HappyFish blog

High-end parties are not just limited to wedding receptions.  I have seen some stellar bar & bat mitzvah parties when designing albums that I hear - can sometimes be on par - or better - compared to wedding photography rates. These parties are crazy, chaotic, fun, busy - creating albums full of people pictures from start to finish. The albums resulting can get jampacked fast if you’re not careful. This is when negative space is a breath of fresh air and keeping the layouts fresh from page to page. Also, the parents usually want as many photos as possible - they want table shots, they want every member of their family, the hierarchical order of whose who respected, show off the venue and careful attention to detail - and believe me, there are amazing things to be seen. I get a sugar rush just looking at the images. Sales for albums can also feature other coming of age parties like the ‘Sweet 16′ parties - and the Quinceanera celebrations.

Personally, I adore the images of these youths at this age - not bashful, not self-conscious - just having the time of their lives! From games, to candy to dancing …. these young teens haven’t hit the ‘I’m way too cool for this’ stage - they are all dressed up and enjoying their entire families all the while. Love it!

Anyway … as I remind myself I’m far from this age now …. sigh …. here are some layouts from various albums:

Copyright Danny Weiss Photo

 
Copyright Danny Weiss Photo

Copyright Danny Weiss Photo

Copyright Danny Weiss Photo

Copyright David Tucker Photography

Copyright David Tucker Photography

Copyright David Tucker Photography

Copyright Jenny Nourse Photography

Copyright Jenny Nourse Photography

Copyright Jenny Nourse Photography

Now that the brand for Danny Weiss Photography’s ‘dwKidZ’ has been established …. now to promote it further!  When designing a trifold like this, I always think about how the images look adjacent to each other when partially opened, and then fully opened up etc. The front begins with the logo - and a group of boys that are just ready to take on the neighborhood! Open it up - dad and baby - and cutie pie close up of baby. Then when completely opened up - inward balance of joyful little girl - both in color like dad & baby shot. In the center a bunch of fun shots in the circles bubbling off the page. Turn it over - ends with a touching sibling shot of baby and big brother kissing his belly - and logo and contact info. Both front and back use the same bleeding off centered circle motif in different positions. To check out Danny’s work visit www.dannyweissphoto.com and click on ‘KidZ’.

Copyright Danny Weiss Photo

Recently I had the pleasure of working with Nicole Tarver of Steve Tarver Photography to come up with a logo for a new kids photography program called ‘Leaps & Bounds.’

Having two young children myself I can attest that they sure do grow faster than you can believe …. in fact, by leaps and bounds. I love the name that Nicole came up with - it has a feeling of energy, excitement, movement and fun. I wanted to come up with a logo that would embody all of these traits. They also didn’t want it to be anything like their main photographic studio’s branding, yet look ok with small mention of the main studio with it somewhere adjacent.

To me the action of leaping is different to bounding so I put the type on two different curves surrounding a sort of core area, like a seed that’s about to sprout out and grow. I told them that since they have adobe illustrator, they can play with color themselves - and in fact change the colors depending on where the logo is going, so the logo was delivered in black and white for them to have fun with. They liked two different versions of the logo so they received both.

Audra Colpitts of Audra’s Photography in Vancouver, B.C. emailed me this morning to tell me that the Detail Shots album we designed last year is featured on the ISPWP blog! You can see the entire album design and read the full article here.  I also didn’t know that Joe Milton runs the International Society of Professional Wedding Photographers blog/website, who I have had the pleasure of designing albums for in the past as well - small world!

This was the first ‘details only’ album that I have designed and I was really excited about it. There were so many images from so many weddings that I really needed to come up with a strategy to keep it from looking like a chaotic flurry!! There were two approaches I could take to achieve a consistency and flow: a) organize by theme (all flowers, all rings, all cakes etc… together on a spread) or b) organize by color theme.

I tried both, and opted to go with the color theme. It felt so much more pleasing to the eye even if it was more difficult to lay out well, was worth it. The flow of the album started and ended with black & white imagery, and in between flowed with a spectrum order of say, purples to blues to turquoise to greens etc… as much as possible.

