Nordica Photography

The design of the website started with identifying what our overall goals were. For Nordica, we wanted to emphasize the following things:

- That we are destination wedding photographers
- A strong blog presence with unique features
- Typography
- Easy navigation and strong visuals
- Our brand values easily communicated

The first step in the process was meeting with a communication strategist, Patrick Ho, in order to narrow down what Nordica’s key values and characteristics are. This step was probably the most difficult in the entire process because identifying what you believe in is never easy, and the questioning and interviews really dug deep into many areas; both personally and professionally. But without this step, nothing else would have worked because we needed to put into very simple wording what made Nordica different. In the end, we came up with the three core values that you now see on the front page, along with our tag line: Get Real.

Once the brand strategist had come up with our core values, he passed that along to the designer of the website, Barry Duncan. While working with Barry, the first thing that we did was send him many, many websites that we liked. A few were within photography, but most were not. If a website had a feature we liked, we’d send it. If a website had a crazy, almost impossible design, we’d send it. In the end we sent Barry quite a large list of websites that appealed to us, and with that he pulled out various elements that he felt worked, and the design started to unfold.

In the end, Barry came up with a few clever ideas that we have never seen on other wedding photographers blogs. The integration of the custom map into the portfolio achieved the goal of emphasizing our desire to travel, and that map was easily connected to our blog. jQuery elements in the scrolling allowed for a unique flow to the websites handling, and the design Barry came up with gave emphases to our work on every page of the site. The small details – such as the roll over images with links and quotes on various pages – gave the website an intuitive feel, and all the while our brands message was clearly communicated. The typography did not deviate too extreme from our original website, yet it incorporate our identity into the font selections and colour patterns perfectly.

Once Barry had concluded the design, the build was conducted by Australian-based web developer, Rob Masefield. His task was challenging because the entire build had to be conducted within the restrictions of WordPress. We had blogged extensively since beginning Nordica in 2009, and our Search Engine Optimization could not be compromised, so Rob had a difficult task in the small features Barry created and also to not disturb the SEO algorithms the website had established. In the end, he assembled a template that is very user-friendly on the backend, and the template met all of the goals of the design.

The process took approximately 5 months, and in the end, the design was very unique – especially within the wedding photography community – yet functional for potential brides and grooms who find our work.

Designer: Barry Duncan
Country: Canada