Branding can be one of the hardest parts about your photography business. Well we are here to help! We are so excited to have Kristina a SUPER fabulous graphic designer explain some frequently asked questions about all things branding. I love her style and her looks. She designed the new BP4U logo which I’m absolutely IN LOVE with. 🙂 You might have some additional questions about branding and finding your graphic designer and we encourage you to post those questions below in the comment section. Yay! Here’s Kristina…
Kristina Brewer of Kristina Kathrynn Brand Design is a graphic designer based in Oregon and specializes in photography brand design. She has been a graphic designer for 7 years and has worked exclusively with photographers for the past 2 years. She also balances design work with her own photography business as well! When she’s not busy designing or shooting she can be found chasing her two little boys and spending time with her handsome hubby…and visiting Disneyland as many times a year as possible!
Whether you are new to the photography industry or an established pro ready to get serious about branding your business, developing an identity that fits you, your business and your current or target clientele can be frustrating and time consuming. From “What exactly is Branding?!” to “How can I create my own brand?” I’m here to help answer a few of the questions I get asked most frequently when it comes to brand design. Hopefully you’ll find some useful information to get you pointed in the right direction!
What Branding is…and isn’t: You might be surprised at the number of people that don’t understand what “branding your business” actually means! So let’s talk a little bit about what it is, and what it isn’t. Branding is not a trend. It is not a fad that will go out of style in a couple of seasons. This is probably the most important thing to know about what establishing your brand is all about. It is not a logo, a set of marketing materials, or a website.
Now you’re saying to yourself, what?! Don’t panic, let me tell you what it is. Branding is a combination of those things and so much more. Your logo, print and web materials and any other graphic representations are the ‘face’ of your brand. But they are not the entire package.
To brand your business is to create an experience for your clients. Take your logo as an example. This is the cornerstone of your business’ professional image but without an experience to back it up it will be nothing more than a flat design to them. It is the emotional connection that you build between your clients and your business image that truly creates your brand.
So with this in mind, when it comes to creating the right brand for your business you want to do so purposefully.Think about what type of experience you want to offer and how that can be translated into a graphic presence. This is where a designer comes in handy. They can help you define your style, create a print and web presence that portrays that style and help you to turn your business identity into an experience your clients will be clamoring for!
Identifying your business style and turning it into a graphic presence: This is the single most frequently asked question I get about branding. With good reason. Finding the balance between the brand you envision for your business and your own personal style can be tricky. Many people start out by creating their brands around their own personal taste and then later down the road realize that maybe that isn’t the best representation of the business they’re trying to build, or have built.
Now don’t get me wrong, a large portion of your personal style will find it’s way into your brand because, of course, it’s your business! But translating personal style into professional style can be very tough to nail down. Here are a few suggestions that can help you find the perfect balance of both…Pin away! Let’s face it, chances are you probably have a Pinterest account. It’s the new Facebook right?!
So instead of spending endless hours pinning yummy recipes you’ll probably never try and gorgeous outfits you can’t afford (tell me it isn’t just me!!) take some time to create an inspiration board for your brand. Pin things that appeal to you from a professional standpoint. Look for things like fonts you love, color palettes that appeal to you as being good for a professional presence, logo layouts…the list goes on.
But the most important thing is to look at things with an eye toward business. This probably sounds impossible to do but once you get in the right mindset you’ll start to see what I mean. And pretty soon you’ll look at that board of accumulated inspiration and see a style emerge that probably looks a little different than it would if you were pinning things with your interior home design in mind!
The other thing I always urge clients to keep in mind when trying to separate their personal and professional style is to make sure that the type of business you’re branding is first and foremost on your mind. Your personal style may be bold and dramatic but let’s say you are specializing in newborn photography. While I am in no way saying that you couldn’t find some way to make that style work for newborns, chances are you’ll appeal to a larger audience of new moms looking for your type of service if you go with a softer design style.
It’s important to remember that while your brand needs to be a good representation of you as the business owner, it ultimately needs to appeal to your potential clients in order to benefit your business building goals!One other thing that you can do in order to help define your professional style is to do some research. Look around at some of the photographers whose work you admire and look at their brands. You’ll be amazed at how this helps you see they type of style you gravitate toward as well as the styles that you just know aren’t for you!
If you tailor this research to photographers who shoot the same type of photography that you do you can also get a good sense of what styles work best for that genre as well. Let me be very clear, however, that copying another professionals brand is never ok so do make sure that you are only researching for inspirational purposes! 🙂
Tips for Creating Your Own Brand: You may not be ready to jump right into hiring a designer to create your brand for you and that’s ok! There are several things you can do to create a brand for yourself that will look great and give you that professional look you need to show your clients. To begin with, if you don’t already have a logo, you have a couple of options to get one. The first option is to create your own in photoshop.
To do this I always suggest going as simple as possible. My personal motto is “less is always more”! Especially if you are not overly design savvy, keeping it simple will make your life easier! So with this in mind my suggestion is to find a font that appeals to you and create a text based design in Photoshop, leaving the background transparent, save as a .png file and there you are!
A clean and simple logo that can be used in conjunction with just about any premade marketing template design you find to use until you are ready to get a complete brand created for your business. A note about fonts: When choosing a font to download please make sure that you are reading the terms of use! Most font sites will say right next to each font what it’s uses are, i.e. personal, commercial, etc.
