"Love Affair," an event planning suite (Portsmouth, NH), was an offshoot of the Wedding Belle and my first branding experience. In 2013, the Wedding Belle was looking to expand its planning services. The concept was to create an event planning library where one could go to research potential vendors (all pre-approved), be able to speak with planners on hand, and use the space to plan their big day. The first step in the branding process was coming up with a name for the new business. The owner wanted something festive that still evoked the idea of weddings, but without using that word so they could still appeal to all types of events. After a lot of brainstorming, I came up with "Love Affair." "Love Affair" combined the romance of weddings with the idea of a grand event. It also by definition meant an intense enthusiasm or passion for something. It perfectly described the feeling they wanted the business to evoke, something catchy and unique with a pretty, flowing sound to it.

With the final name approved, the next step was coming up with a logo that would be the base point for all future branding needs. I started with finding the perfect typeface. I knew I wanted a script typeface with a handwritten feel and ended up deciding on HarabaraHand. I liked the dichotomous feel of mixing two different styles of type to give the logo more character so I chose to pair HarabaraHand with the slab serif St. Marie. Wanting the emphasis to be on "Affair," I chose to write that word in HarabaraHand and "Love" in St. Marie. This also broke up the typefaces nicely as the owner also wanted the logo to read "Portsmouth's Premiere Planning Suite" as an additional description for the new business. For clarity purposes, I used a slab serif for the tagline as well being easier to read at a smaller size. Due to the reduced size of the text, however, I ended up using a different slab serif font, Josefin Slab, as St. Marie looked too thin when it was that small. The two slab serifs looked similar enough to work well together.

Having the logo simply made of text felt a bit plain. I wanted something elegant and decided on incorporating the silhouette of a chandelier into the design. The chandelier fit perfectly with the text to create the square design I was looking for, necessary in today's world of social media. The final ingredient needed was to pick a color scheme. Since the Wedding Belle's logo was a mix of pinks and reds, they wanted something in a different direction. A bridal or "Tiffany" blue seemed the perfect way to go. It was something people already associated with the wedding industry and appealing to the eye. For the main logo, I made the text and chandelier white on a blue background, however the colors could also be swapped (as you can see on the letterhead and envelopes) when the situation called for it.

Due to a lack of proper software at the time, I did not design the final version of the logo since I had no way of saving a high-resolution image needed for print. Here you can see my original design as well as the final version put together by the company's web design team, Tidal Media Group. The only real change that was made, however was switching out the chandelier I chose with a better quality vector image for print. After the logo was in our web designers hands, we also chose to go with a darker, more saturated blue as that popped more on the website. Overall I am happy with this design and my part in it as well as the experience I was able to gain in branding a new company.