Hester Barnes Surrey wedding branding family photographer videographer

Rebranding: from Hester B to Hester Barnes Photography & Film

Apr 20, 2020 | Branding

Hello.

I look a little different. Things have changed. It’s not you. It’s me. I fell in love. With a website design. And it changed my world forever.

Hester Barnes logo

New website

I bought a beautiful theme from the Design Space well over a year ago. I had every intention of building my website in 2019 but work took off and it just didn’t happen. 2020 arrived and I was determined to rebrand. My old Hester B Photography logo and brand visual just didn’t feel right any more. I wanted my branding to be in line with my style of photography. I wanted it to feel more stylish, more grown up, more beautiful.

Adding film

In 2019 I started to shoot weddings and wanted my brand to reflect the elegant relaxed beauty of Surrey based brides. I also added cinematic films to my repertoire. Forever grateful to Sarah Mason for training me in this beautiful skill. I love it so much. It was important to me to include this in my name and branding. So here the ‘& film’ came about. I spent January with my nose stuck in Brand Brilliance book and attended a course by Jonny MP – Develop. My mind was buzzing with ideas and I am lucky to have friends with brilliant creative minds who helped channel these into a new brand vision. Bouncing ideas off them over a glass of wine helped a lot!

New logo

My logo needed a huge overhaul. Designing this was a little beyond me. I had in my head what I wanted and somehow Lucy from Fresh Leaf Creative managed to extract it. I met Lucy through the Guildford, Surrey based Inspiration Space sometime ago. This networking group is a hive of fun, likeminded, inspiring, creative souls. Definitely one to look up. Lucy worked beautifully, quickly and efficiently. It was such an inclusive process. Lots of ‘love it’ and ‘hate it’ virtual conversations. And within a fortnight I had a logo I absolutely LOVE. And plenty of different versions too.

My husband says I am the most determined person he knows. Which is lucky because building a website from scratch with WordPress is pretty hard work for a non tech person. I followed a course from Melissa Love at the Design Space. Her straight talking, methodical approach to online teaching really helped me through….. and the fact that she is constantly on hand to help you over any of the humps was brilliant. If you are thinking about designing your own site do have a look at the Design Space. The themes are just beautiful. Or you could just get Melissa and her team to design your site for you (hindsight is a wonderful thing!).

Hester Barnes LOGO
But it isn’t all gold plated…….

A rebrand hasn’t been straightforward. There have been technical hiccups. I have lost my much loved contact@hesterbphotography.com email address – which I am pretty sad about. But I have got over it and have sparkly new address of hello@hesterbarneshotography.com. Do pop me an email. I need to know it works!

Brand photography

Finishing off by planning a branding shoot with Fiona Caroline – at the Maker Station and Parle Pantry in Chiswick. Ta Dah – beautiful, on brand photographs – adding the polish to my website. Do check Fiona out. She is a dream to work with. And – as you know – it’s all about the photos. But then I am probably biased.

Please do have a good look through my shiny new site. I would love to know what you think. Hester x

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