Creating an Identity, Part III

How many times do you receive business cards and put them in your pocket only to find them crumpled and completely chewed up in the washing machine?  Well, that's happened to me so many times I've lost count.  I am notorious for forgetting to empty my pockets before doing laundry.  So, then, what's the point of spending money for nice business cards, you may ask?  Well, I wondered that same thing, and here's what I've come up with: my goal of giving someone a business card is to leave an impression with them.  I want them to remember that card that's in their pocket and go check out the information that's on the business card, i.e., pull up my web site next time they're on the computer.  I'm not leaving stacks of cards at coffee shops hoping that random people will pick them up.  I'm selectively giving cards out to prospective clients, other wedding vendors and hopefully wedding bloggers and editors.  This means that I need my card to stand out, not only to encourage people to remember it and use it, but also because it's often other people's first impression of my style and aesthetic, and we all know how important first impressions are.

Therefore, Emma and I decided to make a card so thick there's no way someone will forget about it in their pocket.  I also read that the more texture your card has, the more of an impression (literally and figuratively) it will make on someone just because they end up touching it more.  So, here they are.  They were created by Twig and Fig in Berkeley.  The back of the card is letterpress with Emma's hand sketched floral illustration, and the front is flat color printed, all on recycled paper stock with soy based inks.   Check 'em out:

I know I went a little overboard with all the photos, but they are really beautiful, and since most of you can't see them in person, I figured I'd overload you with images.  : )

Stationery is up next.  I send out handwritten cards to clients and other wedding vendors.  Since Emma had created such lovely paintings - the purple one is acrylic and the yellow is watercolor, it was pretty easy to use both as the fronts of my cards.  We used the purple painting for flat cards and the yellow painting for folded cards.  The cards were printed by Brandes Printing Company, also in Berkeley, and also printed on all recycled paper stock with soy-based inks.  I picked up the envelopes from Xpedex Paper Store in Berkeley, and again, they're 100% recycled - do you see a trend here?

Here are the mailing labels that Emma designed.  The smaller ones are for the stationery cards - they fold over so that my return address is on the back (Emma is so clever!), and the larger labels are for boxes that I send out.  I actually printed these at home on sticker paper and then cut them out.  Hooray for DIY!

Emma made some stamps for me.  You can never have too many stamps, right?  I'll use them for all different things - envelopes, labels, boxes, hang tags... there are endless possibilities!

For some reason, I knew from the beginning of this process that I wanted to use fabric flowers to adorn my print packaging.  I found a small piece of fabric with almost all of my colors at an independent store in Berkeley, and followed this tutorial on making fabric flowers from 100 Layer Cake.  The only missing color in the fabric was yellow, but some bright yellow buttons solved that problem.  Unfortunately, the fabric I have is not unlimited and so once I run out, I'll be on the hunt for different fabric.  But that's OK, searching for salvaged fabric is part of the fun, and I like that my look can be eclectic and evolving.  As an extra benefit, I glued on pin backings to the backs of the flowers so they can double as pins for sweaters, purses, hair pieces....

The photo boxes are probably the most boring part of my packaging.  They're 100% recycled Kraft photo boxes from here.  I scoured the internet for other interesting and *affordable* options, and to be honest, there's not really a whole lot out there!  However, it's more important to have my photos arrive safely and in perfect condition than to arrive bent but in a pretty box.  Hopefully with some creative accessorizing, I've spiced them up a bit.

To complete the look, I found beautiful natural wood hang tags that have each been stained by hand with an environmentally friendly wood stain and hand-dyed cotton from this amazing shop in Indiana called Olive Manna. I encourage all crafty brides to check out this shop as there are lots of ideas for DIY wedding pieces.

And that's it!  The only thing I didn't show is my DVD packaging, which I didn't get around to creating and photographing yet so I'll have to save that for a later post.  This is the last of my "identity" series.  Like I've said, I had a really fun time working with Emma, who is just so creative, and I can't wait to put my new look to use for clients!

