Thoughts on branding/my site?

[Evan Bourcier]

Hey guys, I've been toying with some name/branding change ideas, also logos, my site, etc... Would love to hear what you have to think of my current setup.
My site is EBourcier Creative

I have a business Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/ebourciercreative

Do you think the name is too hard? What about the site? Any thoughts at all, be brutally honest..

Thanks,
Evan

[Brian Brown]

Some random thoughts from a random person....

I like the site, I don't see anything wrong with it, other than some of the grey-on-black going on (I'm middle-aged, though). Your Biz name doesn't roll of the tongue, since I might probably butcher your surname a few times before I got it right. But it's a cool name, since it's different. I don't put a lot of stock in a name, since some funny-named businesses make millions every day. Not because of the name, nor in spite of it, but because they're darn good businesses. And no one cares WHAT the name is.

I would suggest that you break out your photography biz from your video side with separate sites. Clients tend to want pros that specialize in one pigeonhole or another. And generalists rarely get paid what specialists do, no matter if it's medicine, law, or A/V.

I think you also need to pick a market segment and focus on growing that. Many of your photography portfolios on your site appear to be of family or friends, and that might give potential clients a little pause when they think about whether you have enough experience to shoot them. Likewise, it seems like most of your video projects are for your church, and that might create an impediment to potential clients that you can handle other types of assignments.

When I see that your siblings are rather young, it makes me think that you're pretty young yourself. There's nothing wrong with that, because at some point in your life, you'll be combating the "too old" mentality then. Cameron Crowe pulled-off some amazing things at a very young age, and is still going strong. But I would pull a lot of the personal stuff out of your portfolios and make it more business-like. And save that stuff for your personal FB profiles.

Consider giving away some photography or videography jobs to get the "look and feel" or a portfolio that you want. Or even pay for models to get the kind of photo projects that you want to shoot. It's a good investment, based upon my experience with it.

[Evan Bourcier]

Thanks! I definitely agree with a lot of it, many of the projects on the site were just to have something there and are being phased out as I do more professional work.
I'm 18, and I've been doing photography/video since December, so I'm still relatively new to everything. 99% of my work has been word of mouth, so the centralized site was to make it easy for friends to show people my work somewhere, but I know what you mean about specializing too.

Definitely working on building the portfolio as quickly as possible, by shooting whatever I can haha. Doing a wedding Friday for $400 just to have it on my portfolio. By the time I pay rental and assistant I basically don't make anything, but long-term I think it'll be worth it for securing other jobs. More thoughts always welcome!

[Tim Polster]

Evan, you have to start somewhere, so you are already doing well.

In my opinion, the site is kind of difficult to read with the light grey and small text. It is very important to get your point across, especially to the older folks who have all the money!

From a design point of view, to be honest, the site does not look like a business but more of a hobby/friend display site. That might be your intention. Had I just came across it randomly I would not know you would be asking for money to do your services.

Also, I think one great example is better than twenty o.k. examples. I would say pick your areas you want to work and cull your examples down to a low number of the best you have. People won't watch 10 videos or go through 10 photo galleries anyway. Numbers will not impress as much as the goods in an example. (if you are lucky enough to get them to watch the one example!)

Keep pluggin' as we are all doing.

[Sareesh Sudhakaran]

Hi Evan,

I checked out your site - I like the thumbnail idea but it doesn't say clearly what you do. I would get rid of the Twitter feed on the main page, or at the very least change it to less prominent location.

About the name, if you can make a 'name' for yourself in your area, it wouldn't matter. However, if you are trying to get people to hire you off google, then it might be better to get a name that is at most three syllables long (two's perfect).

Here are some posts where I've put down some ideas. Hope it helps:

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/taking-c...-new-demo.html
Does Facebook work for photographers?
http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/show-you...x-footage.html
Great Marketing Discussion [Archive] - The Digital Video Information Network
http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/taking-c...-comments.html

[Evan Bourcier]

Sareesh, I definitely agree. I've been toying with making myself a reel/about me video, as I tried making a page, and felt stupid writing positive things about myself haha. I've been kind of waiting to finish up a few upcoming weddings and stuff so I could put that footage in there though.

[Sareesh Sudhakaran]

I'm not sure how far you are from Boston but a close friend of mine, David Kahn, runs a corporate production company called Ecast: Ecast Productions ? A Corporate Video Production Company

Hope this helps.