah, Expression. Seems to go hand in hand with communication, doesn’t it? Oh it does, folks. You know it does.

When I talk about using illustration to express something, I mean having a concept/idea/point of view in which to be expressed. Yeah, it may sound nit picky, but you’d be surprised! Illustration isn’t just about the look of the piece, the style or the medium, but also how the medium and style are used to further push the idea being expressed. It’s a one-two punch combo. Look at the sweet images of the deer, turtle + birds. While it’s very clear that these are more representational images of animals, rather than artistic expressions of them, what DOES stand out for me is how Mary Blair uses line to express the long, free-form elegance completely inherent in the deer. Or how she uses fun plays on color and pattern in the turtle shell. The illustration goes expressive on the elements in which the artist wants to “show off”, to make more sense of these artist’s methods.

Whenever a client comes to me with an idea for illustration, an icon, whatever the case may be, I always look to the idea and concept first– way before the style of the illustration is even talked about! Knowing what you want to say before you even start to make that message beautiful, is always going to give the starting point(AND the end point) so much more strength. Illustration without a message or a concept is honestly, just pure decoration; and if that’s the case, it would be so much better for the illustration to be replaced with a pattern, a texture, something more for look+ feel/mood purposes over expressive ones.

I am all about being (probably to a fault) solution oriented; I’m talking everything from how the kitchen is laid out to how I schedule my days and weeks– Problem solving, solution driven, efficiency meters go off in my brain, and then I attack. Breaking up my days into 30, 60, and 90 minute tasks, I make sure I save time for what I like to call “Jenny goes off the deep end” time (something my boyfriend coined when listening to me “ooh” and “aah” incessantly over some inspiration I found).

“Going off the deep end” is a way for me to explore my curious heart, and very much get back what used to be literally play time- designing for myself. Do not get me wrong, dear clients! Creating for others is exactly why I became a graphic designer instead of a fine artist, it’s absolutely true. But for me, I am not truly satisfied with my day until I’ve worked with something that’s just for me as well.

I thought I’d share a few of my tips for making any working situation a little bit more enjoyable,  be it a working-at-home mom, traveling and overbooked event planner, or even just a wedding photographer sick of taking tchotchke photos. Whatever your time frame, you can do this. Here’s how:

1) Notes are your friend!

Personal admittance time: I have a paper and notebook addiction. A notebook is left (with 2-3 pens/pencils OF COURSE!) in every room of the house- just in case I get struck with some glorious musings, and on top of this OCD-itude I got going on, I also have a series of ‘idea notebooks’. Just in case I ran out of steam, got bored and could not for the life of me fill that time with SOMETHING, I rifle through those books, and usually my problem is solved. My advice to those who are swamped with work, anytime you think of a good idea-perhaps for the current thing you’re working on, perhaps for something else, write that down. Tether a notebook to your life. Not an iphone, or an ipad. A papery book. Keeping track of even the most fleeting of ideas will definitely help you wrangle out the good ones, laugh at the bad ones, and even help you figure out the next step: making time.

 

2) MAKE TIME!

My iCal is filled with 19 separate calendars. I have dual alarms, I set up time limits. I even give myself a time OUT if I don’t listen. to myself. which is really my iCal. Time is your worst enemy and your best friend. So who then, is in charge? You! SO YOU!

Since I know we’re photographers here, stuck editing? take a 30 minute inspiration break. Had a really exhausting, but overall successful client meeting? Reward yourself with an enjoyable, rejuvenating break! Get the theme here? Taking time to relax in between the tasks you do is actually JUST as important as making time to complete the tasks. Trust me, I know. Sometimes I get so stuck to this screen, I just push my feet out and roll right out into the main living room. Whatever you got to do, make sure you count ‘relaxing’ and ‘refreshing’ as equally important

 

3) Lastly, and possibly most important! NO PRESSURE.

