Become a Brand Design Pro — Build a Profitable Creative Agency

1. Welcome to Brand Designer Pro: Welcome to Brand Designer P. Now, I'm not sure your expectations are for this course program experience that is brand designer Pro. But what I can tell you is one decade ago, well, more than a decade ago, I started out as a brand designer. I started designing logos, brands for my friends, family, and for kind of some very small clients. And if I had what you're about to get right now in this course, in brand designer Pro, I could have got to where I am today within a tenth of the time. And I say that because I had to make all the mistakes, do all the testing, try all the different strategies, some that didn't work, some that worked extremely well. And I packaged everything over the past couple of years to create this program, to create brand designer Pro, to help brand designers just like you to get so much further, so much faster. And create a sustainable, profitable lifestyle from designing brand identities and logos. This is my life's work. It is It's the reason that I exist on this planet. So what are we actually going to learn in brand designer Pro? Well, if you want the short answer, everything, like literally everything that you could need to become a successful brand designer. This is from every single book I've ever read. This is from every single brand designer I've ever looked up to and learned from and being mentored by I have compiled everything into this step by step program that can allow you to absorb all of my knowledge, digest everything that I know, and then apply it to your own business to create something unique to you. Yes, of course, we're going to learn the fundamentals of logo design. We're going to understand how to make brand guidelines. We're going to understand color to a degree that you never even thought possible. We're going to dive into typography and learn how to take a really kind of boring and average font and turn it into something super unique and super memorable. You're going to understand how to develop branding systems so that your clients can use the branding that you developed for them more effectively. There are going to be actionable examples from some of the biggest brands and some of the best brand designers in the world, so you can learn from the best how to be the best. We're going to explore not just one, not just two, not just three, not just five, but every type of logo in this course that you could possibly need to design for any client in the world. And you're going to learn what type of logos you can do better than anyone else on the planet. You're going to get my entire process, the process that I've learned and refined over the past decade, but also that I have taken from some of the best brand designers in the world when I studied them so that you can take what I've learned and apply it to your own process and make it better, make it more refined, get better results. We're going to develop world class mockups like some of the best branding agencies on the planet. You're going to learn my personal approach to ing typography properly so you can understand how to make any word mark, even with the most average font, look and feel super established and super credible, even if it's really simple and minimalist. And if you thought that this course just covered brand design, logo design, bloody, blady, blah, it does. But it also includes so, so much more because brand design isn't just about creating logos, right? If it was, then we would never have to worry about getting clients. A lot of our time is focused on getting clients. But there's a difference between going to try and get clients and having clients come to you. I've never asked a client for work, but I am constantly asked by clients, can I work with you? And there is a massive difference between the two. I am going to teach you my way, the way that I like to work, where clients get in touch with me. So when I actually get into a negotiation with the clients and they ask for my pricing, they are willing to pay it because they came to me and I am not begging them or desperate for work. You're going to learn how to position yourself as a brand designer so that you're more credible, more desirable. Clients are going to be more excited and more eager to work with you. They are going to happily join, much like myself, a waiting list to work with you in a week or two weeks or maybe even longer, depending on how busy you are. This course is going to teach you how to set it up, how to automate everything, how to get your business to a place, much like mine, where clients automatically book sales calls into your diary. So all you have to do is just understand their business, propose a solution, and then start working with them. No writing super lengthy proposals and wasting 2 hours of your time and then hoping that they get back to you. **** that. I'm not wasting my time doing that ****. It's absolute ********. Sorry for my French. I apologize. That isn't French, but you get the idea. My entire mission with Brand Designer Pro is to help you set up the most efficient and profitable brand design business possible so you can love your work, so you can do great business with great clients, but also live a little. So also have a little bit of life balance as well and enjoy your life a little bit, because work is good and design is great, but you need to be able to set up a sustainable life system where you can live and look forward to every single day. It's important, right? Now, there are two ways that you could approach this course. The first way is just to go through each of the lessons in chronological order. The second way is to look at the areas that you feel you need a little bit more support in and then start there first. And there's no right or wrong way to do it. So you just do what you think is best for you personally, because you could have major holes in, for example, understanding typography, should start there first and then work backwards, okay? But make sure you don't miss out any lessons, but work them out in a way where you are prioritizing the things that you need to learn first, if that makes sense. And if you're not sure where to start, then use your dedicated support manager, se me to get as much knowledge as soon as possible within brand designer programs. That's what it's being built for, right? So use it that. Wait, in the next lesson, I'm going to show you how to use your support spaces because that's going to be super important for you to get critiques on your logos, to help answer any questions, to help you get feedback on your sales calls and all that good stuff. So anyway, I'll see you in the next lesson. Let's get started. I cannot wait. Please. See you there. 2. Introduction to Strategic Brand Design: Okay, so what actually is strategic brand design? Well, strategic brand design is the process of intentionally aligning your design decisions with the business' objectives. It combines your creativity with research, planning, and solving the businesses problems with design. This in turn is to ultimately help to connect with their target audience far more effectively and ultimately deliver more value for the brand. So this is the difference between just designing a logo and actually being a strategic branding expert or agency. You are making far more calculated decisions when you are choosing the colors, the typography, the logo style, how everything kind of blends together. That is the difference, and that is what we are trying to achieve with this course. So what are we going to cover in this lesson? Well, we'll start with understanding exactly what strategic design is. Now, a little bit later on in this lesson, we're going to look at some great examples of strategic brand design done perfectly. But before that, we're also going to dive into the three things that strategic brand design should do always. We're also going to look at my step by step process of how I think about strategic brand design so you can follow my process or kind of integrate it with what you're doing currently. And then after all that, we're also going to have a little bit exercise that you can do, just a little fun thing that you can do to ultimately take what you've learned and put it straight into practice. Now, before we get started, at the very end of each phase of this program, you're going to be given a little fun quiz. Now, these questions are simply just there for one single purpose to make sure that you understand exactly what you've learned so that you can apply it in your own business, your own life, and to ultimately build yourself as a brand designer. As I said from the very beginning, my job with this course is to make you the best strategic brand designer that you can be, so you can charge more for your services so you can add more value to your clients so you can do better work that you can be super proud of. And that requires a certain process and a certain framework. And that is ultimately what these quizzes at the end of each phase are going to do. They're just going to confirm you know exactly what you're doing so you can have the confidence to move forward and make key decisions with confidence. So let's just reiterate what strategic brand design actually is. It is intentional. Everything about the design that you're doing has a reason for doing it that way. And if we can think about designing that way, you're going to end up with a far better result. Have you ever saw a brand for the first time, and it just looks and feels very credible, very established, and very trustworthy from the second that you see it. The reason and it looks that way is because the agency or the creative person who has came up with that design, the designer has thought through every single element of the brand. Think of branding like a jigsaw. So the jigsaw of the brand needs to showcase a picture, an image or a message, right? If you have a jigsaw where some of the pieces in of a different colo, maybe they just don't fit the actual overall piece of the jigsaw, so the picture is a little bit, you know, not as clear as it should be or not as easy to understand as it should be. That's going to take away from the overall aesthetic of the jigsaw. So your job as a strategic brand design is to make sure that every single element of the jigsaw is right and it's put in the right place, and it fits together perfectly with every other piece. And the harmony between all of the pieces of that jigsaw result in a perfect picture as a whole. That is the goal as a strategic brand designer, and not a lot of designers do that. That's the complete honest truth. And the only way you can achieve that is by going through that five step process I'm going to go through with you in this lesson. But you need to understand that it doesn't just happen by magic. It does take a process, and it takes a little bit more time. Then the average branding project. But the result is ten times better. Now, a lot of people think brand design is just making something look good, and that is part of it. You do need it to look good, but it needs to look good to the right person. And the only way that you can actually get it to look good to the right person and to the target audience that you're trying to connect with is by doing the research, right? We'll get to that later. But I just want to set the scene and help you understand how strategic brand designers should think. It's not just about giving the client what they want sometimes. Sometimes the client doesn't know. And if they're hiring you to give them a solution to their problem, it'd help them design something great. Their personal preferences are one thing, but the strategic decisions to help the brand succeed are sometimes another. And usually what happens is you have to kind of meet somewhere in the middle, and that is a sweet spot. That's why the clients super happy because they have kind of got something of what they wanted. But then they also get your expertise because you've guided them through the strategic side of things to ultimately give them a result which is going to help them succeed. And we'll get to kind of managing clients and stuff a little bit later on in the process and the course. But I just want to open you up to these other ways of working because a client can sometimes be leading you in the the wrong direction. But your job is to say, no, listen, let's pull things back, and let's remember why we're here, who we're trying to connect with, and use the research that we've already done to get the result that you hired me to achieve for you in your business. Now, Great Strategic brand design should do three things. Number one, it should build a cohesive brand identity that connects perfectly with the target audience. Number two, it should help the brand to stand out in even the more saturated of markets and give customers a reason to buy from them. And the third thing that all Grid Strategic brand design should do is it should help the business to meet its objectives, whether that be brand awareness to be seen as more luxury to be seen as more affordable. Now there are tons of different objectives that a brand could have, but understanding that first and understanding the destination and why we're actually going, that is the first step, and we ultimately need to understand that before we start making decisions or even proposing things. So understanding what we're actually doing, that's the first phase of any process when we're talking about brand identity development or brand design. So in regards to the steps of actually doing strategic brand design, first understand the objectives and goals. What are the goals of the business? What challenges need to be solved? There are so many incredible questions that you should be asking, which will co a little bit later on in the course when you are talking to a client on that first sales call. And ultimately, the questions that you ask are going to help you to stand out as a brand designer because the person's going to be thinking, Wow, the questions that you're asking are extremely interesting. They're helping me to think about my brand in a way that I never thought of before. We'll get to those questions, but this is the first step, asking the right questions, digging up what the actual key motivators are for the person who you are working for and who has hired you. What is the key objective for that business? What do they want to achieve through hiring you? And only then can you move on to step two? And step two is always the same research. So you understand exactly what you want to achieve. How are we going to get there? We need to understand the battlefield. We need to understand the journey, the terrain that we're going to go through. We need to understand what obstacles are in our way, what competitors are there. We need to understand our target audience, what their behaviors are, why they are going to buy from us as opposed to every other brand out there who is a substitute selling a very similar or almost identical product. And this is where our brand strategy comes into play, which again, we'll come to a little bit later on in the course. But when you are selling brand identity development, People instantly think, that's just a logo, that's just