Our Brand Evolution

Happy Monday, friends! We have a very special post for you today all about the evolution of Yantes Photo, at least over the last 12 months. It’s been kind of a long and confusing road. But thanks to a few awesome designers, mentors and friends we are so happy with where we landed!

 

We started to discuss rebranding from Ashley Yantes Photography to Yantes Photo almost 4 years ago now, which is totally crazy to think about. When we started our business back in 2007, Ashley was the lead photographer and Troy was her second shooter. But as the years went on we both grew a lot in our business and soon neither of us were the lead. We were equals and we wanted the name of our business to reflect that!

 

What finally pushed us to make the switch? Our first national publication on a wedding blog!! We were (and still are) so excited about this feature on The Knot and we thought that the name we used as credit for our first ever publication should represent the team we are now.

 

So the first thing we did was reach out to our friend and AMAZINGLY talented designer Levi Lowell of Proper Format. (You must check him out immediately. For reals. Do it now.) The three of us worked together over many coffee dates, brainstorming and coming up with a look and feel that would be right for us. And we LOVED the finished product. Did we already say how talented this guy is? The little owl icon he created for us was so cute and clever, with his little eye “flashing” like a camera flash. LOVE.

 

So what happened next you ask? WPPI, that’s what happened next—a week long photography conference full of seminars and mentoring sessions and so much more. There will be another post about our experience at WPPI but for now just know it really opened our eyes to SO many things. For too long we have been living in our own little world over here, doing what we felt was right and not asking advice from other leaders in our industry. I mean, Ashley has a background in marketing and design so we’re good right? Wrong.

 

Fresh off of our new rebrand, with shiny new business cards in hand we started talking with some of the most successful wedding photographers in the country, and over and over again we kept getting the same feedback. What did the owl represent? Did we have a particular fondness for owls? Did the colors (navy and lime green) mean something and why did we pick them? Why isn’t there more about US on the website? The list goes on. And we were crushed. What did we do? Why didn’t this conference happen before we did all this work?

 

The biggest problem with the direction we chose was that we want our couples to have an experience that is romantic and timeless and choosing a cute little woodland creature to represent our brand was a total disconnect. Why we didn’t see this right away—not sure. He was just too cute to pass up. And while he actually fits perfectly for our lifestyle brand, he just doesn’t with the wedding side of things.

 

Lucky for us we made some great friends and mentors at the conference who gave us guidance on what we should do next. We also started out on our journey to become Certified Wedding Photographers through The International Academy of Wedding Photographers which has an entire course about branding for wedding photographers taught by the wildly talented Katelyn James.

 

Saying that we learned so much from this course is an understatement. As a designer there were things Ashley was already familiar with in the course, but there were so many things we just didn’t think about. And it changed everything. We knew right away that we wanted Showit to host our next website and it’s a great platform for photographers who want to build their own website without having to know a line of code! And while we probably could have learned some things ourselves and attempted ANOTHER website build (every website we’ve had since 2007 was build by Ashley through various template sites), we made the executive decision not to. For the first time (ever) we were going to hire someone to DO IT ALL. Someone who is an expert at designing for Showit while having a fantastic eye for design. Someone like Ravyn from Three Fifteen Design! This talented lady made everything you see now a reality! And we can’t thank her enough!

 

Next week, Ravyn will take over our blog and share with you the process we went through to develop this new brand as well as some things to consider while going through a rebrand of your own!

 

See you then!
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