My New Logo!
I've been working as a photographer since I was 18 and throughout that time, I've never had a proper logo. There's never been anything distinct that I could use as an identity for my own personal brand. Why did I never design one? The truth is that I am absolutely hopeless at anything involving graphic design. I find it really hard, and then I get frustrated and abandon any logo designs I start. I'd often thought about getting a friend of mine to design one, but it just never felt like a good time.Until a few weeks ago, when I met Anna for the first time!
Anna is a fellow creative based down in Cornwall. She's a web developer and definitely a branding expert. The brains behind byrosanna.co.uk, she and I met up for the first time a couple of weeks ago to chat about all things creative business and the trials and tribulations that come with being your own boss! We got on so well, and I even took some really lovely portraits of her which you can see here! I mentioned to Anna that I'd never had a logo for my personal business before, so she suggested that she could help me.
The first stage was giving Anna a feel of what I want. I'm not going to lie, I had no idea what I wanted. One of the struggles I've had all this time is knowing what style to stick with. Should it be serif or sans serif? Should it be modern or classic? Anna asked me to put a moodboard together on Pinterest which turned out to be a whole lot of fun because I just involved me pinning photos of things that I genuinely loved. It worked out well, because Anna then produced a gorgeous moodboard for me! I knew immediatly that it was the perfect combination of colours, and the emotions coming through were exactly what I wanted for my brand to be represented by. A cute side note? Anna used one of my own images in the moodboard without even knowing!
Once I was happy with the moodboard, Anna got to work making me a selection of logo options. After a few back and forth's, we ended up with a logo that I am in love with! I needed something which was versatile, and easy to adapt. I wanted a logo that would work on my portfolio website, my blog, and (eventually) a wedding photography website (coming soon!). Using changes of colour, each logo is individual, but still very clearly on brand!
Now, I thought we were going to be done here, but Anna quickly mentioned that I would also need a "sub-mark." I hadn't realised this (who know how because now that I know it seems really obvious) but a logo isn't enough, you also need a mark -- a stamp of sorts. In my case it could be used as a watermark, or as the favicon of my website. It's essentially a more condensed version of my logo. You can see the official "Olivia Bossert" sub-marks here!
This has been such an incredible process for me. Not only have I learnt a lot about branding, but I've also finally got a bit of identity! Atlas has such strong identity, and for a long time it has sort of been my identity, and don't get me wrong I love that! But I'm not Atlas, I'm me, and I felt like I needed my own identity. Now I've got it.
I can't rave about Anna enough. She was patient and so helpful, and walked me through each step, listening to any concerns I had the whole time. If you need any branding or web design done, I really recommend getting in touch with her.
