Stephen Wells is a practising photographer with a unique eye for capturing atmospheric and characterful images of people, often with a touch of humour and intangible weirdness. Wells shoots a combination of commissioned and on-going personal projects, and aspires to be an international household name for his unique take on portraiture. He required a new identity and brand expression to better showcase his photography and express his unique perspective.

He wanted something that would be memorable and express a subtle wit and curiosity inherent in his imagery, in order to differentiate himself from the sea of photographers. A direct request was that the new identity shouldn't feel 'overly branded', or adopt any tried and tested cliches such as frame devices or symbols derived from eyes or a shutter… and above all, he didn't want a traditional logo. It was also important that the identity compliment and not overpower his photography.

In equal parts arrogance, confidence and humour, we created the tongue-n-cheek brand expression 'Stephen Wells: Incomplete Works, 1981 — present.' Borrowing from the familiar language of famous artists in history who have their career of artworks published as 'Complete Works'. Stephen though of course is still practising, still improving, still evolving his artform.

The whole identity subtely riffs off this 'Artist' idea, through it's use of language, application and visual appearance. We deliberately adopted an international, swiss-inspired aesthetic to help enforce the idea, and also offer a neutrality as to not compete with his imagery.

Stephen's website becomes his online 'exhibition space'; in a completely unconventional approach to a portfolio site, images are shown absolutely huge, as if you have walked up close to a large print on a gallery wall. You literally scroll and scroll through one portrait image, which provides the viewer with incredible detail which would otherwise be lost even in 'full-screen' mode.

To promote Stephen's new website we sent out fake exhibition posters to over 50 leading creatives here and across the ditch. On closer inspection of the poster, the small captioning declares his new website is now live.

In the spirit of a real exhibition we also ran a street poster campaign, utilising cleverly positioned locations close to creative agencies in the hope of grabbing attention and arousing curiosity.