We used to say, all the time, as we were sitting around chewing the fat of the hand that fed us, that advertising would be the perfect job if it weren't for the fucking clients.
And then it dawned on us, yesterday, that it's been a long long time since we've had a shitty client: a snarky MBA hell bent on covering his or her ass with mountains of statistics and focus groups out the wazoo and every. fucking. thing. exactly. by. the. book. Wharton. Ick.
A long time. Honestly, these days our clients have been really really good. Small business owners who are eager to take chances or are instinctually(*) not eager to take chances, people who are calling the shots for their own business and their own brand and it's a blast. Maybe that's the thing: it's great to deal with the people at the top. And that's exactly what we've been doing.
So, what, pray tell, might have led us to these thoughts right now in this forum -- these appreciations for these clients? Well, one Juliet Lofaro. Photographer. Client. Great client. That's what.
She came to us wanting some branding and a logo and so we sat down and we started talking. And listening. And listening some more. And right away, it came out that, at her core, she's not just a photographer, she's a portrait photographer. And that was a nice thing for her: to define herself that way and so we did, too. But even more than that, she seemed to be a serious thinker about her work and her craft and that led us to jump the gun a little bit and send the following email (which had no salutation - wtf?):
Philosopher/photographer, continuer of a noble tradition. Builder upon the shoulders of the giants who came before. Thinker and doer whose thoughts and deeds are captured in a fraction of a second.
“A portrait is not made in the camera but on either side of it.”
- Edward Steichen
“The heart and mind are the true lens of the camera.”
- Yousuf Karsh
“My job as a portrait photographer is to seduce, amuse and entertain.”
- Helmut Newton
“To photograph truthfully and effectively is to see beneath the surfaces and record the qualities of nature and humanity which live or are latent in all things”
- Ansel Adams
“In a portrait, I’m looking for the silence in somebody.”
- Henri Cartier-Bresson
“When people look at my pictures, I want them to feel the way they do when they want to read a line of a poem twice.”
- Robert Frank
“The most emotionally resonant photos are portraits, capturing the soul of a person, place or thing.”
-Juliet Lofaro,
portrait photographer
Juliet, your branding is clear to me. I’d love to talk with you more about this direction and how you feel about it and maybe even how to express it out in the world.
Well, she liked these thoughts a lot and we were able to put the cart back behind the horse and proceed with our proprietary branding questionnaire. Now, this questionnaire, 40 or so questions, never fails to identify a client's brand essence and Juliet filled it out and we filled it out and then we all compared notes and agreed that really and truly, what she should stand for in the minds and hearts of her customers was "connections." The connection between her and her subjects that's documented in her camera and the connection between the resulting photo and those who see it out in the world. Connections.
So, next step, we started a logo exploratory, searching for ways to graphically represent the concept of connections. Here are some of the first round ideas, incorporating her new job description "Portrait Photographer" instead of just "photographer":
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| Two fingers on two shutters, representing connection. |
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| Getting inside of the head of your subject. |
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| Getting inside of the head of your subject, line drawing version. |
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| Getting inside the head of your subject through conversation. |
We'd sent along some others, too, but these are the highlights and, also, we were REALLY excited by two of them in particular: #3, the line drawing of overlapping faces and #4, the conversation bubble with the camera lens in the middle.
Well, as so often happens, out client was not as excited as we were, though she kinda liked the idea of using a stylized camera iris and kinda liked the idea of using her signature, so we went back to the drawing board
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| Adding the signature to the conversation bubbles. |
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| Adding a heart to the stylized camera lens, with the heart standing in for the concept of "connection". |
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| A graphic version of "connection"built on the similarities between the upper case "J" and "L". |
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| A further exploration of the "J" and "L" connection. |
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| And, finally, though she didn't really dig it, another push for this line drawing head, this time with signature! |
Well now, at this point, our esteemed client had a favorite: the heart inside of the camera lens. She felt that it expressed the idea of "connections" just fine and had the legs to look good on a variety of merchandise, etc. So we began investigating various versions of that...
Different fonts, different hearts, and getting closer and closer to a great logo. And then, one morning, in the morning fog of recently departed slumber, it dawned on us! We didn't want a heart inside the lens, we wanted the lens inside the heart!! So after a couple of rough sketches and a conceptual "ok" from our client, we went ahead and looked at some finished roughs of that:
And then, with only a few more adjustments and explorations, we'd found our logo. (Top below) But instead of looking at it as static design, with the heart always in between the "Juliet" and the "Lofaro", we recommended thinking of the logo as a collection of 3 unique elements: the icon, her name, and her job description. Implementing Dynamic Design™ in this way gave us a lot of flexibility for various logo applications.
And that's the real, true story of Juliet Lofaro, Portrait Photographer. And the connection we made with her, and the connections she makes with her subjects, and the connections her photos make with their audience.
Advertising, it's kinda the perfect job after all. Or maybe we're just lucky to have perfect clients.
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| Temporary tattoo, sticker and business card, front and back. |