Audra chose a very sexy hot pink leather for her Bon Match album.  FUN! Here are some close-up images courtesy of Audra’s Photography that shows the Bon Match “Noble Flush Mount with Slim Pages” album with the Bon Match Case:

Image courtesy of Audra’s Photography

Image courtesy of Audra’s Photography

Image courtesy of Audra’s Photography

Image courtesy of Audra’s Photography

 
Image courtesy of Audra’s Photography

Here are a few spreads - to see the whole album design for Audra’s Photography please visit the article on the ISPWP blog:

Audra’s Photography

Nathan Addison of Nathan Addison Photography called me up one day and said “Please help! I absolutely hate my logo!” Or something as enthusiastically to that effect …. He showed me his current logo and I could see right away that what he had did not fit his personality. It was too girly, too common and didn’t show well on his website. He needed something that fit his personality, inspirations and work. The jumping off point were adjectives that describe his work: thoughtful, simplistic, funny, touching, artistic, intimate and mysterious. I also went and listened to some of his favorite music - which was soooo incredibly helpful. After listening, I had a few strong impressions: masculine, mellow, deep, folksy and contemporary at the same time and acoustic.  With all of this in my mind, I searched for fonts that exuded all of these things - something that had an intimate and natural feeling, wasn’t feminine, where the letters were slightly mysterious or something different about them, something with a strong horizontal solid feeling …. I can tell you, that finding a hand scripted font that isn’t feminine, and isn’t too formal and isn’t too childlike and isn’t too hard to read… is a challenge.

He also wanted to stick with either black or white, keep it clean, and wanted both a company name logo and an iconic logo.

This is the result after a few different logo concepts were reviewed. He very much gravitated towards a script style name font - with a more contemporary clean ‘photography.’ The ‘n’ icon is something that can be used alone - or with the company name logo. It can be a watermark or whatever he wants. It flows, is simple, and is irregular in shape - not a perfect circle with an even boring width to it throughout. It is also simple and clean enough to be used with a die imprinted on an album cover.

 If you’re interested in help with your branding and materials, please contact Karen at HappyFish Design. Non-album design projects are accepted on a very special and limited basis.

Chad and I love fish - for the long story about why we named our company HappyFish Design way back in 1997 …. read here ….

Anyway, a decade ago when we were married in 1999 (wow …. ! time flies) I designed everything and created everything by hand for our wedding - and it had a flying fish theme. We had flying fish on our invitations, thank you cards, favor box stickers (with swedish fish inside) and a handmade ceramic flying fish cake topper with fish leaping off the top. Somehow I convinced my mother to bake our wedding cake from scratch (p.s. not recommended the sweat and stress of it was crazy, I do not know WHAT we were thinking - but we pulled it off and it was soooooooo delicious!) Since that day, I wondered how many other people have had fish themed wedding cakes….. and now I know. Not many!

Here are a couple groom’s cakes that I have come across while designing albums! Besides these two, I believe there was just one more fish cake… but I can’t remember whose it was now. If you’re a client of mine, and you remembered one of our albums having a fish cake in it - please let me know! I’ll dig out my wedding pics and post up our own cake when I get a chance …

Jamie Fender Photography

Black Dog Photography

Chad and I are asked ALL THE TIME why on earth did we move from Maui to the mainland….

I was going through some old photos this morning and I came across this shot. This is probably the biggest reason why we so sadly decided to move away from Maui. Cane smoke. All of the white clouds you see is actually smoke - sometimes it’s white, sometimes it’s brown. This is the view from our lanai and during burn season it would be like this every other day for weeks. You can smell it even if your windows and doors are closed tight. Later on the “black snow” is all over the ground outside. Right now, they no longer burn on the west side of Maui, just central Maui all over the place in different fields. We have lived on the west side and the south side and it’s funny because the people on the west side forget how much burning does take place - unless their Costco trip happens to occur during a burn.

I’ll never forget the morning I was driving to work at Kapalua Marketing - just north past the Kealia Pond refuge are cane fields flanking the road. Literally I was driving with HUGE orange flames just a few feet away on either side of my car - I both held my breath to try to not inhale the thick choking smoke and was in awe of the fiery and smokey scene.

Sadly, the burning not only is smelly - but is dangerous. They burn the irrigation pipes and everything - environmental asthma is an epidemic and many people of all ages, including something like 40% of school children are on inhalers. Until they stop burning - sadly I don’t think we’ll move back, is not worth the risk to our kids’ health. They have been closing down many of the sugar cane mills in Hawaii, so I’m certain that this will one day end. I don’t want to see sugar production end in Hawaii at all !! They should just adopt machine methods of processing and threshing the cane like other countries are already doing now….