colors, that's just a font and typeface. You can just do that 100%. You can charge really good money for that. But when you start asking clients the right questions and you start to kind of help them realize that they don't really have a distinctive advantage right now or a positioning, they start to quickly understand that they need to do some sort of strategy before they actually dive into just creating a logo. Otherwise, they're going to be up against it from the second they enter that particular market. So I'm talking about building a strategic brand design business. When a client gets in touch with me in regards to finding a brand name, for example, nine times out of ten, they end up doing the brand strategy phase, which is an extra, a couple of thousand dollars, which helps me to be far more profitable per client that actually works with me. But you can do literally the exact same thing, but it's how you actually present that to a client, which is going to allow you to actually sell that extra service to get that additional revenue for literally the same amount of work ultimately. Now, once you've done the research, it's then time to develop the strategy. So if we define what strategy actually is, strategy is using the resources that you have available in order to meet your objectives, okay? So what can we do with what we have to meet our goals and our objectives successfully? That's ultimately what strategy is in a nutshell. You need to develop some sort of positioning which can help to meet the brand's objectives, help them stand out, make sure they connect with their target audience, and also do that within the resources and the budget that the client has. And once you do those three steps, it's then time to move on to design. Most people just start with design straightaway, or they maybe do the first step of understanding the business objectives, but they don't really do the research. They don't really develop a strategy or a plan. They just go out there and just hope for the best. And that's why there's so much brand design work out there, which is so average. People are not putting in the work, and it's a little bit dawning sometimes when you're brand designer puts in, double the amount of time into a project when they're still getting paid the same at first, you are very quickly going to understand that the amount of time that you put into a project, effective time, not just time wasting and procrastinating, if you really go the extra mile with a project, very quickly, you're going to be able to charge a lot more. It is one of the things that a lot of freelancers and brand designers need to understand and they really start to learn is that when you are showcasing your portfolio, for example, you are only going to attract a certain level of client based on the level of your portfolio. So the better your portfolio, the better quality client you can attract really simple. And the last step after you've actually done the design and you've created logos, et cetera, and you've showcased them, the client is showing them how it would be applied. This is mockups. This is showcasing on different applications. This is showcasing the scalability of the logos, how it works in black and white, et cetera. We're going to go through the actual logo development process and kind of the overall brand idenity development process later on in this course, but that is ultimately the first step. You need to make sure that you actually showcase your work in a way that helps someone who particularly creative minded, see it in a realistic light. Okay, so we've been through quite a lot on this lesson so far, but I just want to show you an example, two examples, actually, of how brand identity and strategic brand design can be done in a really effective way to get a brand, the result that it wants, like this example from Airbnb. If you have the Internet and a pair of eyes, you've probably seen the new Airbnb. So, Airbnb, this online rental site debuted a new has become the new Internet meme of today. Let's just say it's a little suggestive. 48 hours after launch, Airbnb's rebrand had been embraced with a global conversation. Thousands of people commented with more than 450 media publications covering the news, making the rebrand the biggest day in Airbnb's history. When the founders of Airbnb first inflated their airbds and opened their doors in San Francisco, there was no way of predicting what would happen next. With over 1 million listings in 190 countries, Airbnb had become more than just an online booking site, but a global community of hosts and travelers. We wanted to give the brand to the community the community is the product. They are the brand. The rebrand process had started a year prior and began with us looking to truly understand the business. We worked closely with Airbnb, talking to hosts and community members to uncover the essence of the brand. But there was a moment we said, What are we about? And what we're about is belonging. That is our mission to live in a world where we belong anywhere. Belonging is defined by people, places, love. We created B, a universal symbol of belonging, a symbol that adapts to locations and cultures, yet is still globally recognizable as Airbnb. Belo was designed for the community to be shared and owned, allowing each member to create their own personal symbol and share their stories of belonging. Airbnb needed a single mark powerful enough to communicate their brand vision, but simple enough to be replicated by each member of their global community. Belo has been adopted worldwide with over 150,000 community symbols being created and shared, a symbol that transcends language, place, and culture, proving that travelers can truly belong anywhere. So as you can see that from that Airbnb example, they did the research. They understand who they needed to connect with. They also understood what the business objectives were, and then they create a brand identity which was strategic and purposeful to help them be successful at the things that they set out to do. And here's another example for Zara, the fashion brand, which I'm sure you're aware of. Now, this is ultimately a breakdown, which I'd really advise you to take a little bit of time just to go to this particular website and just check out this case study because it just gives a really great insight in regards to how strategic design can be done in a website format, right? Because when you are redesigning a website, you can look at, okay, this is kind of how things are working right now, but how can we take what we know and then ultimately do the research, analyze things, create ideas, prototype, and then test to get the best result. Okay? Because the website before they kind of did this redesign, it wasn't getting the results that they needed. And you can use things like Hotjar, for example, to get, you know, really kind of instantaneous data when it comes to people going to your website, getting um, checking out their behavior, what they're clicking on, what they're not clicking on, et cetera, et cetera. So what they're doing is they're ultimately taking all this data, all this research, right, which is the second phase of the process, and ultimately connecting it to the objectives of the business and making suggestions for the website redesign based on that research. It helps you to talk from a far more confidence standpoint and gives you far more credibility when you are referring what you're saying and what you're suggesting to a client back to either studies or back to, you know, case studies which have happened maybe in the past with other brands, with, you know, data that you actually have, with research that you've done. All these things all tie in for you to be able to deliver more value to your client, which is ultimately how you get paid more, right? That's literally the only reason why a client is going to pay you more because you can deliver more value or even perceived value to them, that's how you get more profitable. As a brand designer. That's why you're going to be able to attract those higher quality clients that choose you above everybody else. So everyone else is just designing a logo, they're just choosing the color. They're just making things look nice, but they can't connect it to the business, their objectives. Everything's just looking nice. It's a completely different conversation when you're talking strategy, when you're talking about doing brand strategy, when you're talking about linking everything together and making everything harmonious to get that end result. And you can tell when brand design has been thought through super thoroughly and the research has been done because you get a result which is far more thorough, far more in depth, far more confident and structured and organized, and it just looks far more credible from the second Julie's on it. Now, what I want to do is a little bit of an exercise. So I want you to go out there and find a brand that you love. Just go to their website. I could be any brand, it could be a fashion brand, it could be a watch brand, it could be a sports brand, anyone. Go to their website. And look at how their website is structured. Okay? And try to either look at a way that you would actually improve the website or look at what they're doing really well, which you can see is tailored towards their goals and objectives, right? Just try and take what you've learned and just try and put yourself in a position where you can actually look at what other brands are doing and ultimately find a way to learn from what they're doing already. And remember, at the end of this phase, you're also going to be able to test your knowledge with the quiz. So remember that, that's coming later on, but until then I'll see you in the next lesson. 3. The difference between logos & strategic branding: So what is the difference between a logo and strategic branding? Well, like we touched on before, think of branding like a jigsaw puzzle. There are a lot of different pieces, and 100%, the logo is a very important piece of that jigsaw puzzle. A logo is essentially a visual image or graphic that can help a customer identify brand. And although there are obviously different versions of the logo that you can prepare for a client, which will come to a little bit later on in the course, it is still just one piece of a much broader and much more complex puzzle, which is ultimately the client's brand. Now, strategic branding is everything. It's the full puzzle. It is the colors. It is the typography. It is the tone of voice. It is the positioning. It's the actual message that you're actually conveying to the target audience. It's everything together. It's how things fit. It's the feeling that you're branding evokes within the customer, your target audience, when they see it for the very first time. Does it make them feel excited? Does it make them feel like you are super professional and credible and established? Does it make you feel like you're more kind of organic and earthy? Listen, the amount of emotions that you can evoke within a customer, a particular person that you're trying to connect with, with your visual branding and everything else that comes around that as part of your strategic brand it is endless. You can make people feel motivated. You can make people feel calm all from choosing a different typeface, right? So this is super important because we need to understand and we'll come to this a little bit later on in the course when we start looking at research and examples, you need to start to look at other brands. And instead of just saying, Oh, I like that logo, or I like how that was designed, or maybe this could have been done a little bit better. We need to think about things from a strategic standpoint. So what were they trying to make the customer feel? Is a much better question to ask ourselves. What type of customer are they trying to connect with? Why did they choose that typeface? Why is that color palette used in this way? All of these questions are going to help us to understand branding to a strategic level far higher than you know, 99.9% of logo designers out there in the world. People just making a logo to try and ultimately make an income, it is a very different ballgame when you're thinking about the broader spectrum of what the brand's trying to achieve and how to connect with their target audience, and then coming up with creative ways to do that. So just to summarize the difference, before we move on to some examples and digging a little bit deeper, a brand's logo, without doing the research and, you know, understanding the customer and really understanding the brand's objectives is just a visual graphic. A strategic brand identity is a visual graphic, but it is developed in a way where it's going to position their brand strategically to help them meet their objectives and connect with the audience that they want to connect with. Those are the two differences, and they are worlds apart. The logo designer who just creates logos, they get paid peanuts for their time. Strategic brand identity developers, people who actually understand how to develop brands through visual design and graphics. These guys get paid tenfold, 20 times. Than these guys. And the reason is they can link their design back to the research. It gives the client confidence. Now, later on in this course, we're going to go through the different types of logos, so you can learn kind of which type of style is best for you personally, because it's going to probably be one or two that you're really, really great. Like, you could potentially be world class at. And then there are other ones which you can do if you need to, but they're not kind of your bread and butter. They're not the things that you are the best out if that makes sense. So for me, for example, I specialize in abstract or pictorial logos, whereas some other people may be better at mascots, for example, whereas mascots, although I can do it and I have done in the past, pretty successfully, to be honest, it's not really my cup of tea. It's not really something I enjoy most. I like taking a a message which is super complex, simplifying and boiling it down to a single essence and then communicating that in a single visual mark. That's my cup of tea. That's the thing that I could do every day and not get bored. Other people are very different. For you, for example, it could be very different, or it could be the same. We don't know yet. We're going to find that out a little bit later on in the program, but we just need to keep an open mind and understand that there are some different styles of logos that you're specifically going to be much, much, much better at and could potentially be world class at in time, but you need to understand what different types of logos were out there and then go through the process of kind of understanding where your confidence lies and also why your curiosity kind of leads you, because I think that is the most important thing overall. Now, we're going to dive into some examples of branding, not just logos, but kind of the whole brand identity, just to kind of see how it's done well sometimes and also done not so well, which should then start to confirm the differences between a logo on its own and strategic branding