Building a brand style for your studio is an important way to connect with your clients. With the help of BRI’s marketing department and in collaboration with KML Creatives, I’d like to share some insight on how to develop your studio’s marketing materials. Some great examples of branding a studio will be featured at our Inspiration Table at the upcoming WPPI show.
The first and most important thing is to recognize how your own personality and aesthetic are a part of your studio. Who you are should be reflected in how you present yourself to clients. When I started to develop materials for our Inspiration Center, I took a look at the photographic style of the studio that shot the images we’d feature: Amanda Reed Photography. In those photos (A), I noticed references to the past, including vintage cars, articles of clothing reminiscent of the turn of the century (1900), and a soft aged feel to some of the images. I assembled a mood board (B), which pulled together lots of different details based on the vintage feel. This established a base for what props and items I would purchase, and how we would develop the marketing materials. I chose a main color palette of turquoise and golden yellow, because those colors work nicely with the antique feel I was trying to achieve.
Once you have an idea of how you’d like your studio branding to feel, you can choose to purchase existing templates from a graphic designer or come up with unique designs on your own. Kristen at KML Creatives supported our design vision with beautiful templates that reinforce the old fashioned look and feel. She created templates for BRI’s iPhone cases, LOFT ornaments and specialty shaped cards, folded greeting cards, DVD cases, and business cards. All of the pieces share a similar color scheme, and work very nicely with the images we dropped in from Amanda Reed Photography ( C ).
There are lots of ways you can use BRI’s products to help promote your studio. In our example, the folded greeting card acts as an introductory piece which tells the story of Studio Ten (our fictional studio for this project). It also includes pricing and contact information. We created a LOFT mini card as a Thank-You to clients. It could be used as a coupon card, or as a regular business card. We used BRI’s folded business card to feature a couple of extra studio photos, which is a fun alternative to a more simple card. We also created LOFT ornaments and LOFT cards as studio samples and takeaways.
The final component of designing our Inspiration Center was to purchase some props to help display the products and marketing pieces (D). Since everything had a nice antique feel, we chose props like antique wood crates, old wooden spools, stacks of books, and other items with a similar feel. The products and props work together to inspire and build excitement around the brand.
If you’re planning to be in Las Vegas for WPPI, we invite you to come visit our Inspiration Center and see some of the products firsthand. We’ll be announcing a contest on Instagram that will be held at the Inspiration Center, so keep following our blog in the upcoming days!
Kendall Schlichting is the Senior Graphic Designer at Black River Imaging.Â
