Business Cards
The business cards is going to be a simple and clear design, this will put across who he is and give a more professional look. To make the cards a little nicer and abit more special when handing them out, I am going to propose that they should be printed onto triplexed stock, this would be white stock with black through the middle. As the branding of the photographer works on black, white and greyscale, this ties in well, but adds that extra little element to them.
Initial workings - taking the logo and applying it to the cards to see how they work within the format and to give the photographer an idea of how they can be applied across other products.
After showing him this initial stage, which was meant to be more focussed on the logo's rather than the business card, he came back and said that he really liked the whole lot, including the business cards! This made the job of the business cards much easier, as I now only have to set the cards right and place everything right.
As a little bit of variation I showed him these two designs above, the only different is the use of the logo, it was dependant on which he preferred to use as the main logo and other as the secondary.
He decided to go with the bottom design and logo as the main one, as this links in with the signature mark, which he also liked the idea of being used throughout the branding material.
Letterhead & Invoice
The letterhead and invoice were harder than the business card, these had to be much more thought out and took a few different layouts to get the right composition within the page, but also to show defined areas for all the content. This had to clear and precise as the clients the photographer will be working for, need a clear understanding of all the information.
Initially I started to work with the circular logo above, but found this hard to work into the design as the circular shape doesn't sit that well within the rectangular format of an A4. In the end I decided to use the signature mark as the main logo to work throughout these branding products, which still works with the other products, as it is present on all the branding.
A simple but too basic letterhead. With all the information being centered this sits together well and creates a nice design, but the rest of the information needed doesnt fit on to the design that well.
Still working with the idea of being centered, the top title and bottom section works together creating a top and tail effect on the page, leaving the middle of the page for the main content of the product. Splitting this area into 2 content areas creates a good divide between the details and the content of the letter, this is split in a 2:1 ratio, which is based from the information along the bottom. Column on the left hand side includes all the details for the letter - contact details of receiver and date of the letter. The second column is the area in which the letter content will be displayed - for the time being is is lorem ipsum.
Sticking with the same idea as above, I have just moved the heading to the left and left justified the text instead of it being centered. I felt that because the main area of the product was based around the columns and had a grid to work to, the top heading being centered didn't adhere to that grid or really work with the rest of the page - simply changing it to left justified has fixed that problem and makes the letterhead fit together alot better. All the details information is now to the left column, leaving a good open space for the content of the letter, which doesn't have anything around it to distract from.
Still in line with the idea of keeping things within the two columns, as I think this is working best for the layout and defining the separate information within the document. With this design I have moved the photographers information from the bottom of the page to the left hand column, with the client details, putting all the information into that left column was to keep it all separate from the main content and leave a bigger area for the content. But on reflection to this, it is quite confusing having both the client information and the photographers information together in the same place - even though the photographers information is vital to have on the letterhead, I think it needs to be separate to the rest as it's not directly linked to the main content - its there to provide information incase the client needs to contact him.
Lastly I have kept the columns within the document and design, but again moved the photographers details to the top of the page, inline with the heading. Again this was to keep the details separate from each other, but also to group them together, as now all the photographers details are at the top within the first section being separated by the stroked line. Beneath is the content of the letter plus the clients details, which are separated by the columns. I like the idea of this and in my head it worked as a design, but seeing all put together, the whole document doesn't balance right, by having all the photographers details on top, it makes the page layout feel very top heavy - theres too much info at the top and none at the bottom.
Out of the designs above I have decided to go with the third one:
I feel that this works best with both the layout of the overall document, but also the ease of use and how the information is separated to easily follow it and understand, but still at the same time all work together to create a structured and clear design.
Invoice
The invoice and the letterhead need to work together as a set and be consistent across the branding element, so for this I have used the design of the letterhead but worked the information and needed content of the invoice into the design. As the letterhead has a good structure and grid applied to it, fitting the invoice content to the design was really easy and in fact worked very well for the design of the invoice.
As you can see the basis of the letterhead is still present within this design. The heading and photographers information are still in the same place - top and tailing the document. I have used the 2:1 column system in the main content area for the invoice - the details are all within the left hand column, this included client name and address, date, invoice and job number. The main content area holds the breakdown of the invoice. Creating a simple table within this area makes it clear of which cost goes to which item and should be very easy to understand for the client.
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