Creating an Identity, Part II

When I was four years old, my mom let me pick out my own shoes.  Well, sort of.  She would take me to Nordstroms and pick out three pairs of shoes that fit her criteria - durability, budget and style, and then she let me determine which of those three shoes I wanted.  At the time, with the power to make the final decision in my hands, this made me feel like I was in charge.  However, in looking back, I of course now realize that it was still my mom who was running the ship.  When I made the decision to work with Emma on my (re-)branding, I felt this huge weight lifted off my shoulders.  I was finally leaving it to the professional, one whom I trusted and had great confidence in, to create the perfect logo.  Little did I know that Emma would put me right back where I was when I was four: she'd give me choices, all ones she knew she could stand behind, and leave the final decision up to me.  Lucky for me, I was in capable hands with Emma, just as capable as my mom who covertly stylized my feet for the duration of my childhood. The first step that Emma and I worked on for creating a logo was coming up with a color scheme.  She initially gave me four options, as shown below:

My favorites from the initial selection were the second and fourth choices.  I loved the second choice because the colors had been pulled from a floral arrangement that had two of my most favorite plants:  succulents and rhonunculas.  I also loved the last palette - something about it felt very French and rich to me.  We further explored these choices:

And, after a little tweaking, we landed on the color scheme below:

Once we had determined the color scheme, Emma sent me some font options:

I narrowed them down to 3, 5, and 6.  Even though they're the plainest of the bunch, the simplicity of these fonts felt very Marc-Jacobesque, who was one of my main inspirations for a clean and no frills logo.

Next, Emma presented her first stab at the logo!

And, here are some ways that it could be implemented into marketing collateral:

When I first saw the logo, I immediately loved the painted flowers.  I loved the whimsical feel of them, and I thought the colors integrated really well together.  I wasn't too crazy about the heart, which felt big and bulky to me, and left no space for the typography.

So, Emma played around with the painting and font and came up with this:

I loved this idea - at first glance, you can't tell what the design within the text is, but it's bright and colorful.  I can easily integrate the flowers into other aspects of my collateral so that the whole presentation holds together.  I didn't want all of my pieces to be matchy matchy, but instead wanted them to feel a little eclectic.  However, in this first round, there was a little too much purple within the name, so Ms. Emma went back to the drawing board and came up with this:

The yellow background did it for me, and voila, we had a logo!

Not to toot my own horn, but I love how the logo incorporates BOTH elegance and simplicity with a sense of fun and beauty, all elements that I want people to think of when they see our clients' wedding photographs.  In my next post, I'll be revealing all of the final pieces of collateral including business cards, stationery, packaging...

Creating an Identity, Part I

For this week, I'm going to blog about the process of creating an identity.  I found the process fascinating and fun, and so hopefully it will help some of you all out there who are thinking about or getting ready to embark on this same journey. When Adm and I first started the wedding business, we pretty much started from bare bones.  As in, we didn't have any kind of budget for marketing, advertising or branding, and to be honest, I don't think we really knew that that was a key part of starting and running a business.  We knew we needed a web site and business cards, but we didn't know what "creating an identity" meant or that it was a necessary part of building our business.  Both of us are fairly creative people, and that was what we had focused on honing, not our business and marketing skills.  Since we had to create everything on the cheap, I did it all on my own.

I found a floral stamp at The Paper Source for $8, photographed it, and bam, put some pretty font next to it and that was my logo.  I put that stamp to good use and stamped floral patterns all over everything - stationery, envelopes, contracts, shipping labels....  I have to admit, I was pretty proud of myself for coming up with a design that had a somewhat DIY/custom feel and fit within our non-budget.  I picked the brown and blue color scheme because blue was for Carolina blue (my alma mater), and I liked how brown complemented the blue.

At some point, I think around the beginning of 2010, Adm and I decided that we were ready to create a legitimate logo and identity that was a reflection of what we and our photography are about.  We also decided that it was time to hire a professional to do this.  This was kind of huge for us because it marked the first time that we were hiring other people to do work for the business.  Up until this point, we had done everything ourselves, but we also realized our limitations, particularly the fact that we're not designers.  We brainstormed moods, themes and adjectives that we wanted our logo to reflect - emotions that we wanted people to feel (either consciously or subconsciously) when they looked at our logo and our photographs.  We did all kinds of exercises, like coming up with single sentences to describe our approach, creating a mission statement, outlining our long-term and short-term goals...  Initially, I thought these exercises were kind of silly and a waste of time, but they're really not.  They forced us to be able to articulate what we are about, our vision and what we want our clients' experience with Alison Yin Weddings to be.  While we were doing this, I kept pulling design inspiration from the web and just putting all of that away in a folder for later use.

