BY Christian Palino

Gimme Shelter

PhotoShelter, a “provider of archiving, e-commerce solutions and sales opportunities to the world’s fastest growing community of independent photographers,” founded in 2005, recently exited its Beta stage and has entered the busy, online stock photo marketplace with the intent of bringing back more control to the photographers whom they work with.

Working with Cinco Design, PhotoShelter has updated their previous logo — which had been designed by its founder and was intended to represent photos stacked to form a shelter — to a sleek, dimensional box in the form of a “p.” This new logomark helps remove some of the ambiguity from its predecessor through playing up the word “shelter” and hinting at a viewfinder or spatial representation.

Cinco Design constructed the icon with photo frame-like windows to convey protection akin to PhotoShelter’s role as an advocate for photographers’ rights, royalties, and creative freedom. The design team selected a lush green as PhotoShelter’s official color to emanate life and the freshness of the company’s products and thinking.
— From Press Release

Where this logo falls short is in its execution. Conceptually the “shelter” is a viable idea that marries well with their company’s mission, however the rendering yields a rather flimsy shape that seems less solid and/or protective. One of the visual extensions of the logo’s form is the speech bubble, which you can see employed on the PhotoShelter web site in the footer, and while it’s possible that this could become an ownable graphic device for PhotoShelter (as much as speech bubbles can be owned these days), the opportunity seems rather under-explored.

T-shirt image swiped from Cinco Design’s blog, where they have a post about working on the project.

The typography got an update as well — darker, bolder and without the potentially dated CamelCase. Where this new typography is extended into the body of the web site its seems to work well through bringing a more authoritative visual voice than they had previously. However, the trade-off in the case of the logotype is decreased legibility (a product of the all-caps setting with its tight kerning) and less personality. While the original typography was far too light in value, the mixed-case was easier to read and the typeface had more character. Overall this redesign comes to life on their web site where the bold typography and colors are designed into a more lively layout — which is likely a visual language that can be extended into other collateral, however the logo itself will have a long road to travel to communicate the identity and attributes of the company to their audience.

\n\nPhotoShelter, a \"provider of archiving, e-commerce solutions and sales opportunities to the world's fastest growing community of independent photographers,\" founded in 2005, recently exited its Beta stage and has entered the busy, online stock photo marketplace with the intent of bringing back more control to the photographers whom they work with.

Many thanks to our ADV @ UnderConsideration Partners