Tag Archives: design

Custom Photography vs. Stock Photography

When it comes to your new website or marketing materials, choosing the right images to visually entice your potential clients can be a little difficult. Do you use stock photography? Do you have a professional photographer shoot photos for you? What if you don’t have the money to splurge on a professional photoshoot? These are just a few of the questions that can run through a clients mind when choosing the imagery that best represents your company and the services and products you offer.

Custom photography is usually the way to go and is worth it in the long run.

Custom Photography

Custom Team Photo vs. Stock Team Photo

Custom photos positively impact websites because it shows you’ve taken the time to provide a vision of what your company has to offer in comparison to your competitors who are using common stock photos shared with so many others on the internet. Stock photos were shot with another person’s vision in mind, which means you’re now attempting to fit someone else’s vision into your puzzle. With custom photography, you’re in control of the vision and what your company’s message is trying to convey. It also allows you to use your photos whenever and wherever you like. When it comes to photos of your employees, custom wins all the way. Potential clients are able to put legitimate faces to the company instead of bland stock photos of strangers who you would never meet in your dealings with a company. It’ll always make a client feel at ease if they feel like they know you better.

Stock Photography

Stock photos options can be great! Stick to high-quality stock images

That being said, stock photos aren’t entirely bad if used correctly. There are always pros and cons. While it can be the cheaper option in a short-term situation, you can run into some issues. Depending on what your company does, your competition could easily be checking out similar stock photos or in some cases, the same exact photo as as you. That quickly brings you into the situation of your website or materials going from completely original to ordinary and template looking. This destroys your ability to separate yourself from the crowd. There is clearly a difference between using beautiful shots of a city location and using the same familiar, generic stock personality that everyone else uses. If anything, stick to high quality stock images. Places like istockphoto, dollarphotoclub, and Getty Images (although Getty can get costly itself) can provide very nice photos that can easily be the missing piece to enhancing your site or advertisement.

Final word: You can use both when it comes to your marketing materials and needs, but it ultimately comes down to how you use them. You just need to find the right fit and balance to keep your brand unique to you.

Why Your Brand Should Be Utilizing Instagram

Instagram, the platform used every day by users to share their stories visually with images, has become a powerful force in social media. With an average of 55 million photos uploaded each day on this vast and fast-growing social network, it’s a tool that, if used correctly, can benefit brands and grow their audience.

Why should your brand use Instagram?

While it can’t be said for all social media, Instagram is a platform for everyone. Whether you’re a small business starting up in the world or a well established brand, Instagram is a visual force to be reckoned with, allowing just about anyone the option to tell (and sell) their story. Coming up with content for your feed can be challenging, especially with seeing what works and what doesn’t on the platform. But that doesn’t mean potential users shouldn’t try and keep at it. In the last couple years, mobile media has surpassed online media consumption and will continue in that direction. So take advantage!

Don’t have thousands, or in some cases, millions of followers? Don’t sweat it. Instagram users are eager to connect with brands on a personal and inspirational level, and finding the right visual vision for your brand can make all the difference. Here are three points to get your going:

Brands that are doing it right

65% of the world’s top 100 brands are using Instagram. Here are a few of them and examples of how they use visual images to push their brand.

Ben and Jerry’s: 510K Followers

Starbucks: 4.8M Followers

GoPro: 5.3M Followers

National Geographic: 21.5M Followers

Red Bull: 2.8M Followers

Taco Bell: 553K Followers

You Graming Yet?

Looking to get your brand on Instagram? Take a look at our monthly marketing package that takes your brand and provides it with a steady online presence on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more.

Please feel free to contact us with any questions about successfully marketing your brand across the different social media platforms.

All the Awesome at Awesome Con

We had a blast this past weekend at Awesome Con 2015. The three-day convention, that featured everything from comics to TV Shows and everything in between, definitely lived up to it’s name! BLM had a booth, showcasing all the services we have to offer from art and clothing to our latest Kickstarter-funded board game, Mixtape Massacre (we even brought The Legend with us!). It was three full days of interacting with strangers and getting our name out there to gain some interest in what we do. One of our owners, Fred Carlini, even got to speak on the panel “How to Use Social Media to Promote Your Work” thanks to the success of our recent Kickstarter project.