If the font you love says it is for personal use only, it cannot be used in your logo unless you contact the font designer and request the right to use it commercially. Usually you will find a way to purchase the font, or donate to the author in order to use it commercially on their personal site but you may need to email the designer directly in order to do so. Please respect the font designer’s terms of use and make sure you’re using their font correctly!
The second option open to you is to purchase a premade logo design. These can be found all over Etsy. Though a note of caution about purchasing a premade logo from Etsy: Make sure that the designer you choose to buy from specifically states that the premade design you are purchasing will only be sold once. No sense in spending ANY money on a logo that any number of people might be using!
The other option is to start researching designers you’d like to use when it comes time to create a completely custom brand for yourself and see if they sell an premade logo designs. Many do! If you don’t see any listed on their site don’t hesitate to contact them and ask if they have any ‘cutting room floor’ logo designs you can look at and choose as a premade.
This can be a great alternative to Etsy premades and it gives you the ability to get a design from the designer you plan to use later down the road. When it comes to print marketing for your company there are an endless number of template companies out there that sell premade marketing materials that work great for when you aren’t yet ready to custom brand, or aren’t 100% certain of the direction your brand is headed in yet!
The best thing to do is to ask around and look on photography forum websites at the template companies that advertise in their sidebars and you can find an overwhelming supply of companies that offer what you’re looking for! Whether creating your own or purchasing premade designs, this is a great way to get your brand started and put your best foot forward to your prospective and current clients. Then when you are ready, you can hire a designer to put some polish on it for you!
Tips on Hiring a designer: So you’re ready to find the perfect designer to put your thoughts, ideas and style together into the perfect identity for your business! But where do you even start to find the right designer?! Ask around! I’d bet that you’ve made friends and acquaintances in the photography community, maybe you’re part of a forum or maybe you just follow another photographer who just re-branded and you love what you see and want to know who created it! Word of mouth is the best way to find designers you can look at to potentially create your brand.
Once you get a few names, definitely check their websites for previous projects and examples of their work to see if they might be a good fit for you. I also suggest liking their Facebook pages and following them for a bit to see what kind of a presence they have. This may sound silly but your personality definitely shines through in the ways you communicate on social media.
Seeing the type of presence they have through their page will give you a good sense of what communicating with them will be like and you’ll be able to gauge if they are a good fit for you. Once you’ve found a designer who’s overall portfolio appeals to you and whose online presence makes you feel confident that they are the one you’d like to work with, get in touch!
Let them know where you want to start with your brand and find out a few important things about the work they do. A couple of questions you definitely want to ask (unless this information is readily available on their website).
Can they design your marketing materials for the printing company you will be using? What file formats do they send of your final logo design? What programs do they use to design? You’ll obviously want to make sure that you can get marketing materials that you’ll be able to print through your choice of company!
Also, any designer worth their salt should offer the following file formats of your final logo design: .jpg, .png, .eps, and .abr (Photoshop brush). You can also request the original .ai file although if you do not have Adobe illustrator you will not be able to use this file to make any modifications.
But there again, any good designer should be willing to make any minor changes needed and resend the other file formats. The key word there is minor, however! 🙂 And that last question is the most important of all. I’m going to offer a bit of a contradiction here…I know that in the ‘create your own brand’ section I advised you to create your logo in Photoshop. For non-designers (assuming that you don’t own or know how to use Illustrator) this is the best way to get a logo design to use until you are able to get one that has been properly designed in Illustrator.
However, when hiring a designer, if they say that your logo will be designed in Photoshop, move on. Let me get a little technical here for a minute. Using Photoshop creates what is called a raster graphic. This graphic is a pixel-based design and cannot be enlarged past the size it is built at without losing the clarity of the design. Using Illustrator creates what is call a vector graphic.
This is not a pixel based graphic which gives you the ability to enlarge your design to billboard size should you so choose! There is plenty more technical mumbo-jumbo that explains the difference as well but the bottom-line here is that if you are choosing to get a custom-designed logo, which comes with a custom design price tag, you’ll want to make sure that your logo design is created in Illustrator so that should you become so outrageously popular in your area that you want to shout it to the world through a roadside billboard…..you can!
Or more practically you’ll be able to have a sign made for that new studio you want or have T-shirts created, etc. You get the picture. Make sure you choose a designer who knows what they’re doing, that’s all I’m saying! Another quick note to add in addition to the other information about fonts. Most designers purchase untold numbers of fonts for designing purposes.
This means that your logo can be created with a font that has been purchased for commercial use. However should you choose to use that same font for your marketing materials, website, etc. you will need to purchase that font for yourself as well. Due to copyright laws a designer cannot give you the font files they have purchased for commercial designs. So this is something to keep in mind when you are working with your designer on your logo.
Hopefully this has helped clear up a few questions you may have been harboring about getting started in the branding process! Ultimately every successful business owner has to go through this process to create a lasting impression on their clients and communities. So good luck and most importantly have fun finding your professional style!
Kristina Kathrynn Brand Design Website | Facebook
Do you have any questions? Post them in the comment section below! 🙂