brand

Our new brand

It’s been cooking for months behind the scenes so I’m super stoked to be starting a new year with the sharing of my new brand. Much has changed… an entire website rebuild alongside a new logo, blog and newsletter. We’ve also thrown some animated video into the mix.

Wouter-Kingma-new-website-copy

When I see WE, I’m 100% referring to this being a team effort. The foundation for change was laid out by the crew at Wonderful Machine. They undertook a full brand audit which resulted in a super valuable report with  professional, industry specific views and recommendations. I seriously recommend tapping into their knowledge. Following the report came the rebrand starting with a new word mark and a box of graphic identity tools. I LOVE my new logo. I knew that the new site and blog would have to be a custom build project using a photo template as a base. Internet in this part of the world is slow so we had to be smart as to how it would look and load. Whilst this was going on, Sean at Wonderful Machine assisted with an extensive photo edit, trying to make good sense of thousands of images. He set the base for my portfolio categories and content. The team Wonderful Machine made the below video which recaps on their thinking.

I found an awesome website template at APhotoFolio. They seriously know their stuff and build great websites for creatives. They have a super easy to use backend system for the editing and uploading of new content. Their template was the base from where we added our custom built text pages. Philip Meissner, a web designer familiar with APhotoFolio web jargon did an awesome job in pulling custom work off. Phil also turned the hand sketches of the new blog design into a working platform, still using wordpress. New to the blog will be the introduction of external content and other sources of inspiration. Melissa, from the Wonderful Machine design team, kept a watchful eye to ensure a consistent look & feel, redesigned our mail chimp newsletter and did a grand job in pulling the team together.

One element that needed a stronger online presence is why and how we produce award winning books. Book production is a key element to our business and that needed stronger recognitions. I wanted to step away from jpgs of stacks of produced books, but instead talk about the role of books, what they can mean to your business and our philosophy of making them. I found some inspiration in David McWilliams animation video, on how to tell stories. My text queen Tori edited the copy to create a nice flowing story, which got a voice over by Chris Radley. For the visual animation, I sat down with artist Matt Ryder and videographer Karl Edwards to bring it all together. Sure, the web video might be a tad long, but if someone is really interested, they’ll find the full six minutes both entertaining and valuable.

In summary, I think it all looks AMAZING. Fresh, relevant and a true reflection of what we do so a big shout out to everyone involved. Many thanks for sharing your magic.

Wk.