that is well thought through, well researched and developed fully. Now, I cannot emphasize enough, and we'll go through this far deeper later on the course, how important it is to understand your target audience, who you're trying to connect with. With the examples that I'm going to go through with you in literally a couple of seconds, it is going to be very evident the type of customer that they're trying to connect with. So let's dive into the first example, and then we can kind of look at how that particular example reflects the type of target audience that they are trying to connect with. So let's dive into the first one, which is Burger King. Okay, so what did we learn from watching that Burger King rebrand? Well, they didn't really change much from the previous Burger King branding. But who are they trying to connect with? Think about it. The font is super approachable and fun and kind of carefree. The colors that they're using are not super primary colors, like, almost, like, childlike colors, but they're kind of in the middle. They're not super sophisticated, either. They're bright, they're colorful, they're fun, again, approachable. And it just looks like a fun place to be. Right? They are trying to connect with a target audience that doesn't specifically care about their health, right, right? Listen, I love a burger as much as anyone, but there is a specific type of person that's going to be going to Burger King again and again and again and again and again. And that particular person, and there's nothing wrong with it. It's, you know, each to their own. But that particular type of person is not going to be eating a salad six days a week and then going to Burger King maybe one day a week. That particular type of person is going to see Burger King as a fast and easy alternative to get their calories or lunch or quick lunch or quick dinner on the way home from work to help them just satisfy their hunger. They don't really care about nutrition, right? So Burger King is just like, Listen, we're a fun place to be. We're going to do some cheap, approachable priced food that you can eat on the fly, nice and quick, and then get home and I don't know, watch TV with your wife or, you know, husband, whatever. That is why they chose that particular tie face. That's why they have a really approachable color palette. That is why the logo animations and the animations overall are kind of quite fun and upbeat and, you know, happy, ultimately. That is all done on purpose to basically get someone through the door so they can buy a burger. That is all done on purpose to help the brand come across as super approachable. Now, I'm not sure if you know this, but there's actually a really interesting story about the brand positioning between McDonald's and Burger King. So, for example, McDonald's positions itself as fast food, right? You go in, the food's already there, you literally just take the food and you go. Burger King position themselves twice quite differently. The first time, they essentially position themselves as you have to wait a little bit longer because our food is fresher, right? That's what they tried. And then they tried it again a little while later, where the ABC showed two different burgers, one, which was the McDonald's burger, which just stayed pretty much perfect for, like, months. And their burger, which literally after a couple of days, just kind of withered into dust ultimately or had rotted and was, like, green and horrible. This was a groundbreaking piece of advertising, which, I think, worked at the time, but it was also very unconventional, and it wasn't a traditional way to sell fast food or even a food product to show it rotting, to show it, you know, with mold in such an unappetizing way. This was one of the most groundbreaking and talked about advertisements of the year or a decade, even. This is what I mean by strategic positioning, okay? You are never going to beat McDonald's at being fast. Okay? Even if you are faster, it doesn't matter because when the customer thinks about, okay, what's the burger place that I can go to, which is the fastest? McDons is the fastest. They're known to be fast. Their entire system is built on speed, right? Burger King could not compete on speed. That's the beauty of positioning. If your competition is using speed, for example, you need to look at a different way to position the brand to give the customer a reason to choose you, and that's why you need to understand who the customer is, right? That's super important. I had a client a little while ago that really wanted to be known to elevate the businesses that they work with. However, three of their competitors were already using that particular approach, so we rejiggle things around a little bit. We changed her positioning to be a little bit more unique and help her stand out, and now her business is thriving. You need to understand if you are seeing the exact same thing as your competition for your client or even for yourself, for your own agency, you're never going to stand out. There's never going to be a reason to choose you. So that's super important. Keep that in mind, because that is going to help you to position both yourself and also all of your clients far more effectively in future. Anyway, we're seeing a really good example of strategic brand design. Let's look at a really bad example. Okay, so the Jaguar rebrand was one of the most talked about rebrands that I can remember, to be completely brutally honest. It was the most hard hitting because one, it was such a change from the previous positioning. But two, it also missed the mark so, so, so badly. Now, this apparently is not a complete rebrand. They're just rebrand segment of the business. So this is a segment of the business to appeal to a much younger target audience, okay, with, you know, just one particular product. So they're basically rebranding a product range, not the actual brand overall, which is kind of confusing, but also, you know, makes a lot more sense. This particular rebrand is, in my opinion, fairly damaging for the business. And there's a lot of different reasons why. One, for example, the logo, is just really messy. It's not really very well done. It's got upper and lowercase letters. We're going to get to some rules in regards to wordmark later on when we get into the logo development phases. But this is ultimately a little bit of an abomination, in my personal opinion. But I think that's even worse. For me, personally, is not just the execution of the actual branding, but the actual positioning of the brand. Now, for example, I live in Thailand, right, and nobody cares about anyone's sexuality. Nobody cares if you're man, woman, tortoise, transgender. No one gives a crap, right? For some reason, companies like Disney Jaguar and tons of other brands, as well, are getting on this political high horse where they're ultimately making sure that, for example, out of the eight or ten people that they have in the advertisement, they have to have every single race in there. They have to have, you know, males, females, transgenders, rabbit, all that sort of carry on. There's nothing wrong with men, women, transgenders, whatever you are, different races. I get that. We're all different. What I care about is confusing the customer. I feel like the people at Jaguar did not do their research properly and they got kind of brainwashed by this ridiculous notion of trying to appeal to everyone. That is the cardinal sin of positioning. If you do not understand your customer and who you're trying to connect with and what their interests are, and you're just trying to appeal to everybody, you start making things look quite messy, much like this advertisement which I've just showed you. You have no idea who they're kind of targeting. You don't know the motivations. You didn't even see a car in the advertisement. You have no idea what they're selling. If you show this to an alien, the alien would be like, remember me. But whatever language they speak, they would not know what you're actually trying to sell them. Now, a lot of people said you have to make the car the star of the advertisement. I disagree with that, because there was an amazing Nike ad where there was just kind of an unfit boy running down a road which was one of the most talked about and one of the most effective ads of all time. The first print ad by Nike was essentially a random runner in the distance where you can't even see him because it's a silhouette. You can't even see his shoes, but you can see the park that he's running through really early in the morning, and it's a little tag line on the bottom saying there's no finish line. That is an effective advertisement. They know who they're speaking to, and everything that they have done is related back to speaking to that particular type of person and trying to motivate them to get out there in the morning to get after it. Jaguar is not trying to do that. Jaguar has no idea what it's trying to do. In my humble opinion, but what do I know? So yeah, learn from this because this is a prime example of when brand identity design, but also strategic positioning goes terribly, terribly wrong. So learn from this, and let's move on. Okay, so here's another example of how a brand can look super approachable, super friendly, and just like a fun place to be. Okay, you get the idea. Now, the reason I wanted to show you Duncan and their rebrand was for two reasons. One, it links into the Burger King example, which I showed you a little bit earlier, but secondly, a far more important example. This was a rebrand from Dunkin doughnuts to Duncan. Why did they do that? Because Dunkin doughnuts in the mind of the customer, still now, to be honest, sold doughnuts. Duncan, which they've made a point of in this particular video, sells far more than doughnuts now. It sells sandwiches. It sells espresso, which is basically coffee. But you get the idea. The reason that they did that is to allow them to expand their product range, bagels for examples, bagels for examples. Ash Browns, croissants, bro, all these things are now in Duncan's product range. And by calling it Dunkin doughnuts, they could have still done it, but they basically limited their ability to communicate that they did more than just doughnuts. This was a massive risk, but also it had to be done because ultimately the customer was not going to be able to start to relate those different products that Duncan wanted to add to their experience. To the Duncan brand until they took doughnuts off their name. That was the entire reason behind it. And I thought this was a great move by Duncan, ultimately. But let's dive into another example by WeWork, where this is going to essentially just show us a slightly more kind of professional, less informal approach to brand ident, design from a strategic standpoint, but also still keeping things kind of fun and not too serious. So you see how beforehand, the wordmark that they had was a little bit more curvy, a little bit more approachable. Now they have kind of tightened things up and made it a little bit more sharp. That's intentional. That is a boardroom of people sitting down and saying, Okay, this is how we want to be portrayed. This is the type of person that we want to attract into our business. We want to attract someone who's more sharp and more serious about what they do. We don't just want people coming here just to clown around like, you know, like a community space. We want people to come here to do work to get progress so that people can start relating the we work brand to being productive, not just clowning around and meeting their friends at a secondary workplace, if that makes sense. Since that wordmark looks a lot cleaner. It looks a lot more sharp. It looks a lot more professional than the original one, which was ultimately this one. So yeah, take that on board because that's super important. So something that I want to just point out is this rebrand does a fantastic job of balancing, being approachable with professionalism. Because if you're going to go to a workplace, right, you don't want to be like, super corporate and, like, super, super strict and, like, you know, you've got to wear a suit to work every day, although she is wearing a suit, it's kind of a colorful one. You get the idea. There's professionalism, but in kind of a colorful way with personality. So it's kind of indirectly suggesting, Listen, this is a professional place of work where you can come and you can meet with like minded people who are also serious about what they do, but you can still wear your blue suit. You can still have fun. You can still be yourself. That's a difference. That's kind of the use of color and the wordmark and the typography and the style of the logo and also the typography that they're using. These illustrations, which again, we'll touch on a little bit later on in the course, how to use those, how to do those. This is all done on purpose. Create freedom, but also structure. Okay? So for example, here, you have a very strict yellow box structure. But then you have an extremely free drawn, organic, hand drawn effect for the actual image, freedom, structure and freedom. This is the perfect balance between the two, which we can 100% learn from. Hopefully, you took a little bit from these examples of understanding the difference between just doing a logo and the reasoning behind all of these decisions that we're making. As a strategic brand designer. So over now, you're starting to really understand the difference between just a logo and designing a logo with no real purpose and brands that actually do this with intention from understanding their target audience, right? The reason that we did this rebrand is because they had data and research to suggest that people were maybe not coming back to their particular locations because they didn't feel like they're going to maybe either be theirself or they felt like it was a little bit too corporate and strict and there wasn't enough opportunity to either be yourself or connect with others. This is all intentional. They've got research. They've got data. They've watched people in these spaces interact with each other, and this is ultimate the solution that the design team has created from that insight. This is the fun stuff. Like, this is why I love strategic brand design. And this is why you're going to be so much further ahead than every other brand designer out there who doesn't know this ****. They don't have a clue this even exists. I see you in the next lesson? I come. See that. 4. Best free resources for logo & brand identity design: Okay, so I know a W Illustrator isn't free, but all the assets that I'm going to share with you in this video are free, completely free tools that you can use to accelerate your brand design career and ultimately get better results, okay? And they're all free. You don't have to pay a single penny. Let's dive in. In regards to fonts, there's two places that I always go for fonts. The first is Google Fonts. You can literally download anything that you want here, absolutely free of charge, and it all has free, so you can use any of these fonts in regards to any of your projects, and you have full commercial rights to do that. At least at the moment you do. I'm not