Remaining Authentic at the Core. Designed for Future Success

Grover Sanschagrin and our team have been hard at work pushing our product forward, but we wanted to provide some background on our new look and its development process.

PhotoShelter celebrated our 15th anniversary in 2020, providing us with an opportunity to take a hard look at both who we are as an organization and where we hope to go from here.

At the start of 2018, we set out to revitalize PhotoShelter through an ambitious customer-driven program of new product launches and capabilities. Since then, our team has been hard at work making our products even more valuable for photographers and creative brands, from design improvements, new portfolio templates and SEO enhancements for photographers, to collaboration tools, workflow integrations, enterprise capabilities, artificial intelligence for creative teams – as well as social distance and unrest impacting all aspects of life – our 2020 plans remain an invaluable source of motivation during times of crises.

As our products develop, so does our identity. With each new innovation comes an update in branding, graphics and brand framework.

PhotoShelter has long used their iconic “P Cube” logo as a representation of safety, security and containment – providing users a platform where their files can be safely stored.

Professional photographers entrust PhotoShelter with their most priceless images. Not only can photographers store them here safely but PhotoShelter provides services for managing, organizing, distributing, displaying and selling them as well. Internally we refer to this aspect of our business as its “Core.”

Brands rely on us for their photos, videos, logos and more – and Libris by PhotoShelter has come to serve over 1,200 brands, sports teams, universities and creative organizations across industries in just the past five years alone!

Trust is at the core of our business – but we understand you put more faith in us than simply storing your creative work. You trust us to bring it alive quickly so it can have an impactful message in its worldly manifestation.

Therefore, we posed ourselves a question: How can we create a visual identity that accurately represents how you truly see us?

“Brand Architecture” is a fancy term for asking, “Who am I?” One way of discovering who you are is through asking others what they think about you. Working with Sullivan NYC, an award-winning brand strategy agency, we surveyed longstanding customers and members, new clients, prospects and staff as part of developing a 360 view of our company and products.

These sessions provided us with many insightful comments, both encouraging and more troubling ones. You shared remarkable stories of how we’ve assisted your creative lives; our company values were felt and appreciated both externally and internally – especially that person who called us an “icon”. You made our team’s day!

But one complaint we heard frequently from creative professionals was that our brand didn’t reflect them correctly…we refer to our product for brands as “Libris,” but you all prefer calling it “PhotoShelter.”

After compiling all the research sessions and findings, we devised several scenarios on how best to move forward. Our choice was the “Master Brand Strategy”, or one brand name to unify everything under its purview.

PhotoShelter is an established, reliable and unique brand with significance for our members, clients and team. After careful consideration we realized we did not need to reinvent it but rather embrace who we were as individuals by investing in our values and personality while “sunsetting” Libris brand name.

So what does this mean for our members and clients? Essentially, our company is now known as PhotoShelter, with two primary products designed specifically to support image makers: one called “PhotoShelter for Photographers,” built for individual image-makers; and two called “PhotoShelter for Brands,” designed specifically to help brand creative teams manage and deploy visual media – with our shared mission being the transformation of how creative people work.

Our agency partners at Sullivan were invaluable in providing us with guidance regarding message points, product attributes and the language necessary to tell our story authentically and uniquely – authentic yet original and relevant. They assisted in the creation of “The Power of a Moment” as the cornerstone to all this work – not about us but all about you – our members and clients!

Your images change how people view an issue; inspire deep thought; provide pure aesthetic joy; break news stories that impact brands or advance products; are moments that matter – we’ve designed our product to unlock them!

At creative workflow, our mission is to foster the flow of creative work and help you share visual stories with an impactful message. We don’t just provide shelter; rather we offer access to transform raw creativity into expression and engagement.

Through this process, we’ve come to discover our “Brand Personality.” In three words it read: “All In, Dynamic and Heartfelt.” When we heard these words we recognized their impact immediately – PhotoShelter team members bring these traits every day to work: how they treat one another as well as behave when dealing with members and clients – every single day, every person and always.

The final question was how we could translate our position and personality to our brand, design elements and marketing communications? Our internal design team led by Creative Director Todd Owyoung advocated strongly for doing the work internally – this made perfect sense as our staff are full of creative souls like writers, photographers, comedians, musicians and designers who care deeply for both the company and customers – taking this work in house was an easy decision; no one knows us better than those working alongside us every day to shape its future.

Anyone who has experienced the challenges associated with brand redesign will recognize its painstaking process; I won’t elaborate further here. After several days of mood boards, mockups, design reviews, solutions that fizzled out midair, new ideas out of left field and unexpected breakthroughs we ultimately settled on building off our core and “reimagining versus reinventing”. What may appear like an easy decision was actually comprised of thousands of small choices leading up to it.

PhotoShelter has long relied upon our “P Cube” logo as its mark, but today we have upgraded it with “The Loop.” By softening its edges and expanding color spectrums to give it character depth and dimension we created both a complete loop as well as windows into individual moments – symbolizing more than simply shelter but offering access and viewpoints to share visual stories just like we do!

We believe The Loop represents more than just cosmetic changes – it represents a fundamental one. By uniting both our product lines under one brand name and offering complementary services under it, The Loop unifies our company as the central meeting place of artists, image-makers and creative teams who tell visual stories for brands they represent.

One mark. One company. One name. With individual product lines to meet the visual communication needs of our members and clients alike: PhotoShelter for photographers and PhotoShelter for brands; all under one umbrella company name – PhotoShelter Inc.

Thank you for being our source of motivation throughout this process – inspiring us to go All In, Heartfelt and Dynamic!

Hope you like our new look! From now on, just refer to PhotoShelter when discussing us – as many already do!