Front Room Studios

Based in Bay View, Wisconsin, Front Room Studios provides photography and videography for businesses and families in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and across the country.

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Front Room Studios was founded by two friends, Eron Laber and Neil Kiekhofer, in 1996. Over 25 years, the duo worked hard to build their photography business from the ground up. Changing and adding services, growing and losing team members, and moving studios multiple times. By 2021, so much had changed. Eron was no longer interested in being a co-owner of Front Room Studios, so Neil took full ownership of the business. Along with this, the team had other major staffing changes as well as a shift in their service offerings. They were moving away from wedding photography / videography and focusing primarily on commercial clients. A rebirth of sorts was happening for Front Room, and a rebrand and refreshed website was in order. Neil called on Shelby Design Co for help.

In 25 years of business, Front Room Studios had never been branded professionally. After many years of DIY attempts at their logo and 'quick fixes' of their website, it all lacked cohesiveness and professionalism. They needed a brand that better reflected the kind-heartedness of their team and the high-quality service they provide their clients. We curated a color palette that is bright and optimistic, but with touches of vintage flair, showcasing Front Room’s hipster style and is representative of their long legacy. We used quirky typographic messaging elements to express the fun-loving tone of voice that is Front Room.

The biggest challenge of designing their website was to demonstrate the incredible variety of photography and videography services they offer while keeping the site as simple as possible and easy to navigate.

Since launching its new brand and website, Front Room has been thriving and is relieved to see pre-covid revenue numbers returning.

Operations Manager, Kelly Aunkst, said "We have seen a marked difference in our leads and quality of our leads since the rebrand, brand identity sessions, and website. What it really helped us do is define who we are, which gave us direction, which told the right people we were the ones for the job."

About the project

Kelly Aunkst
Operations Manager at Front Room Studios

"I cried tears of joy when the website was launched knowing I could have never achieved this myself. I can’t recommend Shelby enough."

We hired Shelby for new branding and a refreshed website and it was the best investment we could have made for our company.

The branding process is amazing. She makes you think hard about your business and what you want it to say, but she makes it easy. It’s like therapy for your business. Shelby is easy to talk to and really listens, interpreting those conversations into a brand identity. We went from a tired single logo to having multiple logos, watermarks, wordmarks, colors, fonts, and a full guide on how to use them in different applications. She’s a wizard.

Then, there’s the website. She took our old, boring, huge, overwhelming website and created something we could have only dreamed of. And it was easy from our end. She showed us mock ups, gave us tools to make changes, and then reflected those changes in a timely manner. I cried tears of joy when the website was launched knowing I could have never achieved this myself. Our website is now clean, easy to navigate, and effective at outlining what we offer.

I can’t recommend Shelby enough.