When I first spoke with Jaime of Sweet Serendipity, she was hoping for a website update, where she could easily show off all her new work. Jaime runs a busy studio in Gainesville, Florida. She had a Showit website and a ProPhoto blog, with different styles. In addition, she had another separate website for her boudoir work.
Jaime is an established photographer and had all her printed branding in place. So we wanted to stay true to her already established brand and create a website identity to match.
Here are the before shots of Sweet Serendipity’s online presence. Besides the logo, there was nothing to tie the websites together so that as a visitor I would know that I was looking at the same photographer on each website.
Since Jaime already had a logo, and several coordinating pinstriped backgrounds, that were already part of her brand, the biggest challenge was creating a sense of cohesion. Our goal was to showcase all of her photography, and information into one website, or at least for it to feel like that. We kept her boudoir brand as a separate blog-site, that coordinated. One other thing that was important to Jaime was that her website showcased how much new work she is constantly creating. Some photographers may shoot 2 sessions and 1 wedding a month, but Jaime works every day, with lots of clients and felt that is an important differential to showcase. Therefore having a blog as a prominent part of her website was essential.
Here is Jaime’s pinterest board. If you are not a regular Pinterest user, it’s pretty much a place where you can digitally put together mood boards. When I went back to school for Multimedia Design, we did it the old fashion way of going through magazines and cutting / pasting items that caught our eye. Either way you prefer to do it, I think the experience lets you really just go with you gut on what feels right for you and your business. Pinterest makes it easy to share.
As you can see from this board, Jaime came into this project with a very clear idea of her brand already. My job was to turn that brand into a website with organized information.
This was my first mockup. I knew we had to get her blog posts featured on the front page, and make it easy for clients to get to her galleries. She photographs weddings, babies, families, boudoir, and more.
Jaime strongly disliked my wide stripes on the outer portion of the menu up top. I decided I really disliked my lower right social media icons. We made a list of changes and moved on to the test website. Here is how it ended up, or you can see it live at Sweet Serendipity Photography.
Check back next week to see the coordinating boudoir website for Wish by Sweet Serendipity.
