Business Building 101: Branding

I'm so excited to reveal my newly designed wedding photography business at the show this weekend.  I've researched for months, collaborated with another experienced wedding photographer for late-night hours on the telephone and at all-day meetings in Kansas City, worked with team of designers in creating a brochure, and this week I'm down to the final P's:

• final Planning
• continued Praying
• last-minute Polishing

Branding is so essential to building a long-lasting business of any kind.  It is choosing a logo, colors, style, etc. that will bring your to the forefront in marketing.  Here are some of the changes I've made for 2011.   

My old logo.

My shiny new logo:

Why the change?   When my computer fried during a lightening storm last fall, it gave me the opportunity to rebuild my logo.  This is a nice way of saying that my files and fonts were lost forever and I cried for a week. 

Also, it was time for me to make a choice.  In the past few years, I've taken all kinds of pictures:  babies, families, weddings, seniors, and business advertising.  The type of photography that grabbed my romantic heart (and paid for my equipment) was weddings.  So, although I love anything from the 50's, I had to drop the 50's Diner font and opted for an old-fashioned style font with some fern-like graphics. 

Also, I had to choose a color palette.  One of the weddings I shot last fall had the bridesmaids in chocolate brown dresses and they were gorgeous.  We had already been delivering our photos in chocolate-colored boxes with cream ribbons.  So it was an easy decision to make dark chocolate our main color.  When I presented the following brochure to a design panel, the guys gave it a thumbs-up for reminding them of food and lessening the sting of prices!





Here is my new business card that fits snugly inside the pre-cut chocolate-brown folder (1st - front and 2nd - backside):

But don't think that I've walked away from my portrait photography!  Here is a sample of my info card for portraits:

My plan for 2011 is to focus on weddings as a lucrative way of financing my education and equipment needs as I develop and grow as photographer.  And in-between all of those I-do's, I'll be snapping my shutter at all kinds of other people projects. 

Don't peek yet, but I plan to have my new website up by Friday!  And you thought I was just sitting on my hands, enjoying the falling snow...