Meanjin | Brisbane, Australia
Repositioning Brisbane’s orchestrator of creative strategy.
Location:
Meanjin | Brisbane, Australia
Service area:
Australia
Sector:
Photography - Commercial
Our role:
Rebrand; Brand Strategy, Creative Direction, Brand Identity Design and Rollout, Copywriting, Animation, Custom Website Design and Development.
Callie Marshall is a Brisbane-based photographer, collaborating with global brands and creative agencies to execute campaigns that push boundaries through innovative nuanced ideation. Callie's work is defined by her ability to balance creativity with strategic thinking, a strength that has seen her establish herself as one of the most sought-after photographers for brands looking to capture attention and create impact. Her hands-on approach is simple: she immerses herself in projects, working with her clients to understand their objectives, and action their creative briefs.
Whether it’s a new product launch, a brand campaign, or documentary work, Callie merges art, culture, and people with a strategically-led, yet boundlessly creative approach, seeking out the seemingly insignificant, in-between moments, and turning them into impactful brand imagery.
As Callie’s work and reputation advanced, she began to feel a disconnect between her, her brand and her work. She approached us with one main goal; to reposition the Callie Marshall brand, as a distinctive, aspirational icon that is raw, real and approachable. A brand that embodies Callie, and her uniquely effective approach to photography. A brand that speaks to her ideal client base; global brands, restaurants and creative agencies.
Our approach to fulfilling Callie’s brand goals was multifaceted, and ensuring her branding fully aligned with her ethos and her business goals was our priority.
We began our creative process with our uncompromising commitment to deep groundwork — a thorough exploration into the heart and soul of Callie Marshall (the person and the brand).
Our research was centred around better understanding her, her why, how and what — and finding the common ground and alignment with her ideal audience too.
Our first step was to gain a rock-solid comprehension of Callie, her work, her experimental approach to how she works, and who she works with (and wants to work with).
Our research cemented a crystal clear brand direction – an amalgamation of bold forms, fine detail, curious palettes and technical mechanics of photography. The challenge was ensuring we connected these divergent concepts in a way that embodies Callie and connected with her ideal clients in an aspirational, yet inclusive way.
Our strategic solution distinctively represented Callie Marshall (the brand and the person), intriguing her audience and inspiring innovation ideation. And so began, creating a visual brand identity system and a custom website for her photography to live and evolve, and allow Callie to continue her mission of pushing the boundaries of photography.
Callie’s knowledge + experience = experimental expansion = strategically innovative photography.
Our key insight during our research was two-part; Callie’s intimate knowledge and experience, and her innate drive to constantly evolve and grow as a photographer — to push beyond her comfort zone, to experiment, innovate and embrace the unexpected, to push the boundaries of photography, and to deliver strategically-led, uniquely impactful images.
Our goal was to create a brand identity that repositioned Callie Marshall, to align with the caliber of her work and her clients. It was paramount that the brand was a true reflection of Callie’s personality – knowledgeable, experienced, experimental, effortlessly cool, but also raw and approachable.
Rebranding of Callie Marshall was a complex, multi-layered endeavour, achieved through a variety of approaches: brand strategy and visual identity, creative copywriting, and a custom website design that brings the brand to life with custom animations and showcases the breadth and detail of Callie’s impactful work.
Four key identity elements make up the Callie Marshall identity system – logos, colours, fonts and animations.
The Callie Marshall palette is unorthodox, blending fluro hues with pastels. It is warm and energising, brought to balance with the calming hues, and pairing with bold black and white / duotone visuals, it instills a sense of maturity and confidence.
The brandmark was inspired by capturing a moment in time. It adopts experimental distortion as a means to bring a consistency to Callie’s varied portfolio — each image captured in the aesthetic of another brand. The distortion also delivers a sense of movement and life to the brand, representative of the moments that Callie captures.
The brutalist foundation of the brand creates a sense of structure and dependability, stabilising the eccentric elements. It consists of a clean and bold wordmark, with some curiosities, and an icon that embodies the tools Callie uses and the work she creates. The form of the icon is based on a ‘C’, constructed from segments of a circle. These segments are representative of the internal anatomy of a lens, and the intersection at the focal point. Lenticular manipulation of the icon form captures the changing perspective of the square at the centre of the icon — expanding from a side view to a front view. The lenticular snippets have been adjusted to take on a form inspired by the aperture effect — an oval. The result is a collection of raw (real) analogue moments in time.
Inspiration for our creative solution was drawn from the detailed mechanics of photography, and the analogue reality of capturing moments in time.
It was our overarching aim to broaden Callie Marshall's brand recognition, and build their reach, through the experimental exploration of photography, and ultimately, create more uniquely impactful imagery for aspiring brands.
The new Callie Marshall identity is experimentally distinctive, delivering an aspirational brand system.
Doing things differently starts with a conversation.