Remember when it was just you, your imagination, and your creative tool? Be it pencil, wacom pen, or DSLR? Thinking back, were you thinking of competitors, industry magazines, contests, twitter gossip, or insane clients that make you swear that dragons are real? NO! Do you know what you were thinking about? FUN. Playtime. Exploration. The whole world was open, waiting for you to tear it up and sail it to a viking party.  Bring this back to your forefront. This actually may be difficult because of the level of perfectionism that runs rampant in creative professions.

 

I also had advice for this: (of course I do!)

Make purposefully bad crap. Bad! and I mean DASTARDLY BAD. Laugh at yourself. Do it even worse! Make it EVEN UGLIER! By the time you have the worst ugliest thing ever, you’ll be crying laughing, in a great mood, and more relaxed to let yourself actually create something, without hemming and hawing it to perfection. I promise I do this. I also promise that I overthink, overworry, and overthink myself to frustration. The trick is realizing what you specifically do that gets in your own way, and then be the impish little 7 year old you used to be, and get that nonsense out of here!

 

Fitting in some fun, exploratory ridiculousness throughout your day isn’t just for a calmed creative mind, it can also help build your skill sets as well. Discovering anything “new”, while there is no pressure to create, will always keep your abilities stockpiled, helping you keep your clients happy and you more fulfilled with the work you spend your heart and soul creating.

 

Until next time!

xo,

jne

 

Let me be the first to announce how much the addition to pinterest has EXPONENTIALLY helped our inspiration and overall branding process. Holy Banana, Folks. Pinterest, you are amazing! If you aren’t already face first in the most fabulous and random selection of images ever on the internet, let’s discuss:

Pinterest. Get on it. Set aside some swoony time… and then rescue your productivity because it is beyond addicting. I only allow pinterest time via phone, you know, to keep me occupied while my boyfriend does the dishes. It’s what we call a “balanced relationship”.

That being said, I’ve definitely noticed a wonderful trend when clients come to me with a pinterest account set up. Already comfortable flicking through thousands of  images to find ones that really sing to them, and all without the impossibly debilitating feeling of pressure to get it PERFECT.

Showing a designer even a huge collection of seemingly random images and talking through them will undoubtedly reveal the necessary juicy tidbits that we need– in a way, pinterest is a glorious short cut to the right answers.  Covering everything from typography, to sayings and meanings, color palettes, textures, pattern, tone, everything. Can I encapsulate that enough? EVERYTHING!

It seems that since people aren’t forced to look through specific designed pieces, for instance 30 pages of logos, they’re free to explore all possibilities of everything and anything a logo COULD be– bringing more room for exploration and creativity, instead of just rehashing trend after trend.

If you’re thinking about signing up with us for a rebrand, a blog design, or even just taking stock of your current brand, I say start working on a new board (because I know you have Pinterest. You have internet don’t you??) even just to begin to loosely touch on ideas that you like. Keeping a running tab of inspiration will help show your growth, continually documenting your process (and progress!) while you carve out your vision. And before you know it, you’ll have pinned your way to an amazing, inspiring, and totally unique place- which is the perfect starting point in creating a brand.

 

Until next time!

xo,

jne

 

Creating beautiful photography and maintaining a happy client base is key for any photographer. however, it is also important to remember the other usages for your photographs online, such as SEO. One of the most successful methods of attracting new traffic and potential clients, is through good content, which when promoted can help increase your new client leads through your website via google or other search engines.

 

According to our statistics, if you have just 100-500 hits from Google every day, you have a very high chance of receiving potential inquiries from that ratio, however sadly most photographers average between 30-60 hits a day. Over the past years, our clients have became increasingly conscious of the effect that an seo package can achieve and provide in terms of added benefits. As we ourselves slowly migrated from a custom system, working now with wordpress as it rapidly redeveloped and improved itself, we now have decided that its a perfect time to offer a new service for our clients to improve their blogs and portfolio blog sites to home target their chosen keywords for successful seo online.

