Your Plan A Events Branding & Communications Optimization
Overview
Your Plan A Events is a destination wedding and special events planner based in St. Augustine, Florida. Your Plan A Events (YPA) has built invaluable brand capital over the past 3 years of operations, but required a refresh to elevate their brand image to meet the growing quality of their services and clients. We produced a full visual identity and optimized YPA’s web communications to increase the perceived value of the brand, and better illustrate the value of YPA’s planning and curating services.
Services Rendered
01. Brand Positioning
02. Visual Identity
03. Social media and website optimization
01. Brand Positioning
Photos by various vendors of YPA Events. Visit yourplanaevents.com for more information.
Inclusive, Organized, & Unparalleled Service
Your Plan A Events prides itself on digging deeper and strategizing with intention on every step of the event planning process. Owner and lead planner, Patricia, conducts a painstakingly thorough planning and vetting process to deliver her client’s wildest dreams. Your Plan A Events is also focused on doing good for their community, primarily through a commitment to diversity and inclusion, and working with vendors with shared values. We strategized to convey both YPA’s unparalleled attention to detail, and their warm and welcoming spirit throughout every level of their rebranding.
First, we identified opportunities across all platforms of communication to educate YPA’s audience on the unique intricacies and value-add of YPA’s approach to event planning. The content, though beautiful, was primarily product-centric, so we provided a more in-depth look at how YPA’s value is generated throughout the whole process.
Next, we produced a stand-out visual identity that matched current wedding trends, while establishing that unique A-factor that sets YPA Events apart.
02. Visual Identity
Logo Concepts, Color Palette, and Design Motifs
When designing the logo, our challenge was to update the overall aesthetic to match current design trends, while maintaining YPA Event’s existing brand story. In addition, we needed to visually emphasize the “A” sound, as there had been some confusion in the pronunciation of the brand name.
YPA Event’s approach is data-centric. They spend innumerable hours crunching the numbers to identify and vet the correct location, vendors, and capabilities for the client’s budget. The upwards caret (^) originally served as a nod to their organizational practices. We placed a central focus on the “A” to allude to the caret, emphasize the articulation of the “A”, and symbolize the A-team effort YPA Events provides their clients.
We chose a structured yet whimsical sans-serif font, and partnered it with a custom diamond illustration to further emphasize our central “A,” and allude to the euphoria of achieving a pinnacle event. Our rainbow application of color symbolizes YPA Events’ commitment to diversity, and alludes to the merriment of granting wishes of all kinds to her clients. The color palette also provides a logistical solution to matching the color palettes of the diverse events YPA Events showcases on their social media. Finally, thin line illustrations partnered with abstract ribbons and textures provide a personalized touch to the brand’s narrative, illustrating the diverse partnerships and joyous occasions they bring to life.
03. Communications Optimization
Social Media & Managing Diverse Content
As an event planner, Your Plan A Events’ media is influenced heavily by the design choices of her clients and vendors. This can present visual dissonance on image-heavy social media platforms such as instagram and Pinterest. We aimed to create a consistent experience across social media platforms that is both confluent with YPA Event’s branding, and showcases the diverse qualities of each of the events and vendors YPA Events works with.
We strategized a new posting pattern based on color and content that provides more natural transitions between event photos. The resulting pattern provides visual consonance as the user scrolls through YPA Events’ social media, and provides more opportunity to articulate the behind-the-scenes stories that are integral to establishing YPA Events intrinsic value.
Brand Voice & Website User Journey
In addition to analyzing YPA Events’ current social media strategies, we helped facilitate a brand edit to the existing website. YPA events led the charge on the redesign, while we provided guidance on an effectual user journey that targets event hosts and other industry professionals. In addition, we workshopped the copy and organization of YPA Events’ services, portfolio, brand story, and value statements to present a stronger brand voice.
The new user journey creates more clear paths for YPA Events’ two audiences. The primary audience, event hosts, are guided through a new series of service explanations, brand narrative, testimonials, and in-depth portfolio pages that provide insight on YPA Events’ tangible impact on their events. The secondary audience, industry professionals, are provided a separate portal to view opportunities to collaborate with YPA Events as event vendors or on promotional and educational content.