A while back I worked with Danny Weiss to create a brand for his photography - Danny Weiss in New York. Through many discussions and rounds of sketches we developed a clean and modern logo that he loves.  The font was manipulated to be a bit different than it was, and had a personality that was contemporary/clean and also had lines that resembled the skyscrapers of New York - an urban feel to it. The ‘dw’ icon has become the icon for Danny Weiss Photography and is seen everywhere - on the stationery we designed, the website splash loader, the thank you cards, the trifold promo, marketing promotions etc etc. It can be used with or without the ‘danny weiss’ part of it. We tried many colors, but Danny was drawn to the rich warm but steely blue which is both earthy-natural and urban at the same time.

2-sided circular insert with envelope with circular flap
& circle die cut window revealing ‘dw’ logo from insert though it

top - mailing label & 1.5″ round sticker
middle - letterhead & #10 envelope
bottom - from & back business card

A few years later, Danny was working to add a photography branch of his business for kids and family - one that expanded upon his existing successful company, and yet was unique.  dw KidZ was born!  Again, after much discussion and sketches - resulted a ‘tweaked’ version of the recognizable dw photo brand.  I wanted to bring in a childlike element to the existing brand that was gender and age neutral.  Danny selected this logo - the hand drawn circle that mimics the shapes that children learn to draw early on surrounds the original clean logo - in such a way that one doodles when on the phone on a notepad.  Changing the brand name to dw KidZ in a very fun and loose font, moving the letters up and down brings in a less serious feel to the logo as well.  The little punch of red in the dot of the ‘i’ gives an element of surprise and rather symbolizes the unique and individual personality of every child. In it’s core remains the main icon foundation of Danny’s primary business brand.

We have since designed gift certificates, gift certificate holders with envelopes etc. for dw KidZ.  A few of the pieces were printed at Marathon Press - but instead of using the stock templates, we designed our own from scratch using their stock blank available templates & dies. The benefit of that is lower runs for qty - and a lower price. It’s still not cheap … but is certainly less expensive than doing larger minimum runs at your local print shop.

top - certificate that slips into holder with pocket
middle - certificate holder with pocket
bottom - envelope

self-printable gift certificate to fit a #10 envelope

Danny has just launched the dw Kidz part of his website and has incorporated much of the design elements of the branding to it to continue the look across the board. Congratulations Danny & Liz for all of your efforts in making this new and exciting branch of your photography business come to life!

If you’re interested in help with your branding and materials, please contact Karen at HappyFish Design. Non-album design projects are accepted on a very special and limited basis.

I’ve been meaning to write about studio sample albums since this time of year is bridal show season for most photographers. Ironically, just this morning Amanda of Amanda Zabrocki Photography emailed me this image of her oh so fabulous booth at her bridal show last month! I love how she used the black & white theme throughout and tied it in with the ornate fabric and the tree. The sample albums that we created for her lie open on the tables. The very very best news though is that she told me that one of the brides booked her specifically because of her albums! That’s fantastic news - thank you soooo much for sharing Amanda!!

Image Courtesy of Amanda Zabrocki Photography

I love working on studio sample albums. We tend to have more leverage to work on what the photographer loves - and not have to squeeze in images of extended beloveds etc…. It’s a time to showcase your very favorite images, with a smoothly flowing storyline and fit your own style aesthetic. I tell my clients who are new to selling albums that it is critical to show sample albums that really gel with your own taste because what the couples see…. is what they’ll expect. For better or for worse.  So if you’re showing albums from the early 2000’s … that no longer fit your style and taste - be prepared to follow through with that look with your clients. I’ve had couples tell their photographers that they wanted what they saw in the samples when they booked them …. which in some cases is an ‘old outdated’ look that the photographer themself no longer likes. Showing a draft with a new more modern style, even if the photographer loves it - the clients are still thinking about what they saw before and they might be sold on the older look - no matter how sexy the new look is! (Does that make sense what I’m trying to say?) So, if you show fresh samples from the onset of your client relationship that you love …. both you and your client will both be on the same page when it comes time to design their album! 

For more information about sample albums - please contact HappyFish Design.

Published just today is a web exclusive article written by Norris Carden of Carden Photography - in Professional Photographer Magazine (www.ppmag.com) called “Custom Guestbooks Make an Indelible Impression.”

Norris talks about how I worked with him on the creation of his guest books as well as his own experiences and advice in regards to shooting for, creating, selling and presenting the guest books. He discusses the interaction of the guests with the books - and how they are working to promote and gain referrals for new business for this coming year. It’s an interesting and well written article with some photos of the books as well. To read the article at Professional Photographer Magazine - click here. To learn more about guest books, album design, and post-production services for professional photographers, contact HappyFish Design.

Thanks Norris!

Images copyright Norris Carden - Carden Photography