 

Every photographer that has a blog, generally has more photographic media than content or any other, though only a selective few see seo as a successful advertising marketing tool worth investing money into. In order to optimize your results, every part of your content requires optimized from your titles, keywords, tags to your images to achieve a high ranked position guaranteed. Once this has been achieved it will allow you to promote your page according to where you would like to target your market. It is also important when doing image optimization to reduce your page loading time.

 

Images in html (the most common web coding language) are specified by tags (tag img). Among the attributes for search engine optimization are the alt and the title. The alt attribute specifies alternate text for images… in other words, it tells browsers what to show in the place of your image, if for any reason your image does not load. The title attribute is the tooltip which appears upon hovering over the image with your mouse. These attributes allow you to include your website images into many search engines such as yahoo and google.

 

We have put together 9 important image seo points to help you optimize images for search engines:

 

1. Alt and Title: 

The Alt attribute is a vital key for optimizing images for search engines. Personally I would advise you to install the SEO Friendly Images plugin. The SEO Friendly Images plugin is mostly recommended for those blogs, where images and photos represent a majority of the website’s content, which predominantly the case for photographers. You can download the plugin from the official website (link to download). After you have finished downloading the plugin from the site, or from your plugin manager in wordpress, just install the plugin and go to the Options menu to change the attributes. It is that simple, here is the key:

 

%title – will show you the post title

%name – will show you the name of image

%category – will show you the name of category.

 

Another popular plugin option is the “Override default WordPress alt (recommended)”. It means that the plugin will override any empty alt=”" placed by WordPress redactor by default to any image. If the alt is edited (if it has been given a title), the plugin won’t override it. However, if the title is empty, by default the plugin will add a specific title by default which you have set within the settings of the plugin.

 

2. The File name

The chosen file name should always be relevant. If you have a photo from a wedding in Dallas for example, then the image name should contain the words: “Dallas Wedding Photography”. Instead of underscores (_), use hyphens (-), for your spaces. EG.  Not like this: “Dallas_Wedding_Photo”, but rather like this: “Dallas-wedding-photo”. It is pretty easy and very effective for seo.

 

3. Use headings (signatures)

 Next to the image, use headers. They can be on top, at the bottom, left or right.

 

4. Try to be relevant

The image should match the content subject, and vice versa. Remember, that images will make your users stay longer on your website.

 

5. Save for Web

Always try to use Adobe Photoshop for image optimization. The best option is to use the “Save for the Web” option, which you can find under the tab “File”. The program will select the best quality and image size for the Internet, however usually blog images are 900×600 pixels, and saved to 72 dpi.

 

6. Choosing the right format to save your images

Make sure that your images are saved in either of these 3 file formats for google to index:

 

JPEG – for photos

GIF – for animation

PNG – for logos, icons, etc.

 

7. HQ Images

It is believed that people tend to pay more attention to the quality images, where you can see the details. So try to keep your images at a high quality.

 

8. Optimized image hosting

Popular image hosting services such as Flickr or Google Picasa. Work only with a proven and popular web hosting or save images to your hosting if it can withstand a high load and doesn’t slow down your page loading. However, hosting images using a provider such as flickr, help enhance your seo in image searches online.

 

9. Unique Images

Many experts believe that unique images have a beneficial effect on optimization. They can be branded with watermarks or logos.

 

 

Just remember that proper image optimization will guarantee to bring you a significant ncrease in traffic after a short period of time.

I hope this post will help you. If you have any questions regarding your website optimization and promotion, or would like to know more about our new seo services, drop us an email over at FLOSITESSEO.

Until Next Time…

Lately I’ve been noticing a trend in the clients we’ve been branding. More and more clients are wanting to see how pattern could work within their brand. It seems like I create more and more patterns by the day, so I figured today a brand board was in order, and how even the tiniest bit of pattern can spiffy up even the most tired of brands.

