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Scott Pease, a Cleveland-based architectural photographer, first came to Wonderful Machine looking to reevaluate his branding and marketing efforts. He decided to start with our very popular Branding & Marketing (BaM!) plan, which does exactly that.
In reviewing Scott’s website and brand as a whole, a few problem areas became apparent. Throughout his brand, Scott was using two different logos, which were inconsistent and confusing, not to mention that neither was particularly memorable or relevant to the type of images he shoots.
Second, his website was an older custom site that wasn’t responsive and forced him to crop his images to awkward proportions to fit the site. Photographers everywhere, please note that this is not okay — your photography should define your portfolio (both print and web), not the other way around. Lastly, the number of galleries on Scott’s site made it overwhelming to use and confusing to navigate. With these opportunity areas in mind, we recommended a brand makeover and supplied Scott with a proposed schedule of how we would execute it.
After digesting our analysis and advice, Scott decided to move forward with several of our consulting services: Logo Design, Web Edit, Web Template Customization, (and later on), Print Edit, and Emailer Template. I teamed up with our senior photo editor Sean Stone to get the job done, promptly getting to work on Scott’s logo while Sean tackled the web edit.
Since Scott’s photography has such clean lines and elegant angles, I knew his new logo had to be sophisticated but simple. I presented a few solutions in the first round, but this one immediately jumped out as the winner. After diving into some color exploration and presenting Scott with several possible palettes, he chose charcoal and a vibrant red — a conservative but classic choice.
With his new logo finalized and the web edit well underway, we moved on to Scott’s website. We decided to move his portfolio from the older custom site to a brand new Squarespace account. We love Squarespace and recommend their templates constantly to photographers because they’re well-designed, responsive (looking great no matter what screen size or device you’re browsing on) and easy to use from both the owner and user perspective.
Once the edit was complete, I implemented it on Scott’s new site and we made the switch to take it live. Sean had this to say about his experience working on Scott’s web portfolio edit:
Working with Scott was a fun challenge. His photography is really sophisticated, and he has a diverse body of work. Scott’s original site was well organized. He had categories in place that made sense to me, and represented his work in a clear and concise way. The issue that I saw with the edit was just one of volume. By showing images by project, and showing so many projects, he needed to create layers of navigation that I felt slowed the viewer down, and risked losing potential clients’ attention before they’ve seen the best of what he has to offer. By selecting a broad range of his most compelling, technically strong images, we present Scott in a way more accessible, client-friendly package.
We were all were thrilled with the transformation – especially Scott, who shared the following about our work together:
I recently made the decision to revamp my entire website. It had been suggested that I try Wonderful Machine and after talking to the staff at Wonderful Machine I decide to go forward with that decision. I wound up working with Melissa Ginsiorsky, one of the designers at WM. Melissa offered lots of suggestions to get started and throughout the process. She also kept the ball rolling and the entire rebuild of my website did not take long at all. I was very happy with the outcome and would highly recommend Melissa and WM to other photographers who are looking to put together a new web site or rebuild their old one.
Further Reading
Expert Advice: Building A Functional Photography Website
Expert Advice: Email Marketing Services for Photographers
Web Assessment: Jason Gilmore Goes With The Flow
Need help with your Marketing, Design, or Photo Editing? Reach out!