It wasn’t all work and no play too. We got to check out different celebrity and show panels, as well as all of the ‘awesome’ cosplay that filled the entire Washington Convention Center. It was pretty sweet to see a woman dressed as He-Man,  a family dressed like the cast Bob’s Burgers, as well as the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, all roaming around in front of your eyes. We couldn’t have asked for more from our first Awesome Con experience. It was all the awesome we could have asked for.

Check out some of our photos from the event below!

A Killer Kickstarter: Mixtape Massacre

It’s been a crazy ride but we’re proud to announce that our latest creative project, Mixtape Massacre, was successfully funded via the Kickstarter platform.

Campaign Statistics


Click image to view in larger format.

What is Mixtape Massacre?

Mixtape Massacre is a new board game with a killer blend of all the classic 80’s horror archetypes you know and love mixed with so much 1980s pop culture, you can practically hear the gum snapping and the Cyndi Lauper playing. In the classic 80’s horror genre, far too often we are asked to sympathize and identify with the vulnerable and, let’s face it, often dimwitted victim. In Mixtape Massacre, you enter the shoes of some of your favorite horror archetypes and bring the pain all while breathing in the references to 1980s music, film, and pop-culture.

Setting Up the Kickstarter

We did a lot of research before our initial launch on Kickstarter, but quickly learned that the entire campaign would be a learning process. Prior to the launch we had to create a social media presence on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. We also needed to figure out pricing from different manufacturers, shipping rates for places all over the world, advertising expenses, and then settling on a budget.

Also in the time leading up to the Kickstarter we prepared all the advertising images we would need for our Kickstarter page, as the images are really what is going to sell the product. We also produced an animated video as most, if not all projects with a video perform better than ones without.

Before launching we spent the month leading up to the launch doing social media posts to gain attention, followers, and people interested enough to spread the word during the campaign. Then we sent out our first press release to multiple outlets and began the Kickstarter.

The Kickstarter Campaign

There was plenty of feedback from the backers throughout the 30-day campaign, pointing out things like foreign shipping costs and availability as well as their own ideas for extra characters and gameplay mechanics. This lead us to do further research in order to make our game and product easily accessible to international audiences as well as more appealing for different types of players.

From the beginning to the end, we were able to lower shipping costs, become EU-friendly (allowing our product to be shipped from within the EU without any extra customs charges to our customers), add Australia to our international list, and much more. We took a lot, if not all, of the feedback into consideration, trying to make everything work for our backers and deliver the best product possible.

 

Behind the Project

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Behind the Scenes: KWCP Red Day Video Shoot


We recently teamed up with Keller Williams Capital Properties (KWCP) for a video shoot in honor of their RED Day event. RED Day, which stands for Renew, Energize, and Donate, is an annual event where the KWCP associates take a break from the office and serve worthy organizations and causes in their community.

We visited two locations for our shoot: Woodbridge, VA and Anacostia in South East Washington, DC. Our shoot consisted of interviews with four members of the KWCP team, going in depth about the importance of RED Day and what it means to the company and the communities that surround them. Along with the interviews, we shot the KWCP members at task with assigned service duties at each location. It’s always a great experience to see worthy communities being helped and RED Day was a great example of that.

Check out some photos from our video shoot below.

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Broccoli City Festival 2015

Photos by Purple PPL Media / The District Insider 

The cool kids united in SE DC for Broccoli City Festival 2015!

If you weren’t at the Gateway Pavilion last Saturday, you were obviously missing out. Local lifestyle group, Broccoli City’s mission is to promote environmentally stable, healthier living lifestyle in cool, more relevant ways. Each year they throw a festival that features music, arts, lifestyle activities and more. The lineup this year for the festival included acts like Erykah Badu, Joey Bada$$, Jaden & Willow Smith, Tink, Kali Uchis, Kaytranada, Tiara Thomas, and many more.

As mentioned in our blog Event Branding: Broccoli City, Broccoli City reached out to us to do the branding for their Broccoli City Festival event that took place this past Saturday, April 25th. We started with a logo that branched off onto several forms of press and marketing tools leading up to the event itself. Our branding was felt throughout the entire festival, from press badges to the entire stage backdrop and more.

Check out photos via Purple PPL Media below.

Bright Light Media to Launch Kickstarter for Mixtape Massacre

A “Killer” New Board Game.