Patterns range in style from the gorgeous Arabesque tiled patterns to the tiny repeating subtlety of Japanese prints, and some of my favorite patterns were created in the Arts+ Crafts period (No, not the period in time where everyone made bird houses out of popsicle sticks).  I’m talking about the beautiful visual art movement from the early 1900′s that brought back artistry and craft to the focal point of the conversation (Do me a favor and just google William Morris, will you?)

And if you thought the types of patterns came in a ton of categories, the uses for pattern are pretty much just as varied. Of course the obvious choice for a pattern would be as a full on background to any sort of blog, page, what have you- but I’m a huge fan of the unexpected surprise of pattern. The hey- what’s -inside -this -envelope-and -AHA! -pattern, the oh-wow -look- at -how-well-those-two-patterns-work-together-pattern, and I love love love the use of pattern as the main visual  element, like in the Mast Bros Chocolate. It’s not for everyone, no. But it’s striking, strong, elegant, all of the keywords so many people love so much.

When it comes to finding patterns that will “work” within an established brand, or even finding out which ones could work within a look that you’re trying to create, I say (of course I say this) stick to what you love. I’ve been trying to think on some absolute no-no’s when it comes to pattern + style combination, and I think any pattern can really work in any situation- what plays into it however is more along the lines of scale and color, vs. imagery within the pattern.

Let me explain: 

A client wanting a clean, and modern brand with a touch of feminine pop (sound like anyone out there?) can absolutely benefit from a pattern, and nobody’s hemmed in to just stripes and dots either.

A clean lined, geometric pattern (like a quatrefoil, or a simple trellis type pattern), can deliver the dual natured feeling of structured/ clean + feminine, while keeping the entire thing feeling super high end. It’s truly all in how it’s used in placement, the color palette, and the scale of the overall pattern that’s going to fine tune each of these connotative emotions. A larger set pattern will probably feel more funky/eclectic, while a small repeat pattern could feel very subtle + light. Some patterns are so small that when looked at 100% it creates an overall tone, as opposed to a repeating print.

So where does that leave us now?

Much like everything else that branding seems to be, the best thing to do is start with what you already like. Look to your clothes, accessories, home furnishings. What do you already surround yourself with? If there is no pattern at all (which I doubt, honestly) then pattern is 100% not for you, and I apologize for making you read all about the versatility and wonderment that is pattern. BUT! if you find any recurring visual themes, take note. Even if Flosites doesn’t provide you with a lovely custom made pattern, you can still be open to the possibility of incorporating something new to freshen up what you’ve already got going on, which pattern does beautifully!

Until next time!

xo,
jne

Way back in the dark ages of 2006, yes back when people still sent packages through the GASP! postal service, I was working on my own newly-minted-freshly-graduating-college-brand. At the time, it was extremely important that printed collateral be designed, considered, and meticulously scrutinized before sending them out to any potential employers, and when I mean meticulously scrutinized, I mean this was some literal advice I got from a professor at the time: “Everything, down to the damn postage stamp, must be ‘designed’” And truth be told, these words still haunt me to this day.

Of course now we have way more of a digital presence than a tangible one, but the weight of importance to printed material (aka things people can hold in their hands) is not to be overlooked. The power of feeling something in your hands is one designers have ooh-ed and aah-ed about for centuries. Seriously, since Gutenburg and his press in 1500 something. Books, and their business counterparts- brochures, folders, booklets, pamphlets, “leave-behinds”, whatever you call them, create an instant personal intimacy (an appropriate one) between the business and the potential client. Something physical, being considered over a pdf doc/pricelist or a website, will be something that is easier to ‘get back to’ attention wise. I know from sending hundreds of thank you cards, little posters for “gifts” (designers like to be bribed, what can I say?), in the hopes that one of those little promotional snippets will make it to the desk of so-and-so who, one day, needs the talent of an amazing designer (Me!) and then looks over at my adorable gift, or poster, and says “Wow! this designer is fantastic- I can see their awesome talent in this proof! Right now! I’ll be emailing them shortly…” And you get the picture.

