Shouting silently about Cider & Photography.

Part of being a self employed freelance photographer is taking some time to promote yourself properly. You have to brand yourself, think of yourself as a business (up to a point), allow yourself to detach emotionally from your work in order to look at yourself objectively. Any self employed person will tell you, it can be hard, especially for us arty types who are not doing what we do because its a sound business idea, we do it because we choose to. Its not like I'm completely crap at those jobs when I get stuck in, I just can't get interested in all of it. I hate numbers and accounts etc, much of running a business is keeping an eye on that. However, one of the areas I do tend to enjoy more than others is the marketing. So after last years decision on needing a logo or similar to represent what IAMCIDER is about I had to ask myself: How do you convey that 'Cider' and 'Photography' combination in one glance?

You could, and I probably should, argue that why use anything other than the medium you are trying to promote? My answer was that one photo might be one mans cup of tea, but not everyones. An illustrated suggestion has a different appeal and brings in an element of design, which I like. Ironically, people that recognise the design-process-at-work are the same kind of people that like my photos. Here is my 2010 attempt, I took me longer to even conceive the idea than it did to draw it, which says about all there is to say regarding my expertise in design.

What do you reckon?

It has to accompany press releases headers, banners and adorn posters etc so I wanted it to be simple, engaging and a little bit stylish. It has to stimulate anyone who interest in photography or apples into delving further into whats happening there and vice-versa. I also wanted people who had no idea what it was about want to ask. I can't help but feel it looks a little dated already...

Any clever designer types out there got anything to add? Any suggestions for improvement?

So then I thought... what if I try and mix the two ideas together? Use graphic photography with the illustration ideas overlaid. Its important that a flyer/poster, any promotional material is eye catching. I like it when something I'm looking at stops me and makes me look harder at it to figure out why.

Feedback please...!