Early last spring I was introduced to Lori Roche and Matt Buckman from I Do Films, an amazingly talented grouped of artists and filmmakers. In 2008 they started creating vintage wedding films shot on the Super 8 camera. As their business matured, their look evolved into a chic, indy wedding films that are truly like none that I have ever seen.

Over the past six months we had the amazing opportunity to get to know Lori, Matt, and the rest of their super talented staff as we collaborated on a new brand for I Do Films. We get a lot of requests to explain how our branding process works and thought this would be a great project to use an illustration.

Brand Story Development 

Step one: get to know the players.

Every author knows that without an extensive understanding of the characters in a story, the story can’t develop. We spoke to Lori, Matt, Elan, a few filmmakers, and a few of their clients. Our goal is to understand the perspective looking in and looking out of I Do Films. We hope to discover the true heart and soul of the business.

Next it’s on to sample the product. Probably one of my most favorite parts of the research, the test drive. For I Do films that involved a glass of wine and a box of tissues as I worked my way through their film library. I’m not afraid to admit, I shed a tear, and laughed a little. It was a blast. I finished up wishing I could get married again just so they could film it!

The competitive analysis was not nearly as fun as the research in this case. But still very telling. We were able to identity the trends in the industry, understand the language that is used to describe things, and most of all understand how the products were talked about.

Step two: Establish a storyline

For I Do Films we understood pretty quickly what kind of bride was our target. We knew what she liked, about how old she was, etc. But what we needed to establish was the tone of voice. Was it her mom? Grandma? BFF? We came to this conclusion: A wedding film should be timeless. We want to watch it the way we remember it happening and more importantly the way we imagined it would happen when we were 12.

Here is an excerpts from the story we wrote for I DO Films:

It is a moment that has been playing through every girl’s imagination since she was a child—the music starts, the crowd turns, and she walks down the aisle. The setting may have changed, the characters may be different, but the girl is still the most beautiful thing in the room. Timeless love stories like this have been told on film for centuries, but this one is different—it isn’t scripted, and the characters are real….

 

Step Three: Bring the story to life

Adding the visuals to a story is probably the most challenging piece. We always start with inspiration that embodies the sentiment of the brand. In this case we started with some old wedding certificates, vintage channel bottles, and handmade flower crowns.

And after several revisions here is the final product:

It was a great time. I Do Films was a tremendous client. Be sure to check out all of their work. We are lucky to have a great team at Two Paperdolls. Here are some of the folks that brought this beautiful brand to life:

Christina Beck, Jonathan Rebert Design

Jennifer James Illustration

Bo Duvall, Scott McClelland Printing

Jenny Bennet, Amanda Bennet Production

Phil Meissner Web Design

Whitney Hartshorne Web Development

Alison Conklin Photography

If you have questions/comments about this process you can find me: @GregPAsh