Printed brand material gives you the option of planting seeds and letting them blossom in the future, at some magical unforseen time. Really, usually these things feel like happy bursts of awesome coming into your life, but I totally digress.

My real point in all of this is that you really never know what element of your marketing or overall brand strategy is going to work for every single option in attracting a potential client. Using tangible pieces within a digital brand is a classic, and now very under appreciated, method of connecting with clients, and honestly, the more ways we can connect with potential clients, customers, fan bases- whomever the object, the better.

 

Until next time!

xo,

jne

Rebranding takes effort. Figuring out who you are, your work, the type of market your in– ugh and color palettes? On top of handling an already bloated schedule with work, side projects- oh and also maybe a LIFE? Yeah. Oh Yeah. I get it completely.  As much as I love to individually talk to and work with clients to create spectacular brands, tailored specially for them, I definitely understand the need for templated approaches. Sometimes you just need something NOW. No muss, no fuss, and buying a theme, plugging in content and throwing it up on the web just SIGHS margaritas-at-the-beach. And for this purpose, it’s splendiforous! However, once you get into a groove of owning whatever style/bride/format you’ve carved out for yourself, it’s time to start planning for some customization.

Getting a huge branding package right off the bat is okay for some. If you’ve got the resources, the inspiration,  why not go for it? I’ll never dash someone’s design dreams, but I do find that those who’ve been in business for a few years with an already established design (custom or template) will know better questions to ask, results to expect, and be better acquainted with a sticky process called decision making with visual choices– at least to some degree.

So which is better?

I think they can both be used to your advantage. If you find yourself getting more stressed than excited when it comes to a rebrand- go for a template. Get something done and up there quicker vs PERFECTION, and then plan for the glory that will be your customized brand. It’s always better to relieve the stress with an easier fix than pressure yourself to death with making it perfect straight out of the gate. While branding may take some thought and some elbow grease, the results always speak loud & clear– and really, isn’t that true with almost anything worth doing?

 

Until next time!

xo,

jne

 

Whenever I meet with a new client, we always discuss how the individual sees the brand & business. Both where it is currently, as well as the hopes and dreams of achieving where the business could go. This is always client dependent; success could look like a specific type of bride you want to work with, being able to support a fully fledged film addiction, or even just making their small business something more stable, but whatever it is, these are the things that are seriously important when thinking about, and working towards, a brand for your business.

 

1. Why does it matter where my business is now?

Because you need to be realistic about the work that you’re currently doing, the type of client you’re attracting- and maybe even more importantly, what’s working in your favor, and what is just not working. Knowing how to objectively think about these important aspects of your business will not only help you be able to weed out the unecessary information within the branding process, but also keep you from any indecision you may face when thinking about a look and feel. Be aware of your current surroundings and it will only help you build up towards a better place.

 

Which brings me to,

2. Why should I think about the next 3-5 years?

Let me rephrase, does treading water sound successful?

So you’ve got your current situation covered, you know what your market is, and your place in it. You’ve got your competitors, and you’ve got your style down; now what? Now you dream and plan. Remember what success felt like when you were figuring this out? Okay, now you figure out how to get from where you are, to where you’d like to be; and the fairy godmother in this situation? Designing your brand.

Creating a brand with this stage, the where-to-next stage, will help springboard you to that desired outcome. You want to attract an edgier bride? Express your quirk. You want to get into that exclusive venue that only specific photographers get access to? Let’s talk about class-act, traditional southern gentility and how using texture can speak so clearly to the down-home feel, without ever feeling the cheese factor.

Thinking about how to position a business for growth within a brand will ultimately put you in a stronger position to be more in control of what kind of work you do, the kind of people you work with, and the kind of worth you command. While I’m sure everyone now knows that brands are more than just a logo, they can absolutely be more than just a beautiful facade over a variety of services. Used strategically, brands can be used to the total advantage of the owner, to communicate and connect with whomever and however they want; making branding a very powerful marketing tool. So take advantage of it!