sure if that changes, but at the point of doing this video, then that is essentially the case. Now, all you need to do to download these fonts is to click on the one that you like, click Get Font. There you go. You just download it, and then ultimately it should show up as an option when you are working within different programs, whether it be PowerPoint, Illustrator, et cetera, et cetera, another place that has some great fonts, which are a little bit more creative and a little bit more kind of design oriented is myfonts. So that's myfonts.com. Now myfonts.com is a site where you can pay for the actual fonts, or you can do something which I sometimes do just to kind of get inspiration for some of the fonts that I use. For example, if I like this one, and I want to do it for a brand called I saw, right? What I would basically do is I would just type the name in here, and then I would just copy this image, paste it in Illustrator, and then just outline it, which I can show you how to do a little bit later on the course. And that will ultimately allow you to get something very similar to the font without having to actually pay for it. Obviously, it's a little bit unethical to take fonts from, you know, websites and just use the exact font, you have to kind of change it a little bit and just use it as inspiration, but you can't take inspiration from literature anywhere, and fonts generally all look pretty much the same anyway. So keep that in mind, it's a really great little tip which I've been using for, you know, a little while now every now and again for some personal projects. So yeah, feel free to use that. Now, in regards to imagery, imagery is super important because it helps to give context to the designs that you're doing. Okay? So for example, when I'm doing brand naming, okay, which is one of the pillars of my business, I ultimately always make sure that I have a relevant image find the name so that people can kind of link the name that I'm suggesting to an actual image, which is relevant to the business. Osplash is ultimately completely free. You can get any of these images completely free. I mean, this one looks absolutely great. Black and white. It's obviously very fitness related. She's cooking food. This would be a great image for a hero section for a really cool and kind of down to earth fitness brand, right? All of these images are completely free, and it is exactly the same on pixels. So pixels.com, this website sometimes is down, and you have to kind of reload it a few times. But ultimately, you can see here that this has lots of different not just photos, but also videos as well. So I always use this for B roll, for example, for my YouTube videos and for some of my courses. We'll probably use some of the stuff and pixels in this particular course, as well. It just helps you to kind of just break things up and just offer, like, a really high quality piece of B roll to anything that you're making, it's really useful. But the images are also great as well. I actually find the images is more valuable than the video sometimes. Sometimes, the videos are a little bit kind of boring. Yeah, I mean, I across the actual photos, there are tons and tons and tons to choose from. So free Pick is another website which is absolutely free. To a point, you can pay for a more premium option, which I think is around $20 or something. This is in Taiba so, yeah, that's roughly around roughly about Tin quid or something like that. It's not that expensive, to be honest. And what you get is actually really, really great. You can get, for example, mock ups, which are completely free for you to use. So let's, for example, say cup. But you can also pay for a premium one. So these little crowns are essentially the higher level of standard, which you can choose from, but you can get this one for free, which is absolutely great. This one's free, this one's free, this one's free. So you can use quite a lot which are completely free. But for the highest standard of option, you do need to pay for them, ultimately. So just keep that in mind. Now, another really great tool that I've been using is Firefly, which is ultimately EI generated imagery. So for example, here, let's do, um, I need a yellow dog eating a frog and riding a skateboard. Obviously, I'm not sure if you're ever going to actually need to search for that. Now this is ultimately really great for just getting creative imagery. It isn't perfect, but it basically just helps to give you ideas for certain things. So say, for example, this is all EI generated. It isn't great, obviously, and it's very, very random. But I sometimes use it for thumbnails. And what you can do is you can actually upload images which can give reference. So, for example, if I wanted a more kind of realistic version, then I would ultimately look to do something that's, like, hyperrealistic, and I would, you know, can choose the aspect ratio of it, for example. I could actually put an image of the actual dog that I won and uploaded here, and then it will actually bring that dog up within the actual search results. So it's a super impressive tool, and it's something that you can use to yeah just generate, like, some really interesting images which you wouldn't normally be able to get anywhere else. Check this out. Use it. It's fun. It gives you a couple of different options to look at. But yeah, ultimately, it's not going to win any awards, I think. So there we go. It's super realistic. And this is super fun, right? Like, this is a really, really great. Like, look at this. This is absolutely unbelievable. Look at this little frog. It looks super cute. Yeah, like, this is awesome. So coolers is a really great tool that you can use. Now, this used to be 100% free, but for some reason now, I think they've started charging for it, or at least you can kind of explore different color palettes. So this is kind of a weird one, but this might actually be the best way to go. So for example, if you're looking for a different color palette, you can basically just go here, and they've got millions upon millions upon millions of different color palettes that you can use, which you can basically take for your branding, right? Now, I actually don't prefer using coolers for color palettes. I actually prefer using something like Pintrest because it gives a better array of colors that I actually want, if that makes sense, and it just really helps. So for example, I could change that to red or orange or whatever, and it just gives me a range of different color palettes that are currently out there online that I can take inspiration from and learn from, and then ultimately using my own branding. Okay? So I can, you know, swipe this, swipe this, swipe this, use it in my own concepts, and then kind of take it from there and ultimately learn. So that is my preference, but obviously, you just do whatever you think is best. Now, another really great tool is Adobe color wheel, okay? So that's a color.adobe.com. And this is really great because it actually teaches you and we're going to go into color and using color more strategically and actually using color theory in far more detail later on in the course. If, for example, your client really wanted to have red, as part of their branding. You can place that color as red, and then you can literally have colors which are complimentary to that using the triad approach. You can also have this approach as well. So this color really complements this color really well. You can also do an analog approach, which gives you other options. So you can ultimately play around and create color palettes using color theory without actually having much knowledge about how to use color theory. We're going to go into a deeper later on in the course, but this is a really great tool to ultimately get you started and really help you to understand color theory and why it's so important to use color theory to your advantage when you're actually developing brand identities and, you know, color palettes. Now, lastly, mockups. I have some subscriptions to mock up platforms online. And I actually think that free pick is a fantastic investment for people wanting premium mockups, right? If you're going to pick one, I would pick that one. It's the best investment overall, and it has kind of the broadest amount of mock up options that you can choose from, especially when you're first starting. And plus, you get not just mockups, but you get, you know, images, you get photos, you get videos, you get tons of stuff, right? So that's probably the best investment for you if you're on a budget. Mr. Mockup is literally completely free. So they do have premium options. I personally haven't bought any of these, but free mockups, they're awesome. They're really, really awesome. For someone just starting, you should not need any other mock ups apart from these when you're first starting out because it all is there for you, ready to use. You shouldn't really need anything more than what's here in Mr. Mockup, and it's all completely free and you don't have to pay anything, and I don't think it's ever going to be needing any sort of payment. So if you're a little bit apprehensive and you kind of want to create a mock up pack, that's what I kind of recommend. So for example, I would download maybe my favorite three out of each of the subcategories and then basically take those upload them to a G drive just in case Mr. Mockup starts to actually charge for these. That just allows you to make sure you always have those mockups safe and sound in case anything changes. That's what I would suggest, but that's just my humble opinion. Anyway, that should be more than enough for you to get started and kind of understand why you can get certain assets from for free without paying a single penny. So I hope that was helpful for you, but other than that, I will see you in the next lesson. See you there. 5. Best softwares for professional logo & brand identity design: So what software should you use as a professional brand designer? Now, it all depends on what your budget is at this stage of your journey and when you are in your journey. So don't be Illustrator it is the industry standard. It's what pretty much all professional brand designers use, and it is the one which is going to help you get the best results, I think, once you understand how to use the software. It isn't actually that hard, I think. My tools that I use are probably around ten altogether for every single brand design that I've date pretty much since I started as a brand designer ten years ago. So that is something that I would aim to eventually get to, if not straight away. If you can invest like $25 per month into getting software, so you can actually become a professional brand designer, that would be the one that I would go with. And you can maybe get some sort of free trial if you contact Adobe. But if you do end up going for Adobe Illustrator, what I sometimes do, or at least not what I do, but what someone I know does wink wink, they ultimately get the student discount by going to Google, getting a acceptance letter for a university, which is nearby their home address, and then basically just change it every single year to a different topic or a different subject. So they've basically been to, like, university for every single year since they've been using Adobe Illustrator. That's a way that you can get a little bit cheaper, just by doing the student discount thing. I think it's like $25 a month or something. Apparently, that's what my friend told me, but that is a little tip that I would use. Adobe Illustrator does take a little bit to learn, and it's not the most user friendly in the beginning. After a couple of YouTube tutorials and what we're going to teach you in this course, you're going to be pretty much confident enough to be able to make any logo that you could potentially want to. So, yeah, it's not that big of a deal to be completely honest. Now, if you don't want to use a Wi Illustrator for whatever reason, there are some other options out there. First is Figma, which is mostly used for website design, to be honest, but it can be used for graphic design as well. I don't personally use it myself. I always use a Dob Illustrator, but it is something that you can use if you are looking for an alternative option. Now, there is another option, which is a little bit more user friendly than Illustrator called Coral draw. Now, again, I haven't used it, but I've heard some good things. It is extremely user friendly. It's extremely easy to pick up. So it might be a good place to start if you are really starting from the ground up as a brand designer. If you have a little bit more experience, you're going to want to move into Adobe Illustrator as soon as possible. Even if you have literally never touched graphic design in your entire life, and you want to become a brand designer from literally taking this course, if you can afford it, go straight to Adobe Illustrator because it's going to get you the best results sooner than later, ultimately. Now, Coral draw is another option, but if you can't use coral draw, then the most basic option is ultimately Canva or Canva Pro, if you want to pay for Cava Pro. I wouldn't pay for Cava Pro, to be completely honest. I would just bite the bullet and get Adobe Illustrator and just start like a professional because I want to be a professional. Canva is more of a super user friendly option which can get you half decent results, I suppose. But if you're wanting to be the best you can possibly be, you need to be using the best software. You need to be investing in that software. So yeah, a W Illustrator to the industry standard, but there's three other options that you could potentially use if you were a little bit kind of, I don't know, tight on budget for the meantime until you start getting your first few clients. So hopefully that helps, and I'll see you in the next lesson. 