It’s really wonderful when clients have professional photography to use for their website design. At Opus, we’re inspired by the visuals; and the web design will more or less flow from a combination of the client’s brand, messaging and available imagery.
No Photography
At the Moment, Nothing comes to mind.
What happens when the client doesn’t have any decent photography? For FB Packing, our client and Boston’s premier meat distributor, this was the case. Their old site had a handful of partner logos and not much more for visuals. When we first started talking about the redesign, the team thought we could use stock images of meat or take photos of beef and pork on their conference room table. We had a few thoughts on this idea:
- Poorly lit pictures of raw meat could look depressing and sad
- How would this differentiate them and create a presence for the company?
- How could we use photography to evolve their brand?
Working with Michael Bertolino at FB Packing, I learned that they are family-owned company going back to his grandfather, Frank Bertolino. His dad Leo, runs the business now along with a few of his uncles. Tradition and experience are things they and their customers care about. We could capture this with photography for the website by doing a nice family photo on site. Other values or messaging included
- Located in Boston
- Family / generations
- Products that they manufacture themselves on site
- Quality
- Serving large and small customers
For all of these, I could imagine a possible photo. So Casey McGee and I went to scout their location in the wholesale food district south of the city. Casey took some preliminary photos to test lighting and different compositions. Then, based on this information we put together a shot-list which was basically the agenda for the day for the real photo shoot.
We scheduled the pictures to be taken at various locations to minimize disruption and optimize for people’s schedules. On the day of the photoshoot, Casey took a ton of photos and started using them in the website design.
Wow, the sight just came to life once we could see the Bertolino’s, the FB workers, products, and trucks on the pages of the website.
If budget and time allow, custom photography is the best way to showcase what a company does and who they are. Because it’s custom photography, we could tailor the images to address and support the client’s specific marketing messages.
