While chatting with a bride-to-be this past weekend I was asked a question I hadn’t thought much about: “So in ten years from now are you guys going to change your name to Older Studios?”. Now, we’ve always known that our company image didn’t scream “Photographer”, but until that moment I hadn’t realized just how random our name probably seemed to any potential clients. Unfortunately we do not sell fashionable eye wear for bears (at least not at the moment) but let me explain just who we are.

Newer Studios started a long four years ago as Kuck Photography which is obviously very original. At the time all of my research had led me to believe that you just take your last name and add photography to it and there you go, multi-million dollar name. Really this was just me following the norm and I was okay with that. After studying graphic design for two years I chose to “update” the brand; thus, Apex Photography was born. Although that name looks like I just changed “Alex” to “Apex” and called it good I promise that wasn’t the case. I shot with this name for almost a year and loved the slogan “We are the peak of photography” which fit nicely with the mountainous logo. I shipped myself off to Rome for four months and that’s where the magic of Newer Studios happened.

My biggest issue with both Kuck and Apex Photography was simply the word photography. I love change in my life (I could barely go a week without changing something on my car throughout high school) and I didn’t like the idea of being tied to only photographic services for the life of the company. In Rome I started to play with the idea of a character logo, similar to Chester Cheetah or the Quaker Oats Guy. The bear itself came from a quick sketch but just the bear on its own was a little plain so I threw some sunglasses on him. To somewhat tie back to Apex I put a reflection of some mountains in the glasses as well. That’s it. That is where the bear came from. There was no direct reasoning for the choice, it was just the start of a different branding style for a photographer in my eyes. It turns out it also looks great on a shirt (You can get yours here).

The name itself, Newer Studios, has just as exciting of a story. After drawing the bear I needed a name to go with it so I decided to sleep on it. One morning I woke up and thought of the word newer and it caught me. I played around with different fonts and loved how it worked with the logo itself. I cleaned it all up and that was the end of it. Our entire brand was created through random ideas that happened to work well together and in a way that’s exactly how it should be.

Looking at it now it completely encompasses who we are as wedding photographers. The market is saturated with *Insert last name here* Photography companies and we knew we wanted and needed to stand out. We show up to every wedding in matching purple bow-ties and have a blast through the whole day. We have been dubbed “Photo Ninjas” on more than one occasion based solely on the fact that as a guest you wont see very much of us on the wedding day. We love the brand we created and the people we have met so far on this journey.

In short, Newer Studios is a wedding photography company pulled out of thin air owned by two brothers who rock purple bow-ties. We look forward to everything yet to come!

www.newerstudios.com

Alex & Jason