6. How to harmonise all brand elements perfectly: Okay, so how do you harmonize all of your brand's elements perfectly? Can you remember what I said before about all of your brand elements and everything about your brand kind of working together effortlessly, a little bit like a jigsaw puzzle. Ultimately, everything is working together to create a bigger picture. Well, this is exactly what I mean when I talk about harmonizing your brand elements. You can have an incredible logo. You can have an unbelievable brand name. You can have an amazing tagline. But if all of those things don't work together perfectly, you're never going to get that cohesive, trustworthy feel that you want as a brand in your marketplace. Now, your logo, your name and your slogan are just three of many things and many pieces of your brand's jigsaw. We're going to go through all of those throughout the brand designer Pro course, but I just want to get it across how important it is that all of your elements of your brand or your client's brand must work perfectly together. And this is one of the things that you begin to develop as a strategic brand designer. When you start to work with clients on more complex projects, you start to understand how to fit these things together to get a better result. And ultimately, these are the types of brand strategists and brand designers that end up getting paid so much more. The brand designers who can ultimately develop a brand identity or design something which fits perfectly with the brand's overall strategy, therefore, adding more value to customers and clients, therefore, getting paid more for your solutions. And this all ultimately just comes down to taste, and it takes a little bit of time to develop this taste and this understanding of kind of what works and what doesn't work. And once you kind of acquire this taste and you get used to developing brands to this level, you start to see your income skyrocket because you're so much more desired to work with. Like, people want to work with you because they want that big kind of picture to make complete sense to their customer. That's ultimately what being a brand designer is all about. Connecting your designs to the strategy of the clients and helping everything come together perfectly. That is your job as a strategic brand designer at the highest level. Now, I'm going to show you some examples a little bit later on on exactly how to do this. There's some great brands out there that have been developed on the likes of Be hands, for example, that do the harmonizing of all elements very, very well. And also, as well, when you kind of develop this taste, you not only can develop brands yourself, but you can also spot why other brands don't work as well. So you can, maybe take a client's project that just doesn't feel right to them and say, Okay. I know how to fix this just by looking at it, because you know what's kind of not fitting and not feeling right, so you can tweak it and then get it to a level where the client's super happy. Now, the steps to actually harmonizing a brand and making sure that you get that kind of cohesive, bigger picture feel comes in three stages. And the first step is always research. For example, if you are trying to create a perception for your brand but you don't understand your target audience yet. You don't know how to communicate because you don't know who you're speaking to. You know, trying to communicate to someone that you are super professional and maybe a big Lotham or, you know, you're super serious, as opposed to being kind of a treadi fashion brand. Those two brands are not speaking the same language. They are talking to completely different people. Um, that is something that you really need to take into consideration, and that can only come, and the clarity in that particular area can only be achieved through research. Now, within Brand Designer Pro, member, you do get the brand strategy template, which you can use with clients. You're completely free to do that. And you can also use it to conduct your research and to log your research, and to ultimately present it to the client and say, Okay, this is who we're trying to connect with. This is how we can connect with them, and then that is ultimately giving you a foundation to make your decisions when you get to the design stage. This is why I very rarely get revisions with clients. I very rarely have to worry about that because we've already confirmed things as we're going through the process, and it isn't as much of a kind of reveal when we, you know, share the logo with it's more of a case of just simply having an expected result that is predictable based on what we've already discussed through the research, and what I've already told them is going to essentially happen. So again, research is super important. You need to make sure that everything that you're doing is linking back to the research. What type is are you using? Research? What color do you think is going to work best? Research, you know, looking at your competition, looking at your target audience, looking at how you want to position the brand. What are the opportunities in the market at the moment? What type of logo is going to be best, looking at the research. What are your competition doing? Where is the logo going to be applied? All of these things come down to research. So don't skip this step because this is the difference between having a brand identity which is going to look super cohesive and super harmonized from the start and something that just falls flat on its face because it hasn't been developed with research in mind. Now, once you actually do the research, you understand exactly what you're trying to achieve, the second step is to design with consistency in mind. So what do I mean by this? Well, as a brand designer, you are not developing a logo. You are ultimately creating a branding system, and a brand is ultimately the face of the company. It is the visual appearance of the company so that this brand can be easy to recognize by the target audience that he is trying to connect with, okay? You are developing a system. So you need to make sure that you understand where your client's logo is going to be used. You need to make sure that you understand, you know, the different types of typography that's going to be used in digital application as well as print. You need to understand the different variations of logo that are necessary. Maybe, for example, your client needs packaging design. So you need to make sure that you have a pattern in there to be used for the paper which is inside the actual packaging to make sure that's consistent. By understanding where the logo and where the brand is going to be applied, you can offer a better overall solution to make sure that everything across the brand at every single touchpoint, whether it be the packaging, the website, the social media banner, you know, the stickers, the email signature, everything is consistent so that when somebody gets in touch with the brand or has some sort of experience with the brand, it is consistent and predictable, therefore building trust and reducing the friction that they have when they're thinking about buying from that company. And then once you have everything consistent, you think you're ready there step three, which is reflection. Now, this is by far, one of the most important steps to developing a brand or doing any sort of creative work. You've done the work. Instead of sending it to the client then, take 24 hours. Just look at it a couple of times over the next 24 hours. You're going to spot opportunities to improve that work. And this is going to be usually the difference between a client saying, Wow, this is pretty good and a client saying, Holy ****, I cannot wait to work with this person again because they have literally went not just an extra mile, but an extra 20 miles, an extra 50 miles. This is the difference. And you can achieve this by doing one simple thing, taking 24 hours to reflect on your designs. Think about, okay, does this work? How could I potentially make this better? Could I make this better? No. Okay. What about this? Looking at every single element and looking at it from the client's point of view, and also reflecting on your research, because listen, we all know when we are kind of knee deep or even shoulder deep sometimes in some types of projects that are a little bit more complicated. When we are super deep into a project, it is so easy for us to get kind of bogged down and just kind of, you know, be too close to the project for too long. Back. Get a good night's sleep. Caffeinate. Get plenty of coffee. If coffee is not your thing, get something else that's caffeine related. And just look at the project again with a fresh pair of eyes the next day, and you will spot little tiny things that could be tweaked and could be made just that little bit better. It's that little tiny bit at the end that makes all the difference, trust me. And this, as well, also really reduces the amount of visions that you get, at least for me. It also makes the projects that I work on and the end results so much better. So I'm actually prouder to share my results and the work than I'm doing. But anyway, let's dive into a couple of examples from Be hands. So I can actually show you what I mean by harmonizing everything in regards to the brand elements, just to give you some things to kind of think about and also some inspiration, maybe. So, here are some examples I really want to show you. So the first one is for this brand, which is a macho brand. So it's kind of like got a Japanese vibe in regards to the actual branding. But you can see here. That there's a couple of things going on, and I'm going to kind of work through them with you in this particular example. But you'll see that all of the elements of the logo are identically balanced. So they're exactly the same weight. So, for example, the K, the E, the Y, K, the O, they're all the same weight. They're all the same thickness, which I'm basically meaning the line around the outside. You'll also see that the logo shares the same weight. It's the same thickness, right? That gives them a form of DNA between each other. So they feel like they belong together. Okay, here, what I see a lot with a lot of logos that are kind of out there in the world is the logo and the actual typeface doesn't feel like they belong together. They don't share a common DNA, which is one of kind of the most fundamental principles of logo design, at least in my humble opinion. Now you'll also see that the color and the textures that they're using on the actual colours are all very similar as well throughout. So what you'll see here is you've got this kind of, like, slightly less saturated matcher green with kind of like a noise effect on it. It's kind of like a very kind of rustic noise effect. You'll see here that matches this, but this is obviously white, but then you still have this green here. The texture on the actual card is, again, that kind of, like, rustic effect, if that makes sense. Again, the logo looks great here as well. The actual texture of the matcher on top when it's being shaken, that is also textured. It's not flat. It's not kind of Shimi, it's very sort of bobbly and kind of up and down, which matches this effect here. And it also gives a little more of a premium feel as well if you think about it. So there's tons and tons and tons of things going on here as we sort of work through examples like this. And when you're working through really well finished and executed brand design, you can pick up on these things again and again and again. It's one of those things that here, for example, it's super simple. Look at how much space there is. This is actually a design philosophy called math within interior design and also just design in general in Japanese culture, right? Where you essentially had a lot of kind of white space or sort of space to be explored, this is making sure that the actual information on the packaging is where your eyes go. It's not kind of like littered around with lots of images of, like, mature brushes and stuff. Like, it's all just focused on what's important. It feels minimal. It feels more premium, and it feels better. And that is, you know, corresponded throughout all of the brand's elements. So you won't see them kind of just litter things just for the sake of it. So a really, really great example. This example is another one, which really caught my eye. This breaks some rules a little bit. What I've mentioned, or I will mention, as well throughout this course is the weight of everything needs to be kind of the here kind of almost breaks that rule, right? Because it's not the same thickness, right, but it is still the same as this e. It's basically being cut off this e and then put on there or the H or the Q, whatever. The thickness is still consistent, but they're breaking the rule slightly. And you're going to get to this later on in this particular phase when you get to the lesson called thinking outside the box with local and brand identity design. Once you understand the fundamentals, you can break them a little bit, and it makes the logos that you create look a little bit more interesting. So here, for example, you can see this case so there we go, so we've got a nice, full wordmark, but then they've broken it down into a really nice clean icon, which looks great. This blue and this kind of off wire looks really great together. I really love that. So they've formed it from just two basic shapes, which I'm assuming I haven't read into it, but they are probably in some way related to what the brand does. So they've basically created this entire mark from just circles and squares, which is awesome. Create a full wordmark from that. Color palette super simple. One thing as well, the better you get a brand identity development and design, the more simple your designs become because you become more confident in the fundamentals and your execution of those fundamentals. So that's kind of something that we can all aspire to and work on. So it looks super clean, it looks super nice. All the elements, this is like a stationary upload. I'm not 100% loving this business card. I feel like it could be a little bit more minimal. It's a little bit busy for me, but yeah, it still looks good. Really, really nice, really, really nice project. So this was a project which I felt was it's more on the busier side, right? There's a lot going on. Okay. The reason I wanted to show you this is because the other two, the macho one and the Koi example, they were a little bit more simple. So for this one, this is kind of on the other end of the spectrum. So you can see here, it's like, I believe, a bakery brand or something. It's, it's like some sort of bakery or food place, maybe a coffee place. They do something really, really great. They use patterns really, really well. For example, know the little coffee holders that you get, which are, I think here. I think that's here we go. So you can see there there's like coffee holds where you basically used to be able to, like, stretch them, if that makes sense, and it used to kind of both aerate the coffee, so it keeps it hot, but it also kind of keeps your hands cool so it doesn't kind of let it touch the heat directly. I think they basically took that particular shape and created a digital version of that to ultimately make this awesome pattern that they can use throughout the entirety of the brand identity. So you can see here they have this here. They've got this on the actual coffee holders. They have this on some sort of cards, I believe. They also have it on marketing elements, I believe. They literally use it everywhere. They have it on bags, which just looks absolutely awesome. They have it on business cards, gifts vouchers. And that's what I mean about really harmonizing everything and making everything feel so you know, together and wholesome. It's not always about keeping things simple. But in this case, this person, whoever has done this, they understand what they're doing, and they've probably did the whole simple approach, but then they probably went the entire opposite direction and did this sort of this is like a fitness brand or something related to food, I believe, where you can kind of get groceries, maybe a fitness or organic focused, food establishment, but it just looks awesome. And again, they're following the same rules again and again and again. Also breaking rules, right? Again, we'll come to that later on in this phase, but super important to think about, because it's definitely something that we can learn from. So direct talk, I wanted to