Justen Hong, Author at Visual Lure

New Custom WordPress Website for Rivas Photography

Posted on April 2, 2016 by JUSTEN HONG

Visual Lure recently completed a new website for Rivas Photography. Rivas is a soon-to-be husband and wife photography team based out of Kansas City, MO. They specialize in wedding, engagement, corporate event, professional sports and newborn baby photography. They are known for their clean, bright, vibrant and dramatic imagery. They also happen to be good people which is a pretty important characteristic you want your photographer to have.

I had the pleasure of meeting Kyle and Melissa (the owners) this year at Shutterfest 2016 – where I spoke to professional photographers about branding and search engine optimization (SEO). They took my SEO class which will help their already well ranking website climb even higher.

This brings us to Rivas’ search engine rankings. Before Visual Lure designed and developed Rivas Photography’s new website, they were using Square Space. While Square Space is super easy to setup, use and maintain, their websites tend to load very slowly. What’s the big deal with having a slow loading website? Having a slow site provides users with a bad user experience. This can effect bounce rates and cause users to “pogo-stick” back to their original search – both of which are proven to negatively effect a website’s search engine rankings. Before their new site, they were ranking somewhere beyond the first 15 pages of Google for most of their targeted search terms.

As of today, April 2nd 2016, on Google searches: they are on page 1 for “kansas city event photographer”, page 1 for “kansas city sports photographers”, page 2 for “kansas city engagement photographers”, page 4 for “kansas city newborn photographers” and page 4 for “kansas city wedding photographers” (climbing more than 10 pages in Google in one month). The website also ranks well for many variations of those keywords.

The Results

Within the first month of the new website going live, Rivas Photography acquired five new clients, all directly tied to Google search leads. This has lead to Rivas’ initial investment being paid back three times over. This, ladies and gentlemen, is why we do what we do. We love nothing more than helping other entrepreneurs find success. We couldn’t be happier with these results. We wish Kyle and Melissa future success in both their business and their upcoming nuptials.

Visit Rivas Photography

Learn more about our website design services or our fully custom WordPress designs.

Tradeshow Graphics for FUELAB, a Digital Fuel Delivery Manufacturer

Posted on January 20, 2016 by JUSTEN HONG

FUELAB is an industry leader in the development and manufacturing of aftermarket fuel delivery products. Their extensive line includes digital fuel pumps, fuel pressure regulators, fuel filters and accessories. They are headquartered right here in the St. Louis Metro East area in Collinsville, IL. Visit fuelab.com to learn more about this state-of-the-art company and their products.

FUELAB originally came to Visual Lure to re-design their existing trade show booth panels. The old design was distracting and visually muddy which made their products (the most important part of their booth) difficult to see.

Below you can see before and after photographs along with the artwork we created. The new design makes the booth stand out and it allows the products to be the main attractions. At the very bottom is a print ad we designed and wrote.

st louis tradeshow graphics design

Holland Construction Christmas Card Design

Posted on December 16, 2015 by JUSTEN HONG

Every year Visual Lure designs a custom Christmas card for Holland Construction Services. This year’s card was designed utilizing five stock illustrations. Safety glasses and a safety vest were custom drawn onto the stock illustrated snowman. The final artwork was then reformatted for a postcard.

HcsXmas2015 Hcs-Xmas2015-2

Professional Photographer Logo Designs Catch Up

Posted on October 26, 2015 by JUSTEN HONG

Visual Lure designs a ton of logos for professional photographers. Why? For a couple reasons:

1.Because we truly understand the photography business.

How? Well it all started out with our good friend Salvatore Cincotta. We’ve known Sal since he was working at Microsoft and just starting his home-based photography business. We’ve always shared contacts, resources and we have done whatever we could to help each others companies succeed. In the very beginning, we would talk with Sal about his branding, promotion strategies and all aspects of the business almost on a daily basis. It was during this time that Sal was developing and refining his current business system which he now teaches to other professional photographers. We know this system first hand and have actually had the pleasure of watching it transform over the years. Today Sal is a world-class photographer, educator, author and entrepreneur with multiple award winning companies. Just this year his umbrella company was on the list of Inc. 5000’s fastest growing companies.

2. Because we write about branding for one of the top professional photography resources and publication in the market: Behind the Shutter and Shutter Magazine.

Justen Hong of Visual Lure writes articles about branding and marketing for Behind the Shutter and Shutter Magazine. Topics include articles about logo design, website design, package design and search engine optimization (SEO). We also speak every year at Shutterfest (Behind the Shutter’s annual photography conference held in St. Louis, MO). This leads to a lot of photographers contacting us for help in defining their brand (which usually starts with a new logo).

3. Because of photographer referrals.

When you combine the referrals from Sal, all the Shutter entities along with all our happy photographer clients, it leads to more photography logos. Which leads us to the true purpose of this post. We simply do not have the time to write up a blog post for every photography logo we design, so we decided to pack a bunch into one post. Below you can see a small collection of logos we’ve designed for photographers from all over the United States, and one from Austria. The collection features monogram logos, a couple crest/seal logos, and a few typography-based logos.

If you’re looking for a new photography logo that will stand out and last the test of time, contact Visual Lure today. We would love to help.

View more of our photography logos & branding projects »

Logo & Trifold Brochure Design for St. Louis Non-Profit

Posted on October 21, 2015 by JUSTEN HONG

One Classroom™, a St. Louis, Missouri based 501c3 non-profit organization, hired Visual Lure to design a new logo along with a new trifold brochure. Their mission is to give children with special needs the opportunity to study and learn in normal Catholic school classrooms, side by side with their peers.

Below you can see the final logo both in color and black and white, the color palette, and brand typefaces along with a sample identity package. Underneath that is the new brochure design along with unselected logo explorations.

Logo & Branding Package for Quebec Photography Studio

Posted on September 1, 2015 by JUSTEN HONG

Studios Elysium Photographie is a Rigaud, Quebec based wedding and portrait studio offering wedding, family and glamour photography in the Vaudreuil, Montreal and eastern Ontario area. They recently came to Visual Lure to create a new visual identity. They requested that we incorporate a dragonfly into the logo as it has a special meaning to this husband and wife photography team. We did so by making it form the letter ‘t” in Studios.

Below you can see the vertical and horizontal logo formats, the sample identity/letterhead system, proposed packaging and a sample watermark. At the very bottom are two unselected logos that we really liked. The bottom right logo was a fleur de lis that also created a dragonfly. We thought this one was genius, but after speaking to the clients, they informed me that it would be controversial using a French symbol in their logo. I guess there is a dispute whether Quebec should be politically aligned and influenced by France. They didn’t tell me which they preferred, simply that they didn’t want their business logo to be controversial.

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