 

Until next time!

xo,

jne

I think at some stage everyone has had the heart breaking experience of a hard drive with lots of information, photos or data which you wished you had saved somewhere else, disappear, to then lose several days trying to salvage it, restore and to some extents send it to the Big Guys to pay a large sum of cash to get the content back… well sadly, this can happen with websites and blogs if you are not careful or aware of the potential hazards online also.

Backing up your blog and any online sites is one of the most important parts of your business. It is a shame that all of your efforts put into blogging, advertising, marketing, seo and administrating your blog can go to waste overnight. Whilst the majority of hosting companies do offer backups free or at a charge to restore, many do not offer up to date backups or backups at all. Therefore making sure your blog is safe and sound, with several restoration options is important.

 

Before we get into the backups, here are a few quick plugins that should be taken into consideration for any blog!

Spam Filters!

There is nothing worse than receiving tens of hundreds of spam weekly, and whilst there are many spam options out there, the one proven and successful option for wordpress is Akismet.

Security:

If you are wanting to take security to another level, and make sure all your options are covered, here are 4 useful plugins to do so:

Login LockDown – If someone is trying to login too many times from one location Ip Address in a certain time frame, it will cause a lock on that user.

File Monitor Plus – When changes are being made to your WP, you can be notified to know every step of what goes on with your blog or site.

WP Security Scan – Think of it as an anti virus for your blog, it checks your wordpress for any vulnerabilities.

Secure WordPress – Tightens your entire wordpress site, to remove, or hide any errors that may allow hackers opportunities to access your site.

Backups!

We have created a shortlist of options to secure and backup your blog safely and easily without having to go through a trial and error solution to find which is best for you. We have made sure that all of these plugins are easy to install, provide automatic backup features and the user interface of the plugin is user friendly.

1. WP-DB-Backup – It is one of the most popular options, and is very easy to setup and install for your blog/site backups.

2. Vaultpress – This is personally our favorite, but it is a paid service but it is one that we personally have a lot of experience with and its a great solution.

3. BackupBuddy – It was created by one of the top WP providers,l and now has sleek integration to dropbox for backups. It isn’t a free solution but it has some interesting features.

notable options to mention:

MyEasyBackup – Another wordpress backup system that has a very easy to use interface and good documentation which offers easy backup options.

Automatic WordPress Backup – It is another option that uses amazon s3 servers as a backup option, but isn’t as updated as often as the above options.

These last few tips and words of advice will never fully guarantee you will be completely safe from being attacked or having malware issues with your site, but it can safe guard and greatly minimize the vulnerabilities for allowing them to happen, leaving you with a safe assured mind that your hard work one day won’t go to waste. So here is what we can recommend:

 

1. Choose a Good Hosting Company, make sure that you know their backup policy before signing up, and what options they provide. In our experience with hosting, we recommend only 2 main companies, we are not saying that they are the best of the best! but simply, if an issue comes up, they are the fastest to respond, and get the error fixed.

Blue Host:

 

HostGator:

DreamHost:

2. Protect your blog with a STRONG SOLID PASSWORD. Usually this is the easiest way to have a site/blog hacked, because the passwords are easy to guess, or simply access, leaving you vulnerable.

Lorelle has a brilliant article on blogherald all about how to choose a password which is memorable but also bulletproof.

3. Staying up to Date! One of the easiest ways to get hacked is through old or expired plugins. Make sure your plugins/widgets are updated often.

4. Regular Backups - This is mentioned above, but is your lifeline… If your blog/site crashes, gets erased or goes missing be rest assured that your backup program will restore not only missing file directories, but also your database files.

5. Keep your wordpress blog version up to date. There is a reason why they update the versions, and it isn’t always because of new shiny features… generally its to close bugs, vulnerabilities or ways which hackers can penetrate and harm your site, so be sure to make sure that your versions the latest it can be.