move on to something which is a little bit more corporate because that's kind of the types of logos that I personally like, to be honest. I kind of like these types of logos. Direct talk does a great job, literally the exact same thing. So it has a really strong mark here, which obviously is a D with a talking symbol inside, which, it's pretty unique. It's pretty nice. You know, it's definitely been done before, but I think they execute in quite a unique way, if that makes sense, with their actual brand identity, what you'll see is the keeping is nice and simple, so nice and clean, very readable font, quite predictable, to be honest. But then they start to use the colors in a really clean and minimal way, again, three colors. That's it. For a color palette. For a brand. That's all you need. Look at how they use this here, the icon. You can see how it looks absolutely fantastic. That looks great. Scalability. Got Twitter handles, for example, have you know, maybe Instagram posts. This looks absolutely incredible. This looks awesome. Would probably say that if you looked at this particular billboard and this one, do you think they're from the same brand? They're branded with the same branding, but I think that the visual language that they're using is a little bit different. So you see how this is kind of, like, very, like, abilesqe and it's very kind of I don't know, it just feels a little bit more clean, and also it's got C here, so there's a spelling mistake, eagle eye. This is different. This is more colorful. This is a little bit more kind of in your face. I prefer this one, but they are very different in regards to the visual language. So that's why they feel a little bit disjoined. So we can both learn what people do well. We can also learn what they're doing not so well as well, so keep that in mind. This again, looks like these here look very clean. This background thing, I'm not 100% sure on this, like, paper dot line thing. I'm not sure on this being, like, bright, bright purple when it looks great here. This looks not too bad. It isn't too bad. I'm not 100% sure on the um, the spacing of this or how it's not centered, that annoys me a little bit. And also, as well, how there's absolutely no relationship between this element and these elements here. What should happen is this should end where something else ends, and this should end where something else ends. So it actually has a relationship to the other element on the actual card or pat. Not sure why they did that. This is actually a great example of a one which isn't done too well. They do some things well, but, yeah, some things are not non ideal. I mean, this doesn't look actually that great. They're not using the same color. I would be using the same color. And also as well, the fun that they're using is not consistent with the fun that they've been using throughout the entire element. So overall, they've been doing some things, pretty good. So things look good, but some of the elements that they have used is not quite a bit of scratch for me personally. This looks great. Everything from here downward is a little bit questionable. It's almost like they changed designs halfway through, which is weird. But nevertheless, anyway, we learn, we learn, we continue. Traffic connect. Again, pretty distinctive and strong brand mark. Makes sense, TNC, awesome. Let's see how they actually execute. So you can see here they're using, you know, the black and the sort of really bright luminous green really well. Awesome, awesome awesome looks good. For this purpose, because they've been using the same visual language the entire time, it makes sense here because they're using the green and the black in the same way. Again, here, I don't mind this because it looks it's the exact same mock up as the other one. But the only difference is this isn't consistent with everything else. This is consistent with everything else, because it's very loud. It's very kind of in your face, if that makes sense. Yeah, this looks awesome. You can see how they're using the same visual language again and again and again. You would not see me dead in that jumper, but it is definitely still consistent. These are super busy, but it's ker if they're busy and they're not like super clean and minimal, like this one. This one's a little bit more busy and a little bit more colorful. This one's more clean and direct. These are all kind of bright and colorful and very kind of loud. But that's what the brand's visual language is. They're not switching it up. They're staying consistent. Same with this, same with this. Same with this. So this is a really great example. So hopefully from those five examples, you've kind of gotten an idea of what to do, what not to do, and we're going to go further into it later on as we kind of move through, you know, more examples, designing logos, you know, bringing together your brand identities and bringing together, you know, guidelines, for example, to create these visual languages and guidelines to make sure they're always consistent over time for your client. But this is just, you know, five examples that I picked out so we could learn it from. So anyway, I hope you enjoyed that, and I'll see you in the next lesson. 7. The importance of brand guidelines & how to create great ones for clients: Okay, so what are brand guidelines? Well, brand guidelines are essentially a comprehensive document to give to your clients so that they can then make sure their branding is going to be consistent and everything's explained, the typefaces, the colors, icons. Everything is consistent and harmonized, ready for the client to sign off, and then use those guidelines for their visual branding. And also, as well for maybe their other communications as well. It doesn't just have to be visual. It can be everything in one single document. Mostly it's just visual. But sometimes it includes things like tone of voice. It includes the types of headlines that you would potentially use, all that sort of good stuff. I want to show you an example of brand guidelines, which we'll go through a little bit later. But why should you actually understand how to create great brand guidelines? Because one, it's an additional source of revenue. If you just design a logo for somebody, the worst thing that could happen is they start using that logo, and they maybe start changing stuff, which I've had clients do that many, many years ago before I started offering brand guidelines as a service. They start changing things. They start thinking, Oh, they can use like the white logo on like a super low contrast. Background, it's like, Listen, you don't understand design. You're going to end up using this incorrectly. Let me show you and give you a guideline so that you don't make silly mistakes. That's the purpose of our brand guideline. From a selfish point of view, profitability, right? You can sell brand guidelines from anywhere between, depending on the complexity of the actual document, anywhere between, you know, $300 to $3,000, in some cases, if it's super, super comprehensive. This is easy work for brand designers, right? If you get a really great template, which is actually included in Brand Designer Pro anyway, so you can download that professional template, which you can use for free, that is all going to help you to get more profit, more revenue, and also, as well, most importantly, serve the client better, okay? So you're going to be able to get them a better result over the long term because they're going to be able to be consistent for the long term. Now, one thing as well that every single brand guidelines should include is logo usage. The reason I say that is clients don't understand branding. They don't really understand design, otherwise they wouldn't be contacting you. You need to show them which logos to use where and how to use them. Super, super important, so keep that in mind. You should also be showing them the color palette and how to use them. I'm going to show you an example in a couple of seconds, which will kind of show you both the template that I use, which you can download as part of Brand Designer Pro, but also as well, some other examples from Amazon and Jeingo which can help you kind of understand how they do things, so you can kind of understand both sides of the spectrum. But color usage, color palette, typography, sizing of the typography, where to use certain typefaces. That's another one that's really important. And also, as well, imagery. Imagery is not talked about enough. You can select the right style of imagery or the same style of imagery from pixels and from Unsplash and from free pick to create kind of, like, a feel for the photography that particular brand is using, even if you're not doing the photography yourself and it's not shot for the actual brand. It's just kind of images that you're kind of collecting. You can still have, like, a visual language with the photography that you're using. That is something again that should be included in the brand guidelines. And we're going to go through that later on. But this is super important for you because one it's going to get you more income, secondly, it's going to help to serve your clients better. So let's look at a couple of examples. I'll show you one from me and also two from Amazon and Jewel Lingo. And then you're going to be able to see exactly what brand guidelines should look like. There's lots of different kinds that come in different forms, but here's a couple of examples. So the first brand guidelines we're going to look at is Jewel Lingo. So if you don't know what eLingo is, it's essentially an app, I believe, or a platform that essentially teaches you how to speak different languages. And this particular brand actually has a mascot logo, which we'll dive into now. So this is an online brand identity the reason that they do this is they ultimately have this as a website so that they can change it and they can edit it, and all they need to do is just essentially send someone the link to this particular page. And what they'll do is they'll basically update this maybe every quarter or every year just to basically make sure everything's up to date. And all they need to do is just send someone the link to this particular page, and they can all the information that they need. So, for example, here, we have the different logos. We have some clear space around the logo. We'll come to that in some other examples as well, a little bit later on. And we actually have the template within Brand sired Pro for you to do all of this. Not a website version, but you can do it as a PDF really easily with the template that we have general positioning. So again, it's just showing people how to use the logo, how not to use it. You know, don't change and put a gradient on there, you know, don't make it purple, don't outline it, all that stuff. You'll see some common threads between each of the brand guidelines as well as you kind of go through them. For example, now we have the bird mascot, okay, which is really cool. Actually we really love this logo, to be honest. We've got the spacing with the mascot, without the mascot. So these are the different types of logos for different locations, right? So, for example, here we have the logo for the icon, which is going to be on your mobile phone, and then here we have something which is a little bit more minimal. And when it's a lot bigger, we can use this with the actual bird, right? So again, it's just giving people options to use different variations of the brand's logo, whilst also making sure that everything is super consistent and super minimal. Again, here, so we look at, for example, writing. This is going to be all of the different communications like brand personality, tone, it goes through everything. It essentially helps to make sure that there are guidelines in place throughout every single step of the brand's communications to ensure that there's not going to be any mistakes. That's the most important thing. Illustrations is another one. Look, so these are the illustration styles that suit the brand. These particular ships shouldn't be used. Okay? So in construction, these ships can be used. These ships should not be used. So we don't need sharp shapes. They want nice curve shapes to make it approachable. This is, again, all connected to creating a design language. Here, look, you can see these. So we want nice curve ships. We don't want super sharp ships. Six ships, 15 shapes, 30 shapes. Complexity. So the complexity that they want to achieve is 15 shapes. Six shapes is too less, and 30 shapes is too many. Again, exactly the same situation here. We have this objects in space. Duolingo characters and icons are designed to be on a flat perspective. So we don't want three D. Don't want it to be kind of looking down. We want it to be just flat two D. These really help to make sure that whenever anyone is creating any asset for Duolingo, you can instantly check this with the guidelines and you can see, Okay, this doesn't fit what we are trying to do. This is one of the most well thought out brand guidelines I've ever seen to be completely brutally honest. Amazon is another great example. There's a little bit more simple, and it's a little bit more wood heavy. But it follows pretty much the same thing. So you see here, we have the clear space. Again, we also have the sizing. We have, you know, don't put.com on there. We have incorrect uses, again, outlining, you know, transparency with text over it. We have the different logo colors, so do not use anything apart from these colors. We have, you know, contrast in Magls to putting it on different backgrounds. We have the actual icon itself. We have actual uses of just using the actual icon, so the smile, which, again, is just a different variation of the logo. Again, we have the actual outlines for that, everything. So the colors, the typography, it's pretty much the exact same. Now, we have guidelines, and you actually have guidelines as part of the brand design of Pro community, where you can design brand guidelines, literally the exact same as Amazon, basically, where they basically look exactly the same as this. So you would color things like the introduction, what the actual brand story is, logos, so the two different types of logos. This is for a climb that I did a little while ago. The the different secondary logos, exclusion zones, which is essentially another word, clear space, incorrect usage, assets. So for this one, it has patterns, those didn't have patterns. Overlays. So, for example, here, let me just move my big head up there and just make it a little bit smaller. We have, you know, overlays here. So how can we use the actual icon in a really creative way Colors, so the different brown colors. These are the two different brands. So just take this one into consideration. The other one didn't end up being used, tints and shades. So different shades of those particular logos, usage, color combinations, typography, display. Sizing. Brand and action. So this is something that those guys didn't do, I think, but this is just essentially mockups to showing how the actual logo could be applied. So here, for example, this shape is the same shape as this. It's the exact same shape. I basically blew it up really big, and that's why this particular shape feels like it's part of the actual brand's language because it is the brand's language, right? Going down. So this is a mockup for the actual app that they are going to be creating, and then that's pretty much it. So that gives you a little bit of breakdown in my grass to what good brand guidelines should look like. If you have any questions, obviously, make sure you reach out, but that should be more than enough for you to feel confident that when you're using the actual templates within Brand Designer Pro, you have everything that you need to be as professional as the biggest brands in the world, Amazon, Duolingo or multimillion dollar companies. They are going to set a standard, and you can be up to that standard if you put the timing. So yeah, hopefully that was helpful, and I'll see you in the next lesson. 