The next task (no small feat) was to find the right designer.  We did have some restrictions - namely, our budget, and we wanted to work with someone local so we could be active and in-person participants.  That, and we're also trying to support local businesses and services as much as possible.  In researching graphic designers, I noticed there are lots of different types of designers - the three most obvious to me were designers who specialize in typography, others who specialize in collage and mixed media, and others who are illustrators.  We wanted someone who could draw so we went the illustrator route.  I realize that all of this must sound really elementary, but figuring out these basic principles literally took us months, so that just shows where we were coming from.

After several meetings with designers and countless hours looking through online portfolios, we finally stumbled upon Emma Robertson.  At the time, Emma had just moved to Berkeley from Paris, one place that provided some major inspiration for the look I wanted to create.  What sold me on Emma before even meeting with her was the personal work portion of her portfolio and her blog.  Most of the time, graphic designers create work that reflect the vision of the people they're working for, so it's not really a true reflection of what their personal style is all about.  I love Emma's illustrations and her use of color, AND her blog is full of things she likes and is drawn to - all things that were on the same wavelength as what I wanted.

Unfortunately for Emma, I basically just dropped my inspiration folder in her lap (there were at least 85 different photos of things), and told her to have at it.  Here's a sampling of what I gave her:

Below is a smattering of things that I like that I gave Emma.  I wanted her to create something that was pretty and elegant, but that also had a hand painted, whimsical and quirky feel with room to evolve over time.  And obviously, as you can tell from just glancing at the images below, I love color so that was also key.

1/2/3

4/5/6

7/8/9

10

11/12 (a vase I brought back from Paris)/13

14 (a bag I brought back from a store in Paris)/15

For the next blog post, I'll write about the process of working with Emma and coming up with our new look.

Someone's got a new do!

Baby, you lookin' fiiiiine today, did you do something different with your hair or maybe you've lost a few pounds?  Why yes, thank you for noticing!  Actually, we got a COMPLETE makeover, and it feels soooo good!

My friends, I am so excited to FINALLY reveal our new look!  We've been working for months on creating a new identity, and it's finally here!  Actually, the uber talented and creative designer Ms. Emma Robertson really gets all the credit for our new style.  I plan to blog about the entire process of creating an identity as well as show off the rest of the collateral next week, so for now, just sit back, grab a cocktail and admire the new design, made-over blog, and updated portfolios on the web site.

Vacation!!!

Whooohoooooo!!!! We're heading out of the country for a much needed and long awaited vacation to Buenos Aires, Argentina!  I've got a few blog posts scheduled and ready to go (including a very special introduction!) while we're away so the blog won't be completely dead while we're gone.  I'm sure we'll also post a few photos from our trip once we're down there. For current and prospective clients, we'll be back in the Bay Area and in full work mode on February 10.  Until then, I'll still be checking my email every now and again, but please be patient as I'll be a little slower than usual to respond. Happy January!

See ya, Bay Area!

2010 Highlights: A Year in Review!

I can't believe we're already ringing in a New Year.  2010 has been a complete whirlwind, and at the end of the year, when things are starting to slow down and we're getting ready to breathe and relax for a few months, I always like to reflect on what we've done and think about what direction we're headed in.  In pulling out images for the highlight slideshow, I can see how our style is evolving and what areas to focus on for the future.  This is part of what makes our job so fun - constantly critiquing one another and pushing each other to do better.  We absolutely love what we do and are so incredibly lucky to work with such wonderful people who trust their memories with us.  We are so grateful for each and every couple that lets us into their lives on such an important day, and we just hope that the care we take in creating their images is a true reflection of how important they are to us.

The slideshow includes images from every wedding and engagement session we photographed this past year.  Music is "Perfect In My Mind" by Gold Motel.