Branding for the wedding industry isn’t exactly new territory for us at Upswept. In my earlier days as a photographer, I photographed quite a few weddings, so I got a taste of the industry, worked some vendor events, encountered more than a few wedding brands and pinboards, and learned just how much planning, energy, and sentiment goes into making a wedding happen.
It’s that intensity, emotion, and detail of wedding planning that sparked the idea for WedBrilliant! Founder and CEO Melissa Wilmot chose Upswept to bring her vision to life, and it was an honor to take her concept from the rough sketches in her mind to a fully-functioning brand and web site.
Designing a Logo
Melissa had done her homework, looking through a lot of different sources of wedding inspiration to find the styles that spoke to her–something we recommend all of our clients do. We wanted to create a brand that appealed to women, but didn’t necessarily exclude men, either, so popping shades of pink were right out!
We ended up with a soft green and a deep navy blue as our primary colors, and dreamed up an elegant oval-shaped badge design, along with a circular version of the logo that would work great as a social media profile photo, or in other contexts where square dimensions would be a better fit.
Once we did that, we designed business cards to match, with a rounded corner cut and an uncoated card stock, to let the paper’s natural texture come through. Keeping the design simple and elegant was the name of the game!
Developing the Web Site: Not Your Average WordPress Theme!
WedBrilliant has a lot of special functionality at work behind the scenes, which meant that we had to build it! Melissa hoped to make WedBrilliant into a unique way for engaged couples to interact with wedding vendors, so we created custom displays for user profiles, a searchable directory of Vendors, the ability for couples to request and receive bids from vendors in their area, and plenty of other features you won’t find in a standard WordPress install.
Before we started development, however, we knew we needed to nail down the design aesthetic for the site. So, we dialed in a stellar homepage with callouts to important parts of the site, that showed off inspiring wedding photos from San Francisco wedding photographer Meghan Faith, so we could get couples excited to plan a beautiful wedding like the ones shown in the photos! We also chose typefaces that would bring some style and elegance to the site, without going crazy-over-the-top with script fonts and curlicues.
After the design was locked in, it was a long several weeks of development, testing, and styling the web site to make it look good, function well, and make it easy for both couples and wedding vendors to find the information they wanted, and get involved in the WedBrilliant community.
We just opened the site to vendor registrations earlier this month, and the community is starting to grow already, with wedding vendors signing on from across the country, and wedding couples starting to find out about it, too! We’re so excited and happy to have built Melissa’s vision for WedBrilliant from start to finish, and I’ve enjoyed watching the site grow and get interaction from real users.
Both Melissa and I are already starting to look ahead to the future, so I’m sure we’ll be making the site even bigger and better before long!
Portland branding design – Portland web design – Upswept Creative