8. Thinking outside the box with logo & brand design: Okay, so why should you think outside the box when it comes to logo design and brand identity development? Well, here's the thing. Most of what you do as a brand designer is going to be to do two single things, help your client to connect their brand to their target audience. Okay, whether that be a business or a personal brand, it doesn't matter. Number two, you need to help them stand out. Doesn't need to be flamboyant, it doesn't need to be over the top, but it needs to be unique enough for a customer to say, m, interesting. I'll check that out. That is ultimately the key to really effective brand design. Some things can be a little bit more safe, but some things need to be a little bit more interesting and distinctive. So what I want to do is just to prepare you because when we get to the logo development phases later on in the course, you're going to learn the processes and systems that I specifically use to go through the process of taking a meeting with a client, confirming a message idea, and then ultimately creating a logo or a mark which communicates and symbolizes that particular message. That is the process. But your ability and mental limits are going to dictate your results, okay? So you need to be able to do a couple of things. Number one, you need to experiment with different shapes and ideas which you may think are not going to work, but do not be scared to fail. Cause what usually happens, maybe one in two or three projects is you'll sketch something or you'll do something. Which was outside your comfort zone, and we call it a happy accident, right? It's something which you wouldn't usually have done, but you kind of find it, and you're like, mm. That is interesting. There's one particular instance which I remember for a brand called Centipi and I found that when I put the two arrows together, it created like a hourglass shape, which represented time perfectly. That helped me get that particular project signed off, and that was all because I pushed the boundaries and found that little happy accident. Once I saw it, I was like, I've done that. I've solved the problem. This is the problem that the clients been revising and pushing for, and I'm glad they did that because it helped me to push my boundaries. But once I saw that pushing the boundary and kind of really going beyond what I thought would work, that is where the magic usually happens. So make sure you do that. Make sure you don't be scared about doing things which may not work and wasting time, because sometimes where the magic happens, that's most of the times where the magic happens. Now, another thing, which is really important when you're actually, you know, kind of thinking outside the box when it comes to logo design and brand identity design, is to storytell. So what do I mean by that? I was working with a client a couple of months ago, and these two founders, awesome, awesome girls. I absolutely love them. They're amazing. They were starting a personal color business, where they basically tell you your personal colors, and then you can choose to wear clothes which are ultimately going to help you to look better, right? I decided to create mockups. Based on who they were going to be in ten years' time. So, for example, I created a mockup of a book by both of them on personal color. Then actually just starting their business. They're not even thinking about writing a book, but I did that because I thought, I'm tapping into their long term ambitions, their long term vision of who they want to be. I'm believing in them before they even believe in themselves that they can do. I also use Firefly, which I mentioned in a previous lesson to create sort of interior design inspiration for the studio where the customers were going to come. These types of things can not even take that much time, but it's thinking far ahead and it's kind of thinking beyond just creating the logo and doing the colors, lala la la la. Go farther ahead, tell the story, get involved in the business. Think about the business as kind of your own, if that makes sense. I always do. I always look at every single client's business like it's my own business. Then I get kind of a little bit attached to it, and I'm like, Okay, it would be nice if I did that. It'd be nice if I kind of explore that. This would look cool. Oh, but maybe they'd want to do that after this. Be involved, be committed to the business and the actual client you're working with. And the last thing that I would say, before I actually dive into a couple of examples of, you know, really great, you know, outside the box thinking within brand identity design, is to break some rules sometimes. **** it. Why not? We are in the perfect environment to be able to express ourselves and express our clients' brands through the power of design and brand design. Let's have some ******* fun, as well. Why not? We should be always looking for kind of that extra little thing that we can do. If that requires, you know, breaking a few rules, why not? Just to add it as an additional thing. Maybe you want to do something that's a little bit risky in regards to the copy that's used for the brand's advertising on the billboard mockup that you're making. That's kind of a little bit cheeky, and it links into the brand's personality and the target audience that you're trying to connect with. But it's a little bit. Like, you know, the client might not like it. Do it anyway, because you can just add as an additional thing and just tell them, just preempt them and say, Listen, I did these things that were kind of like the standard, but then I thought, Mm, Let's try. Let's try and brig a rule, just to kind of see what happens and see how we feel about it. Best case scenario, they're gonna absolutely love it, and they're gonna love the fact that you went above and beyond and thought outside the box. Worst case scenario, they're gonna hate it, and they're gonna, take that out. End of story. You cannot lose. You cannot lose, okay? That is the beauty of breaking conventional rules and kind of going above and beyond. It is all a winning game, okay? It's really, really important. Now, we're going to actually go into kind of neurology a little bit later on in the course and how you can use studies and facts about how the brain works to ultimately say, Okay, this is why this logo is more memorable, et cetera, et cetera. We'll go through all that later on. But for the case and point of thinking outside the box and kind of going above and beyond for a client. Use what you learn in regards to how the brain looks at branding and how your customer's behavior is going to actually build a perception around branding. Use everything that you're going to learn in this course to ultimately help you have better conversations with clients because that's going to be one thing and outside the box in regards to, Okay. We're not just trying to make you a logo that you like. We're going to actually talk about, okay, human behavior dictates XY. That's why we did this, this, this. This is going to help you to be more valued. It's going to help you be more respected, less revisions, and just about a life overall. So with that said, I want to go through two things. One, some examples of brand identities that have thought outside the box and did things which were a little bit less, you know, predictable, okay? And secondly, I also want to go through some great agencies that you could take great brand design inspiration from that I personally check out pretty much every time I'm doing a project, right, for some inspiration and some kind of guidance. And don't forget at the end of this phase, you're going to have a quiz where you can just answer some questions and just confirm that you understand everything that you've learned in this phase of the course, which if you need any help with, let us know. But you should be okay. I'm confident and I believe in this shop off example, they actually brick rules in a really simple way, and they do it by literally using pretty much every single color in the world, at least. You can see here they've got, like, you know, different blues, whites, greens, purples, purple, more red, different purples. They're using pretty much every single color. There's also one instance here they use a green with a really, really light green, and there's literally almost no contrast whatsoever. I'm not sure when it happens, but it does happen at some point. Let's wait for it. Da da dun, dun, dun, dun da There it is. The contrast isn't as nice as you'd like it to be. You'd want to have a little bit more contrast, but it works because it's breaking the rule, right? It's a little bit weird, but you get the idea. Now, another thing that they do is they use these colors. Excuse me, in quite interesting ways. So what they'll do is they'll kind of splash color over the artist. So put the artist in black and white, basically make the artist one of those colors and then basically just put them on a background with one of the alternative colors. This does a couple of things. It makes all of their visual language consistent no matter, you know, what color the artist's skin is. It doesn't matter, you know, what type of image they're using. You can see here, although all of the different types of photography are very different. So the style of the photography is very different. The visual language that is being used to color them is the same, okay? So that is something that you can use, which is not very conventional. Usually, you would have all the photography across every single aspect of the brand. Harmonious and consistent. What these guys do is they basically make it consistent by editing via color. So that's a little tip that you can potentially use in future. But again, they're using shapes, they're using colors in really interesting ways. But they do break rules as well, which is really, really interesting to see, especially from a really big brand like Spotify. Another example of branding basically done too well. And this was a rebrand for the branded Gap, which I'm not sure if you've heard about it, but it was a little bit of a disaster. So, V apparently rebranded from Gap on October 6, 2010, and by October 12, d referred back to the previous 1990s logo. Now, the reason that they did this, there's a couple of reasons. The first reason is this logo is pretty terrible. And the reason it's terrible is it makes pretty much no sense. It is it's kind of a rebrand for no apparent reason. And also, it's just it's got a gradient. It's like, like what is it? Like, it's literally feels like it's just being plumped together for I don't know, for no reason whatsoever. The actual brand itself, this one here, the old logo. The reason that I think so many people were kind of in an uproar about it is because this logo has been around for so long. It's very difficult to rebrand a company that's been around for at the moment, this particular brand has been around for longer than that, I believe, but 1990s is when this particular logo started. It is kind of hard to rebrand something that's so beloved by everybody. So that is something that definitely came into play. When it comes to breaking rules, mail chimp do this pretty well. For example, this icon isn't the exact same weight. It's like a mascot, so it's very hard to do that. You can see how the actual lines are not the same weight, but it does still work together, right? I still works. The way that they've actually done it is, I believe, they have the same points, the same curve. So for example here, this little curve here, this little kind of indent in the M, and in the A and in the H, and in the P, and in the M, this is the same here. It's the same. So that's why they kind of feel harmonious together, although the lines don't fix, okay? So keeping some rules, but breaking some others. The illustrations are also remember with the WeWork example before where you have kind of very formal text where it's kind of, you know, very professional. But then the illustrations have a little bit of structure, but also a little bit of chaos. This is kind of the same way. It's got a little bit of chaos. I don't actually personally use Milchm anymore. I think they're super expensive, but it does give you an idea as to how you can, you know, ultimately break some rules and do something really unique. You can see here they're using this just to be a little bit more interesting and their branding is being done super, super well. But again, it's that balance between chaos and structure, which helps to make the brand that little bit more memorable. And yeah, I mean, it's in human. It makes them feel a little bit more human, I think. I think that's another thing which really, really comes into play, which is awesome. Now, what I also want to do is I wanted to go through some examples from agencies out there that are doing brand identity design to the best of the business basically. Like, they are the apex of what brand design should and could be. And if we can look at some of their it's going to help us to understand how we can get better with brand design. Therefore, I used to spend hours upon hours upon hours on Pentagram's website and Collins' website and Unusual's website, just to try and understand what they're doing. How do they use copy on billboards? Why are they using these types of images? All of these things all come into play to create a really great overall look and feel, which is awesome. And, you know, it's going to actually help the brand to meet their objectives, which is ultimately what strategic brand identity is. So you can see here from Collins, which is the same brand that did Spotify, also Mil him as well. These guys just get it. For example, let's check out this Equinox example here. So for Equinox, you may or may not know Equinox is like one of those super, super expensive gyms, I believe. Like the CEO of Apple goes there. I think I'm not 100% sure. Don't quote me on that, but I believe I've heard that at some point. You can see here that it just looks super, super clean, super nice. You can see the copy as well. January thinks it has the whole year ahead of it. You know, it speaks to somebody who wants to do seriously and, like, really invest in their health. And these don't just do actual health. Like, they don't just do gym. They do, like, massages and stuff. Like, they do everything. It's not just fitness. It's a