Color Swatches and Getting the Mood Right

I went to Home Depot to get some paint swatches for another project I am working on (I’m designing a logo for a children’s art museum). I noticed many of the colour swatch pamphlets are targeted towards family homes, which I thought was perfect for exploring the aesthetic of the Wedding Videographer identity.

I’ve always loved very bold and dynamic color combinations. For the children’s art museum, I am playing with two color schemes: blue, yellow, and orange or blue, yellow, and purple. Primaries look awesome together. Plus, one crucial reason for my choices is having the option of bringing red into the mix. Red is an attention grabber.

But I am getting a little off topic…

Back to the wedding videographer identity…

Soft colors, pastels, and any color combination you’d find in a catalogue from the Bay or a porcelain doll boutique, are what I am looking to use. It needs to have a sense of comfort and luxury, but not too luxurious.

High end fashion websites are overly luxurious and obnoxiously daring. I visited the dolce and gabana and they use imagery that is extremely over the top. I was at the European site, so that may have been the reason.

But for the wedding audience, I need to give them what they want and hope. Many catalogues use words like, special, precious, everlasting when selling to wedding couples and carry an aesthetic of security and comfort.

Color swatches are very helpful. I’d never done it this way before, but I can understand the reasoning now behind choosing your color palette first, and then starting the design process.

Reading and Researching

I spent several hours reading and researching the audio positions held in film and video.

There was a book in my girlfriend’s collection about digital movie making (she took film at SAIT, so she’s gets a lot of questions from me too). I flipped through to the areas heavily focused on audio production and found the information helpful. It explained much of what Patrick said with the perspective of a novice.

Many times without thinking, we often fall into the habit of speaking in jargon, so it’s refreshing to hear the same info, but in “layman’s terms” and explaining the physics of the job.

I never realized how important audio in a video is. Good sound effects and dialogue something that we tend to expect from a film, but take the progress of making it for granted. I couldn’t imagine enjoying a film like, Apocalypse Now, Lord of the Rings, etc… without great audio.

For my project of developing a professional Location Audio Specialist identity for Patrick Taylor, it was extremely helpful. I really got an understanding of the challenges of the position and why producers and filmmakers are very critical of who takes care of the audio for their productions.

Research always pays off.

A Quick Conversation

In between school and my job as a wardrobe consultant at Moores, Clothing for Men, I managed to organize a small meeting with Patrick Taylor, a location audio specialist and wedding videographer.

Amidst the aromas of cappuccinos and mocha lattes, we were able to have a brief conversation over the nature of his business.

The film and video industry is very competitive. It truly is a matter of whom you know in the industry and what you can do for them. People are hired based on recommendation over qualifications on numerous occasions.

Producers and filmmakers will make decisions in a split second to hire you or not.

This is the importance of creating a highly effective business card based on a well-developed identity.

My original design was merely a prototype. Its main intent was to explore potential designs and to engage the flow of ideas.

In our brief talk, Patrick explained to me the nature of being a Location Audio Specialist and the importance networking. He mentioned that one of the most vital things to have on business is a face. More or less, a face to put beside the name because once your image is there, if you’ve networked properly, someone down the line will remember you.

 Which brings us back to the importance knowing the right people.

 

Establishing a Business Identity

I recently met a videographer in the Burnaby area who is seeking a way to establish himself. His specialties are Wedding Videography and Location Audio. He graduated from the Art Institute of Vancouver and has much real world experience.

I thought I would take it upon myself to create a business identity for him, or dual identities because of how different his target markets are. To achieve this, his specialties will have to be taken on as two separate entities (Wedding Videography and Location Audio).

When I brainstorm my ideas, I like to jump into my sketchbook or use my whiteboard. Seeing how things connect and visually presenting them has always been my preferred way of going about things. I find ideas will just pop up and answers will be much more clear after scribbling and sketching out the passengers on my train of thought.

The first identity I decided to work on was Location Audio. The target market is the video and multimedia industry. I thought this would be the biggest challenge because of how visual presentation is so important in this field.

For the overall design of the Location Audio business, I wanted the design to be very simple.

I learned from reading about Milt Kahl, one of the pioneer animators for Walt Disney Studios, the importance of a single image . He believed that if the image doesn’t look good as a grayscale silhouette, than its not worth keeping.

Here is one of my conceptual pieces: