Carmen Salazar
Brand Strategy, Brand System Design & Pattern Creation
Carmen Salazar is a supremely talented photographer in Sacramento, CA.
Since she does a wide variety of styles and types of photography, she needed a branding system that tied everything together while still remaining true to who she was and her artistic vision.
Before:
Disjointed and distracting, her visuals and site design didn’t support her amazing art. Carmen needed a way to fit all of her subjects and styles in a streamlined and beautiful way.
Her focus was on blending 3 attributes: romantic, nostalgic, personable and quirky.
First, we explored how her 3 business aspects fit together. Defining different roles we were needing to communicate allowed me to explore 3 different typographic treatments that complemented each other.
Typographic patterns were explored to show the interworkings of the varying marks.
While she wasn’t feeling the typography direction, I hit the drawing board with a diagram showing how the 3 pieces of the business could be represented in tandem.
This, plus the client’s amazing home inspiration created the solution that resulted in ultimate brand strategy perfection.
It took seeing her home to realize her love of color and pattern were the answer! She throws around color and pattern like it is confetti. It’s incredible.
Singling out the patterns allowed me to focus in on which ones I should be creating and how to pair them together to suit her aesthetic.
Her logo became a stamp; an updated cameo that would situate perfectly with patterns.
With the elements and the aesthetic clear, it was now on to color! The color palette I built for her was pulled from photos from her sumptuous home- which meant practically every color was used.
To help guide her, I created some organizational charts for her to see how broad this system could be.
After:
Combining pattern and color makes the system come alive, providing her with endless options to speak to her wide variety of clients. No matter what, she’s showing herself to be a quirky, romantic, artistic, and accessible photographer.
