(Identity) Change is Good

(Identity) Change is Good

Today is a really cool day.

As you might have noticed, we had a little identity change. No, we aren’t in witness protection services. We just thought that we could align the logo and our look-and-feel more closely with our brand values – namely, vibrant, open, and thriving. We were fortunate to work with Kirk James and his awesome team at Cinco Design in Portland, OR. Cinco has done a bunch of work with some companies you might have heard of (Nike, Microsoft, Xbox to name a few). You’ll be hearing more about this in the next few weeks…

Creating a platform for photographers to organize and license their photographs is the obvious manifestation of PhotoShelter, but we also believe a lot in mobilizing the community and becoming a focal point for discussions about commercial photography. So we also went out and found ourselves a blogger named Rachel Hulin and started a new blog. Rachel will be writing daily about photographers, photo editors, photo buyers, art directors, pros, amateurs, and stuff going on in the industry in a way that we don’t really think exists. She’s going to have some cool guest bloggers as well, and we think it’s a wonderful opportunity to showcase people just like you, and all the interesting things you do.

The Personal Archive just got a whole new slew of features, including a bunch of cool modifications to the e-commerce cart like custom crop capabilities, which make selling your products a lot easier. And our customizable templates now support larger images (all the way to 1000 pixels) and larger thumbnails (up to 200 pixels). It’s a really great way to add some killer functionality to your personal website and enable searching and commerce.

In case you missed it, we made a number of buyer-side feature enhancements to the PhotoShelter Collection on Leap Day (Feb 29 for those of you who have eaten too much sushi with high mercury levels like moi) including batch add capability to the cart, a display preference to increase the # of images per page, caption rollover display, sequencing of lightbox images, and batching functions in the lightbox.

We recently launched a student competition called “Elevation 2008” over at the PhotoShelter Collection because I believe the children are our future. No, seriously, we assembled a kick-ass panel of judges from Nylon, Spin, The New York Times Magazine, Newsweek and The Fader to review submissions coming into the PSC, and students can win some cool prizes to kick-start their career, while also creating a potential source of revenue for themselves.

Our very cool widget got a facelift to go along with the new logo. If you already have the widget somewhere, it’ll update itself automatically. Otherwise you can always grab it here to let everyone know that you’re all about PhotoShelter.

Speaking of which, for those of you that really want to fly the colors, you can buy a new PhotoShelter T-shirt from our merchandise page. Our friends over at Vuvox let us play around with their beta Collage product to make a very cool flash presentation showing the PhotoShelter Team wearing their gear around our offices at Union Square in New York. And for those of you with websites or blogs, you can insert some of our new “badges.” Pick one that matches your mood or your personality. We’ll make more.

Our direct sales force just added a few more people from a well-known agency that rhymes with “Betty”, and they are busy pounding the phones and the email to attract new buyers to PhotoShelter. Our sales and marketing efforts are really coming together, and we think there is a great sense of momentum about PhotoShelter right now that we’re very excited about.

Of course, your big question is probably about the fate of this blog. And you’re probably pondering the sadness you’re feeling in your heavy heart. But have no fear, my corporate blog will continue. It’s just that I wasn’t the most regular of writers, and each entry usually generated an email from my sister about my grammar or my spelling. But I remain undaunted.

Today’s changes are only the tip of the iceberg for our 2008 plans. We are so excited that you’ve joined us for the ride.

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This article was written by

Allen Murabayashi is the co-founder of PhotoShelter.

There are 11 comments for this article
  1. Mike Cavaroc at 12:42 am

    I was in the middle of updating my website templates on the archive side and all of a sudden the whole site changed! I was amazed I didn’t experience any hiccups in the process. It looks great and the continuity between the two sides of PhotoShelter is awesome!

  2. Clair Dunn at 4:21 am

    Way cool — woke me up, it did. (I start work at 3 a.m.) But, (of course there’s a but) and you are probably working on this one already — the links on the slate bg are hard to see. I love the open box — but I want it to appear where ever the PS name appears — and it needs to be close to it for identity purposes. Name + Logo — should be glued together on the site, on every page — especially if you intend to separate them for other graphic purposes as you probably do (e.g., T-shirt). (I’m an old typographer so I’m still a bit hesitant about the new, heavy-handed, machine like PHOTOSHELTER in all caps.) Over all, it’s a good facelift — AND I LOVE the slide show — my money is on the guy with the green light camera — bet he’s your main geek. If so, give him my regards! And, BTW, that is an absolutely fabulous shot, whoever took it! (Credits, I want to see credits!!! lol) Thanks much — best to all — Clair

  3. Stefano Levi at 4:47 am

    Dear Allen, I have to say I am very impressed by the speed how photoshelter changes. Being in Europe and working on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean I had some reservations about the usefulness of a platform bades in the USA. I think photoshelter is moving towards something that has the potential of setting a global trend. Keep up with the good work! Stefano

  4. Fredrik Naumann at 5:25 am

    I am happy to see the team is still putting efforts into improving the Personal Archive too. It is assuring seeing the PSPA train isn’t going to be left behind at the station as the Collection picks up speed.

  5. Allen Murabayashi at 9:15 am

    Hey Clair, That’s Mike with the camera with the green light. He is our QA engineer in addition to contributing a myriad of other random skills (like producing all our Town Hall videos). As for the photographer…aw shucks! You caught me! Allen

  6. Sergiu Turcanu at 12:29 pm

    Yes, the new design looks nice, really like it. But I’m not so sure about the logo. Perhaps you should reconsider the logo…. it looks better in black and white, but it’s not that good. And since you changed the design by adding more green which looks cool, why you still keeping the blue tones for navigation (i’ve seen it in the photographers navigation area so far). Am I the only one who thinks blue and green is not such a good combination. The green you’ve got with orange (less orange) – would be a good idea… and it is vibrant, the way you want. I would make the logo B/W and use a combination of green and orange for design.

  7. Ken Schulze at 3:23 pm

    Astonishment, admiration, delight — these are a few of my initial feelings when I discovered your redesign. I love your mission statement, “This Is Who We Are,” and the fact that it is prominently up front, as is a wide field for your excellent search. Your Web designers have produced a masterpiece. How user-friendly it is! How richly enticing! How well everything fits together! PhotoShelter = wow x 1000 What a tool for discovery! Some photographers are so lucky . . .

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