I have often been told that I have a creative mind.  I like to believe that until I am faced with a creative challenge.  Sometimes it’s a struggle and sometimes things come easily. One of the struggles in my business was what would my web presence would look like?  The word ‘struggle’ is actually a bit extreme because I had all of these ideas in my head but it was a matter of bringing them to fruition that seemed like the challenge.  Each time I thought that I was headed in a decent direction, I would get halfway and decide that I didn’t like some aspect or I would get bored and would want to change it as soon as it was finished.  This is the case and point with my logo.  This post is dedicated to the process of me getting to my current logo.

Prior to getting into photography I designed websites.  I am a self-taught web designer and would love creating them but because some of the websites that I created were complex my clients could not maintain them themselves.  Back when I first started designing a website for my sorority, someone came and copied everything I did and placed it on their organization’s website and did not give me an ounce of credit.  This upset me because I knew how much time and effort I put into the process.  Shortly thereafter, I taught myself how to design websites in Photoshop and export them in a way that could not be ‘stolen’ with a simple right click.  To think, this was prior to You Tube and all of the other tutorials that are out today!  At any rate, this first logo represents my web design company- Expressive Elements.  I thought it would be great to keep the logo and just transition into photography until a friend said that the name was hard to remember and with photography referrals most people would refer to me by name anyway.  Today, I find myself referring to my friend’s photography businesses by the photographer’s name even if the business name is different.  Sorry guys!

Once I transitioned my business from Expressive Elements to Terri Baskin Photography, I attempted to create several logos myself but just wasn’t satisfied with anything I created.  It was weird to me that I could design websites from scratch but could not create a logo.  I decided to outsource it and after many revisions, this was my first logo that I decided upon.  I liked the ‘tb’ {my friends call me that} and I liked the font because both weren’t anything that could be too easily duplicated, but I guess one could if they chose to but since my initials aren’t as common among photographers near me it was less of a risk.

When I decided to outsource my own website design it was because I still had a number of web design clients that I was trying to wrap up and still help friends and clients understand my transition. In the process of doing so, my original web designers Earl & Layne told me that my current logo didn’t match the vision that I had given them for the website, so there were some revisions that needed to take place.  This next logo was more consistent with the font of my business name and the color changed to match what I gave my designers on my inspiration board.  The color change was a good one as Fuchsia is my favorite color and changing my ‘tb’ to a color that was closer to Fuchsia was what I had in mind.  I didn’t want to change the font of my text but I realized that it was too busy for the design that I had in progress.

I kept the previous logo for some time until I started ordering marketing collateral and I realized that my name didn’t pop off of the print materials the way that I wanted it to. So I made a small revision for that sole purpose.

While I love this logo, recently I had a branding conversation with the company that is going to do my promo video and some of the questions they asked really made me think if I knew my target audience.  Based on my almost 3-minute response she politely told me that I didn’t!  LOL!  Additionally, during my coaching session with Katelyn James, I walked away knowing that I needed to have a more cohesive brand from my logo to my editing to my website and it just wasn’t there…yet! That’s when I decided to reach out to Kara Layne to see about a log re-design.  Kara can hand-draw logos and after hearing my thoughts she came up with the first draft of hand-drawn logos.

Of the three, I gravitated more towards the first one and had her make a few revisions which led us to this.

After giving Kara feedback on my branding colors, we arrived at my new logo that I just received this week. Kara was able to hand draw my logo and then digitize it so that it was truly customized for me.  The essence of this logo goes back to the original idea of wanting something different.  I wanted something that I could not find by scrolling thru my fonts menu.  I don’t discredit anyone that has done that and that are actually many photographers that I admire that have a really simple and clean logo. I just wanted something more feminine with colors that were softer.

My style of photography is clean, romantic and fun, so I feel like this new logo embodies all three of my brand words.  The Pink represents the romantic side of my work, where my couples are embracing and showing emotion.  The gray represents the clean side, where my post-processed edits aren’t overly done and the hand-drawn font represents the fun side, where my clients are laughing and truly in the moment. Simply put, my work is not heavily post-processed, I don’t follow the latest photography trends (i.e. vintage washed out, heavily matte, selective color, soft focus etc.) because soon they will be dated and as a matter of fact, selective color should not even be in the latest trends list because it is already outdated. So my blog has been updated, my website is currently being updated and my marketing pieces will soon reflect the current logo for Terri Baskin Photography!

Terri Baskin is a Virginia-based wedding and lifestyle photographer. Terri is passionate about her work and has shot weddings in Virginia, Washington, DC, Maryland, North Carolina, Georgia and St. Lucia! Her work has been featured on various wedding blogs such as Capitol Romance, United with Love, Every Last Detail and Pretty Brass Tacks. To book her for your engagement or lifestyle session or your wedding, please contact us today!