Randy Krause Schmidt is a one-stop-shop photographer, social media manager, and real estate agent based in New Orleans. He’s also been a partner of Online Optimism for several years, leading photography shoots for many of our clients. Randy came to us in need of a full rebranding and an upgraded Squarespace site, so our Design & Development team built him a new personal brand and website that better represent both him and the full breadth of his work.
We started Randy’s project with a new personal brand, focusing on building a brand that encompassed all three aspects of Randy’s company and reflected the creative, unique, warm quality of both his work and Randy himself.
Warm and saturated, Randy Krause Schmidt’s palette centers a vibrant blue supported with two cheerful yellows and a bright pop of orange-red. A very light creamy yellow for backgrounds and a dark navy (rather than black) for body text further enhance the warmth of this welcoming, fun color palette.
Randy Krause Schmidt’s typographic system uses a combination of Futura PT and Le Monde Courrier. Futura provides a strong balance to the organic shapes of the RKS logo; paired with Le Monde Courrier, a bouncy sans serif with a warm, rounded, slightly textured look, RKS’ typography is creative, professional, and unique.
Randy Krause Schmidt’s principal logo, which uses an illustrated portrait of Randy himself, highlights Randy as the center of this personal brand, while handwritten typography for Randy’s name further contributes to the unique, cheerful look of the brand. We built a highly flexible set of logos for Randy to use across the wide breadth of his work, including versions specific to photography, social media management, and real estate.
We added several more illustrations as supporting elements for Randy’s new brand, including custom icons for photography, social media management, and real estate.
With Randy’s new brand established, we moved on to a website redesign on Squarespace. A big priority for Randy was to make sure all three of his services were clearly available on his site, so we included all of them alongside each other, rather than just showcasing his photography like his previous site. We also added clearer language about Randy’s services and skills, thanks to the Content team, and provided easier means of getting in touch with Randy about his work with contact forms. Finally, we highlighted social proof of the high quality of Randy’s work with expanded client testimonials, a list of past clients, and even links to recent recognition and awards Randy has received.
Randy also wanted to be able to sell prints of his photographs directly from his site, so we set up an e-commerce shop for him with Squarespace’s e-commerce capabilities. Users can select from various sizes of prints and specify which photos they want during the ordering process. It’s also simple to create additional products, so Randy will be able to easily add to his shop in the future.
Randy does his work as a real estate agent through Entablature Realty, but he wanted to be able to showcase his listings on his personal website, too. We used Squarespace’s blog functionality to create simplified versions of Randy’s listings that link back to Entablature’s site.
This new website really helped refresh and elevate my brand. There are many different aspects to my work that expand outside of photography, like real estate and selling prints of my photographs. With the new setup, I’m able to sell prints and add new listings whenever I need to. Being able to update the website on my own makes my job so much easier and I’m glad it’s so simple to do.
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