6. Disabling right click. Being able to disable this option will not allow people to always view your source code, or to copy your content directly.

 

If you would like to check out many more options for security plugins, we found this useful post listing 25 plugins dedicated to secure your wordpress site. Click Here.

We hope that this post helps offer a few solutions to protect your content for the future, but if you feel that we have missed some noteworthy options please let us know in the comments. Thank you.

 

I felt like I needed to expand on my last post a bit- I honestly feel like talking about feedback without mentioning how to gather, and talk through, inspiration, is like trying to show people what it’s like to drink water without offering a cup first– totally helpful. Basically, without insightful inspiration backed up by clear explanations as to why it’s inspiring, the potential for disaster in terms of design- especially branding, increases ten fold. Now I know that this is difficult- even without working on branding, even DESIGNERS (yes, we glorious bunch) have a REALLY hard time with articulating feedback. My college critiques were painful, people. Laborious, draining – “Oh.. you know, like.. it’s not THERE, but it’s like.. close? I don’t know, like, you know”, and I pretty much quote and end quote there.

Working with as many different people as I could ever imagine, I strive to be as fluid and as empathetic as possible when trying to read through client’s FAQ’s and inspiration folders. I’ve probably had to evolve this part of the process what feels like a hundred times throughout my time here with Flosites, but with each round of fine tuning, the better and better the results. What started out as a quick read through from the FAQ has now been loved into a fully fledged process, involving a far more in depth questionnaire, an image inspiration hunting process, and what’s looking to be the newest addition: a conceptual word list, meant to give the designer a stronger insight to the tastes and personality of the client. But it’s still difficult, and there will inevitably be more flaws in the system. Seeing a whole folder of images, or even getting 100 words in a word list will still leave room for interpretation as to how each particular concept, direction, whatever, is applied; and it’s because every single person is 100% unique. I’ve referenced the fact that I’ve had clients at the same time, send me over some of the exact same images as reference, and yet the end result of the process is like night and day. What better way to hammer my point across, than to lay it all out here, case study style, so here goes.

And the final results; of course after a few rounds of tweaks:

 

 

These images are a pretty solid sampling of both ladies’ inspiration folders, while the color palettes may differ, the overall feel presented here is the same: clean, bold, fresh with some sort of modern and romantic flair. From a designer’s perspective, this is still pretty wide open visual wise- how we get to the end product is really not mapped out at this point. All that’s laid out, and that is tentatively laid out at best, is a clean-lined font- most likely sans serif, with a breezy, playful, casually high end element. How do I fill in those blanks? Why the client’s feedback, of course! The thing about the inspiration, visually or verbally, is that it’s all the possibilities and suggestions. Showing each look and feel with the client’s name/info/next round of feedback will help show the client if that’s the right direction, or if a new one is to be determined. None of the inspiration will be “perfect” or “exactly right” because it hasn’t been created yet. The client and designer create the perfection together.

For me, these problems really feel like mad libs, “Photography Company X needs a brand. It needs to feel (adjective), (adverb), with a dash of (adjective), communicating overall the desired feeling of (noun/adjective)”. I could spend all day and night adding in different dashes of this and that to make things different, but those aren’t really brands for clients. Those are different doodles and hypotheticals for me.. and maybe other people who want templated things, but not a solidly designed, results-yielding-I-paid-a-lot-of-money-for-this-brand, brand. And thats why I turn it around on the client. I know they put their heart and souls into their work, as anyone who is passionate should. I in turn, pour my heart and soul into my work- which as it turns out, is crafting brands and such for other companies. Which is why I will spend hours, days, months, finessing my approach and process, to not only help me create awesome brands that as a designer I can boast about all day, but help make the client’s side easier. So that when we have a meeting to discuss things, they feel prepared, understood, and that they have a team of people wanting to help them through this sticky situation of branding; and the better the client feels, the better the brand will be.

Until next time!
xo,
jne