Washington, DC — March 31, 2015.
Bright Light Media’s latest project, Mixtape Massacre, is a tabletop board game where up to 6 people play as horror film archetypes and compete in a fictional 1986 killing spree to be remembered.

Players travel the streets of Tall Oaks visiting different town locations, vying for a chance to draw a card from the Killer Scenes, Dude deck (cards decorated like VHS tapes of old), providing an opportunity to slay victims and collect souvenirs. Claim your prize by rolling the action dice, marked in knives, fists, and pentagrams to the amount required on your card.

Along the way, take your chances with the Bonus Tracks cards (decorated like your favorite dusty mixtape) or engage in Brawls, where players can battle it out and eliminate one another from the game.

To win the game, be the first to rack up a body count of 10 or be the last player left alive.

With tons of jokes and references to all of your favorite 1980’s music, films, and pop-culture icons – Mixtape Massacre will have you laughing while you’re slashing!

A Kickstarter campaign for the game will launch on April 8, 2015 with an assortment of rewards, as well as some killer stretch goals to enhance the game’s playing experience.

A live demo will take place at Third Eyes ComicsInternational Table Top Day event in Annapolis, MD on April 11, 2015. Customers will be able to demo two working prototypes of the game and sign up at the event to back the project on Kickstarter.

To learn more about Mixtape Massacre visit http://www.mixtapemassacre.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mixtapemassacre
Twitter: https://twitter.com/mxtpemassacre
Instagram: https://instagram.com/mixtapemassacre

Download Press Kit Here

About Bright Light Media
Bright Light Media is an award winning digital design agency. The company is compiled of a tight knit team of designers, developers, creators, and insomniacs who love what they do and are passionate about each project they take on. In a combined 30 plus years of experience, Bright Light Media has had the pleasure of working with clients ranging from start-ups to fortune 500’s and everything in between.

Learn more about Bright Light Media at www.brightlightmedia.co

####
Contact:
Fred Carlini
Partner
Email: fred@brightlightmedia.co
Office: 301-509-8005

Press Images

Event Branding: Broccoli City

Branding is the corner stone of any business or entity, whether big or small, and can be very beneficial against competitors if your brand is effective enough. Local lifestyle group, Broccoli City contacted Bright Light Media as they were seeking a new branding strategy for their very popular annual music festival in Washington, DC.

And so it all begins with the branding. We came up with several different concepts for the festival’s logo. We worked with ideas to find the one that would fit their style, their company, and what they represent. Below shows you just a sample of some of the ideas brought to the table before we arrived at the final logo.

The Broccoli City Festival is on Saturday, April 25. Get your tickets here!


Branding Process

Ideas, Ideas, Ideas


Refining Ideas


The Winner

Using the Brand

Looking to brand your next event? Contact us today

Building a Community: Takoma Park

We recently launched the Old Takoma Business Association new community website. They were looking to upgrade the site for the city of Takoma Park (Maryland, Washington DC). From upcoming events, to a list of local businesses and available resources, the website is a central hub for all and any needed information pertaining to the community of Takoma Park. We implemented a custom, easy-to-use calendar that allows site users the convenience of submitting upcoming and recurring events, helping to keep the site fresh and up-to-date with content and happenings. In addition, we created an easy navigation for the site, dividing it into five main areas: Explore, Events, Business, and Live, accompanied by tertiary menus under each to add the ease of finding what areas apply to each site visitor.

For community websites, it’s sole purpose is to relay necessary information whether it’s needed or wanted. Now Takoma Park does just that with a clean and easy-to-use web presence that’s easily accessible on any device (desktop, tablet, and mobile).


Site Features

+ Responsive Web Design
+ Custom Event Calendar
+ Custom Event Submissions for Users
+ Custom Featured Event Page
+ Tertiary Dropdown Menus
+ News/Blog Feed


Video Production: Arlington Tower


We recently worked with our clients at DTZ on a property shoot for Arlington Tower, in Northern Virginia. The main purpose for this video was to create an efficient edit that showcases their latest property listing, one of the tallest buildings in the DC region, by capturing multiple tenant spaces to be used in various marketing materials for the property. We shot time-lapse footage of several different angles of the building as well as various floors including the lobby, tenant space, and rooftop that uncovers the wonderful views of the DC/MD/VA area from atop the building.  Below are behinds the scenes photos from the shoot.