Back in November, Wonderful Machine’s Marketing Manager Ann MacMullan worked with Bisbee, Arizona-based photographer István Vizner on a Branding and Marketing Plan. István had just relocated from Switzerland and was looking for help getting his bearings in the North American photography market. After evaluating István’s website and marketing materials, Ann presented him with ideas for marketing to a new audience. After discussing István’s goals for the future, he chose to move forward with me on a new Web Portfolio Edit as well as a Web Template Customization with Senior Designer Melissa Ginsiorsky.
István was eager to get started, and promptly sent us a selection of images, splitting the work between his commercial and personal series. His commercial work is highly produced, with a lot of polish and frequent CGI elements, all of which István handles himself. The personal work covers more ground: some resemble his client work very closely, while others are more raw, painterly, or collage-based. We began working on István’s organization, opting to divide his images into four subcategories: conceptual, corporate, lifestyle and entertainers. I felt that his fine art work was interesting, but not as relevant to his marketing efforts. As he and I reviewed the initial edit, he assured me that his clients in Europe would expect to see more personal work with an artistic sensibility. We talked about how to approach these two sides of his work, and decided that for now, we would leave the commercial side under “Work”, and his personal work under “Art”, which he edited himself. The eventual goal is to create a separate website for his fine artwork, giving him two distinctly different brands.
After we finalized the photo edit, we passed István along to the very capable Melissa, who had this to say about the process:
“Working with István was a unique case in that he has a design background, so there was a lot of collaboration on that side of things. The identity he started with was strong and he showed me a mockup of what he wanted his new site to look like, so most of the work I did was focused on helping István achieve his vision. I knew of a Squarespace template that allowed us to achieve a sleek new site that’s incredibly close to his mock-up, while being very easy to navigate and looking great no matter what size device his clients are browsing on. It was a pleasure working with István on his site, and we’re both very happy with the results.”
For a complete before and after critique of István’s site, check out our screencast below:
Check out István’s new site here.
Need help with web template customization and a web edit? Reach out!