Design: An Updated Wordmark and Business Cards for Mike Bradley

Recently, I had the pleasure of working with Rochester-based photographer Mike Bradley. He joined WM just over a year ago and comes from a photojournalism background, but his old logo wasn’t on par with the clean, sophisticated style of his work. A few months ago, Mike came to us looking to update his look, beginning with a new wordmark to better suit his brand.

Here’s Mike’s original wordmark:

Before we get started with a photographer, we have them answer a series of branding questions. As soon as I read his answers I knew Mike and I were going to get along famously— we both share a love of classic, clean strong logos such as the Gap, which is a personal favorite of both of ours. I immediately knew the feeling that Mike was going for and already had a selection of strong, masculine, clean fonts I wanted to use. I then got to work creating a series of logo options for Mike to browse through. Here are some of the options from the first round:

And Mike picked these two marks as his favorites:

After a few small revisions as well as some color exploration in the second round the winner was…

Both Mike and I were thrilled with how the final mark turned out, so we decided to work together on some business cards! I immediately knew this logo would look great on the Luxe business card line from Moo.

The Luxe line is different than typical business cards: the cards are created using Moo’s “quadplex technology,” which sandwiches together four layers of Mohawk Superfine paper, including a color of your choice in the center. The end result is a thicker, more tactile card with a pop of color. Mike sent us an image of how the final cards came out:

Mike also used the logo on the cover of his new portfolio. Check it out below:

Mike was a pleasure to work with, and in the end he was very happy with his new look:

The last time I hired a designer, it was my college roommate and I paid him in beer. I came to Wonderful Machine looking for a more professional wordmark that would pair well with my style of photography. Samantha delivered exactly what I knew I wanted, but couldn’t come up with on my own. The process was just as good as the final product; every new round of edits was like Christmas morning all over again. I’m thrilled to get my new wordmark out there, starting with a new set of business cards that Samantha also designed!

To see Mike’s new branding in action, visit his website. For more information about our Design services, visit our Consulting page or reach out to us directly, we’d love to hear from you!