For most of us, truly bold and ambitious projects don’t land in our laps every day. When they do, it’s important to stop and recognize the unique opportunity at hand. When Louisville-based photographer Clay Cook came to us looking for a project edit and design for a spiralbound sketchbook print promo featuring images shot for Celaya Tequila, he offered me and Wonderful Machine designer, Lindsay Thompson, just this opportunity.
Having worked with Clay on previous promotional assets, I knew in advance that he would have a clear sense of what he would be hoping for in terms of the overall look and feel of the finished product. My job with the image edit, along with Lindsay’s designs, would be to bring these ideas to life. As with all of our consulting projects, the process began with a meeting between all involved to go over how we were going to tackle the various facets of the project and to put together a loose calendar that mapped out each phase of the process: edit, design, and print.
The images Clay had created for Celaya Tequila, a new company founded by two former NFL players, the brothers Ryan and Matt Kalil, were collectively a bold and cinematic representation of a place and a product. Shot on location in Mexico, they were stunning examples of Clay’s ability to tell stories. He seamlessly blends portraits, landscapes, and product work together for an individual client looking to tell an entire brand story across multiple platforms. I knew that I would have plenty of material to work with for the individual page edits, but finding the right combinations of images would be key. I was also aware that Lindsay’s designs would have some disruptive brushstroke elements and torn page effects that needed to be considered as I sequenced the images.
I started my editing process by working out an overall narrative feel for the project that would introduce the location and subjects first, before moving on to harvesting and distilling the agave, as well as product and lifestyle shots that were evocative of the brand experience. Getting this balance right would be an important way to showcase Clay’s talents as a brand narrative photographer who intuitively understands how to help clients create stories for their brands.
From there, it would be a matter of seeing the images dropped into Lindsay’s layouts to make sure that each individual page looked balanced and that the image placements were complementary to the designs. Although Clay had shot most of the material before we began the project, a later still-life shoot had been scheduled to pull in additional product shots. Clay had mentioned this to me when we began, so I was able to leave a little space in our edit for these images.
Once Clay had shared these beautifully-styled tabletop scenes with me, I was able to drop those additional images into the space we had intentionally left in our sequence for the new work. After sharing the revisions with Lindsay, she made the final layouts for those pages in the sketchbook, and the project then moved on to sourcing and preparation for the eventual print run.
See more of the projects we’ve worked on for Clay, including an Emailer Template and Print Promo.
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