Week 3 Part B: Developing a brand

     I do not currently have a brand, but I have a million ideas that float in and out of my head constantly. Most of them being shot down, by none other than myself, before I can start to develop them. I guess it's true what they say about being your own worst critic. 

    As I believe I've mentioned before I would like to develop my photography into an actual brand that can be recognized. Such as Peter Lik or Ansel Adams has done. They are simply photographers who have made themselves into a brand so to speak. I also want to have an organic gourmet mushroom business. I want to be able to supply farm to table restaurants with rare and unique mushrooms. For the photography brand I do have some ideas for names and logos. The first being Luxago images. I came up with the name luxago by combining the first part "lux" which is a unit of illumination and also latin for light. The second part "ago" comes from the latin word for play. So together it would mean "light play" I thought this was fitting for photography. For the gourmet mushroom business the only name I've thought about about about was The North Shroomery. The only reason I have for "the north" part is the fact that I grew up on the north shore of Kauai.

    I don't have tag lines for them yet but if I did I would have them be something that conveyed what I believe in a sentence or two. As for the color schemes I would use a simple black white and grey for my photography since I prefer to shoot in black and white and I think it's just a lot cleaner looking when it comes to photos. For the mushroom business I would use more earthy tones, maybe some browns and dark greens. 

    One thing I find difficult is how to make my photography branding stand out among all the rest. I know I want to stick to black and white so I will need to have all my promotional stuff be monochrome in order to build better brand identity. I want to use a simple classic font to convey the classic nature of black and white photography as well. 

    Now for the mushroom business I really haven't put much thought into the details as it's just an idea that I've been bouncing around. I would need to somehow convey an organic, almost homegrown feel. I want customers to know just by looking at my promotional material that everything is organic and made with love. I know I have the word "north" in the name because of growing up on the north shore, but I feel like adding anything Hawaii related to the branding would be confusing since I don't live there now. Perhaps if I find myself living in Hawaii again this is something I can incorporate into the logo and branding. 

    Overall it seems I have some work to do. I have a general idea of what I'm looking for but I just need to pin point exactly what I want. I need to find my niche, in both the photography brand and the mushroom business, and stick with that. For me personally I don't like when a business tries to do too much. Often times they try to do too much and end up not doing any one thing really well.