It was time for a change
When we decided to pursue a brand refresh back in 2019, we realised that our product range had extended so much, that we had outgrown the name Doctor Photo too!
Great property marketing visuals are still at the heart of what we do, but we felt that having 'photo' in our name was quite restrictive. We offer so much more, including CGI and now New Homes Creative - think of us as your marketing side-kicks.
I'd like to introduce you to DCTR 🎉
So why DCTR?
As DCTR is pronounced 'Doctor' it isn't a huge change from Doctor Photo.
People often call us 'The Photo Doctor', 'Dr foto' or the 'Doctors', so we knew that the word 'Doctor' was our biggest and most important asset. We couldn't have called ourselves 'Doctor' because of SEO and quite frankly, Doctor just sounded a bit boring!
After a lot of thinking, we agreed on the name DCTR. It felt fresh. Modern. Distinctive, and low and behold, the domain name was available for 99p. SOLD!
With very few search results on google under DCTR, we hope it's a 4 letter acronym we can own in more ways than simply legally.
What about Doctor Photo?
Doctor Photo still exists! The brand has now become a sub-brand of DCTR and from now on is described as our 'platform.'
Customers can still log in as normal at doctor-photo-easy.co.uk or via our website at dctr.co.uk.
You may notice we've given the Doctor Photo logo and upload site a Facelift too - reducing colours and aligning fonts and styling with our DCTR brand.
The DCTR brand
We spent a long time on the DCTR brand identity.
Both internally and with our web partners Deuce. An awesome bunch of guys who have a bunch of estate agency clients too, based down the road from us in Fleet. give them, a shout if you're in the market for something special.
So... onto the rebrand. They say that you should refresh your logo every 5 years. Well, since 2010 this will be our 3rd, so we're a little ahead of the curve!
As well as a new logo, we've also updated our favicon (the small icon). It's changed from depicting a camera-shutter to just two letters, DR. Not only will it help us diversify our services but we also hope it will help our customers with the pronunciation of our brand (Doctor, not D.C.T.R!).
We have stuck to 2 main fonts, Startan & Railway - both of which are Google fonts. They are easy to read, modern and have a contemporary feel to them
Black, White, Pink and Yellow
Our new brand identity has just four dominant colours instead of the 8 we've been so used to since 2010.
Now, 90% of our brand is black and white with accents of pink & yellow. Pink represents our commercial property marketing arm and yellow represents our residential.
The two key reasons for reducing our colour pallet were to help us modernise the look and feel and secondly, we felt that our photos and design work should do the talking - and fewer colours were less distracting to the eye and helped framed our work better.
Say hello to Doctor - our new mascot!
The eagle eye'd amongst you will notice that there's a trendy looking cat across some of our marketing materials and website. No, we haven't diversified into cat food.
For us, the cat personified (or catified?!) the personality of our brand. It's eye-catching, and that's what we're all about at DCTR. Creating assets for our clients that catch the eye and evoke a positive emotion (unless you're a dog-person).
We've always been a bit quirky... for years we've been famous for having a flying chicken on our website.
Some people will find a cat weird but BLAH.. why not?
We have a new home too
If a new website, new name, new logo, new identity and new services weren't enough
We also moved offices on 1st June. Now, the 6 of us work in a beautiful space called the Old Brewery in North Farnborough. It's been a busy few months!
Most importantly though
It's the same great team, same great tools, and same great service.
Apart from the monumental changes to our brand, our team remains the same! We haven't been taken over or merged with anyone else. Our phone number 01483 474737 remains the same and you can still log into doctor-photo-easy.co.uk directly to upload your pics for editing, cgi and furnishing.
If you have any questions about our new brand & services, or just fancy a chat, please give us a buzz on 01483 474737 or email us at studio@dctr.co.uk. We'd be delighted to hear from you!
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