It’s true – I feel like a graphic designer! Ok – I’m not, and have no real right to call myself one, but I’ve recently obtained the tools that made me feel like one… for a bit.
I’ve always been amazed at how quickly designers I know can rustle up a cool logo or a flyer, with seemingly little or no effort, and just for a moment last week I was like one of them. My enlightenment came when I decided to subscribe to The Shoppe – a design resource for photographers offering a really neat collection of templates, textures, backgrounds, marketing materials and photoshop brushes and actions. After spending time exploring all their awesome products, I found and downloaded a photoshop brush that I knew would be the key for my new logo design.
For a while I’ve wanted to do an overhaul on the Jinger Studios branding, and I have had an image in my mind for several months now on just how I thought it should look like. Something Floral, something Henna, plus the simplicity and color scheme of our old logo (which was designed by my brother) . I found exactly this ‘look’ in one of the photoshop brushes provided by The Shoppe and I had my eureka moment as I was playing with my new brush sets and making a mess on my screen. Using this new brush, and a few other elements from their range, I was able to knock together a logo that I’m really proud of, and I feel gives a proper sense of the type of style and aesthetics that our photography studio values and embraces.
When it came to producing a line of holiday greeting cards and save the dates that we could offer our clients as a fun way to show off their engagement or portrait images – we turned to The Shoppe again. Their range of templates was just what we were looking for – enabling us to go a little bit more artistic than the average greeting card.
These templates are fully customizable and can be tweaked to suit the many differing tastes out there. But beware! Flushed with a confidence in my own new design skills I tried to change a template too much and unknowingly tore apart the delicate lines of good design aesthetic that had been wizarded together by The Shoppe and accidently created something a six year old would dismiss as ‘noise’! After that I decided to keep my needless but enjoyable tinkering to a minimum and the following examples are the results!
SAVE THE DATE (FRONT AND BACK)
“Chocolate Forest – 5×7″
GREETINGS CARD (FRONT AND BACK)
“Vintage Blue – 5×7″
GREETINGS CARD (FRONT AND BACK)
“Snowflakes – 5×7″
SAVE THE DATE
“Dark and Unique – 5×7″
GREETINGS CARD (FRONT AND BACK)
“Muted Elegance – 5×7″
GREETINGS CARD (FRONT AND BACK)
“Fun and Clean – 5×7″
I think the main benefit of our subscription to The Shoppe has been the ‘unlocking of creativity’ as far as graphic design goes. Of course as photographers our main focus is on capturing timeless, awesome photography – and in so doing we don’t have the time available to source elements, design and make our own templates. Having a resource where we can pull good design ‘off the shelf’ and adapt it to our own specific needs is invaluable to us, as we can both concentrate on the business of providing excellent photography to our clients, while at the same time have the ability to package that photography with the cutting edge design it deserves.
See our full range of HOLIDAY GREETING CARDS
See our full range of SAVE THE DATES