lifestyle, which is ultimately their entire kind of ethos or philosophy. They also have hotels as well, which is obviously, you know, really, really, interesting. They're kind of branching off into hotels. Collins know what they're doing. They know what they're doing. Pentogram are another really, really great example of a brand design firm that are known throughout the world. And one thing that I really like about Enigram is how they structure their portfolio. So for example, you come onto their work, and you essentially are met with type of clients, type of work in all projects. This is done on purpose so that you can find the type of work that you need to essentially confirm working with Enigram. If I'm a bank CEO and I'm looking at, okay, although the CEO wouldn't be looking for, you know, a bank account, let's say, for example, I'm looking to start my own bank. Let's just I know exactly where I need to go to see examples of work because clients are going to buy from you based on the previous work that you've done, based on the things that you are doing that I want to do as well. So here, I'm like, Okay, they've worked with PayPal, wings, you know, the Monte Fort, Virgin Money. Okay, these guys know what they're doing, okay? I feel more I have more peace of mind working with them because I have seen their track record. You can see here logo evolution. You can see all their different logos. This feels more progressive. This feels like it makes a lot more sense. Whereas the GAT logo, obviously, if you look like before, it has a completely different look and feel. It's like, not even comparable. This is a little bit more transitional. It takes time to do that. Another great example and really great implementation of the actual branding as well, throughout different elements, all different touch points, and it just looks and feels super nice and another one that we're going to really learn from. Now, unusual. They are another brand that do things, but they do things in a way where it's just a little bit nuts, to be honest. They are a little bit weird, which kind of fits the name really well. You see here, for example, with their example of skill, this particular project stood out to me. Just because it's super simple, I kind of like simpler branding projects, to be honest, in the similar design. You can see here, though how, you know, it fits into their brows communications. You can remember this image from the pixels. So even the best branding agencies use pixels, right? So remember and you can see here how they're using the line. So this line is kind of like the simplest form of them communicating what it is that the Brawn wants to communicate. And they can use this by essentially creating different patterns, different animations, which look really cool. You can also see this, as well, look how they, you know, create different icons using the same line, which is really, really incredible. And you can see here how they've got kind of like an animation on an app, which is great. See here how they've got that pattern used again and again and again. This little line just comes up and it just helps to kind of fix everything together. Without this line, it would feel very, very bare, but now it has that line, it makes a lot more sense. So here how it just fits everything together really nicely. So this is the business cards, I believe, maybe. So really, really great examples and something to really, really think about as you're kind of working through learning about brand ident design and really getting, you know, the best you can possibly be, spend some time on these agency websites and just kind of check them out and see, Okay, what do I like? What do I not like? Going to be able to learn. You know, maybe you see this and you're like, Wow. I love that boost logo. Like, I love how just a simple wordmark can create so much emotion and so much messaging and so much kind of, like, you know, have so much impact. That's interesting. So listen to your own intuition and explore and don't be scared to say, Okay, you know, maybe this type of stuff isn't really for me, but, you know, I really think that I really think that I like wordmark, but I just this is a type of style that I want to do. Listen to yourself and go through that process because that is ultimately going to help you to find out what type of brand designer you want to be. So hopefully, this has been helpful for you, and I'll see you in the next lesson. See you there. 9. What makes an effective logo?: So what is effective logo design? Well, a great logo is far more than just beautiful design. It, yes, should be aesthetically appealing, but it should also be functional and usable for the business that it represents. And ultimately, a logo is just a symbol for the brand and the business. It's no more and no less. It symbolizes what the brand stands for. Now, there are some key characteristics that we should be thinking about when we are thinking about creating effective logos, and there's five of them, and I'm going to go through them in this lesson. And this lesson is just to kind of give an overview in regards to how we should be thinking about logo design. Afterwards, we'll go through all the details. How we can think about logo design and the process, et cetera, et cetera. But in this lesson, we're just going over the five key fundamentals, so you can build a really strong foundation in regards to your brand identity development understanding. So what are these five key characteristics? Well, first and foremost, the logo needs to be simple, okay? So the logo should be able to work exactly the same, whether it is plastered across Times Square or whether it is on the end of this pencil. It should just as effective and scalable throughout every single environment. And by making sure that the logo is simple enough to do that, it gives you so much more power when you're actually using the logo, and it gives it so much more functionality. Now, another thing which is really important is memorability. Now, later on in the course, we're going to cover different processes that are going to help you to develop more unique and memorable logos, okay so that you can create a memorable message, and that you can also make sure that your logo designs are distinctive and unique. This is going to ultimately allow customers to recall your logo more easily it just stands out more. Now, another thing which is super important is versatility. Now, what do I mean by that? I mean that the logo needs to be able to be used in lots of different ways in pretty much any given environment, whether it be print, digital, on an app, on a website, on a billboard, everywhere. Business card, you name it. The logo needs to be able to be applied effectively so that your brand can be consistent across every single touch point. Another very important point. Now, fourth, it needs to be timeless. So all great logos are timeless. Look at Nike, look at Apple, look at, you know, Coca Cola, for example. All of these brands have been around for it feels like forever. And the reason that their logo has not changed too much, although Apple's was very different back in the day, it was a lot more complicated. But obviously, as we have moved more into a digit ge with pixels and all that sort of stuff, we are now finding that the logo needs to be a lot smaller, which has forced us to create more simple designs. And with timelessness, we ultimately need to approach the logo design process in a very specific way to allow us to get that timeless feel. We should kind of ignore all these logo trends and stuff because they come and go. Timeless design like the Nike logo, for example, is rooted deeply into what the brand stands for, and that is never going to go out of fashion. And number five is relevance. So how relevant is the logo to the actual brand? Now, we're going to go into every single process for every single type of logo design. So you can understand exactly how to approach each type of client and project. But for this instance, we just need to understand that if we are selecting a typeface, we need to make sure it's a purposeful decision that is going to be relevant to the perception that we want to create within the mind of the customer that we are trying to connect with. What colors are we going to be using? That's another decision that we need to make purposefully, and that needs to be relevant to the brand that we are serving, the brand that we are choosing these brand identity elements for to create the perception, to symbolize and be relevant to the brand that it is actually connected to. So just to summarize before we move on to the next lesson, the logo needs to be simple. It needs to be memorable, it needs to be versatile, it needs to be relevant, and it has to be timeless. That is what we're trying to achieve here in this course, okay? Now we're going to learn tons more in regards to the brand designer Pro course, we are going to actually teach you how to build your agency. But first, in the first half of the course, it's all about design, understanding the fundamentals, getting things super tight, and going from there. So I will see you in the next lesson. 10. Scalability, Relevance & One Colour (The trident of effective logo design): Is the triad of effective logo design. The three boxes that every single logo, no matter what type of logo it is should take. Well, I'm going to cover the minus lesson, and then I'm going to go into more detail later on in the course. So first thing that every single logo should do is it should be scalable. So I covered this a little bit earlier, but the logo should look great, whether it's on the side of a billboard, as it should be on the tip of a pencil, okay? Obviously, don't want to put logos on the tips of pencils very often, but you get the idea. Now, a great way to test this is to ultimately make a 32 by 32 pixel, which is a fabricon for anyone who builds websites, and put the logo in that size. So there's 32 pixels by 32 pixels. If you can still see what the logo is or what the logo stands for or represents, that's a good sign. We're going to cover the details a little bit later on, but that should give you a little bit of an experiment to test whether your logo is scalable enough. And obviously, we'll get into branding systems and using different logos of different levels of detail later on, but for the moment, just keep things simple. Now, the second box that we should take is relevance. So again, I covered this a little bit el. We need to make sure that the logo is relevant to the brand long term. So when you're having conversations with clients, and again, we'll cover this later on when we get to the processes, but make sure that when you're having conversations with clients, you're not just talking about what the business does right now, but we need to make sure that the logo is going to be relevant to what the business does in the distant future, as well. So relevance doesn't just mean, okay, you're branding a coffee shop and the coffee brand wants a logo that has a coffee bean in it. That is not going to be distinctive enough. It's not going to be memorable enough, and it's a little bit too predictable, right? You don't have to be that direct when it comes to relevance, okay? Thing a little bit outside the box. And if you do that, you're going to create a portfolio, which looks more interesting is more kind of professional and distinctive, but it's also going to tell clients that you don't just do this simple predictable thing because most clients don't want that. Some clients do, but most don't least the ones that pay a lot more money for logo design and brand identity solutions. Now, the last box that needs to be ticked is the one color test. So when you are designing logos, you need to make sure that you present the logos to your client using just one color. Why should you do that? The reason that you should do that is because when you are presenting an icon or logo design to a client without any color, you can get that signed off, or you can get the green light when it's just black and white, which is what Alan Peters does, which is one of the best designers out there, at least in my opinion, he taught me a lot. When you do that, you allow yourself to move on to the color and typography stage if you're not creating a wordmark. That is going to allow you to create the actual brand identity and bring it to life with color and all these other beautiful things like textures and patterns, et cetera, in a way where the logo is already pretty much there. The logo itself should be able to communicate the message without color being actually included in the very beginning. Then when you add color it's the icing on the cake. Okay? So those are the three things. Let's just summarize those. Number one, the logo should be scalable. Number two, the logo should be relevant. Number three, the logo should work in just one color. If your logo does that, you're off to a good Star. But anyway, I'll see you in the next lesson. 11. The 9 different logo styles and which is best for your client: The nine different types of logos out there. Now, we're going to dive into each of these different types of logos later on in the course in far more detail to actually develop logos together with these different styles. But for this particular lesson, we're just going to cover the nine different logos and what the kind of the pros and cons of each are. Now, the first type of logo, which is one of the most popular actually, is a wordmark. This is simply something along the lines of Coca Cola or Google, where it's just the company name in a font or a typeface, which is distinctive to that particular brand. Now, wordmarks usually work best for companies that are super name focused and they don't need an icon or anything too fancy. They just want to make sure they have a distinctive typeface and a font and a logo, wordmark that actually gives an insight in regards to the type of character that the logo has. Now, the second type of logo is a lettermark, which is very similar to a wordmark, obviously, but it is more for companies with super long names, for example, like IBM and HBO. Now, a lettermark usually works quite well for kind of super corporate clients with super long names, but it can also work for other companies, like for example, photography studios or kind of more feminine brands as well. Now, a pictorial mark is a little bit different to an abstract mark, which we'll come to next because a pictorial mark is far more direct. So obviously, you've got an Apple for Apple, and you've got a bird for Twitter, obviously, before it. Change to X. Now pictorial mark works really well with brand names that are super visually focused anyway. So, for example, an apple looks like an apple and a bird looks like Twitter, you get the idea. Making sure that you have a really great grasp of design when you are creating this type of mark is super important because obviously, both of these logos, the Twitter logo and the Apple logo, they both are designed using the golden ratio theory, which we'll come to a little bit later on in the course. That just makes sure that you have something which is super aesthetically pleasing and distinctive whilst also focusing on designing something which is very well known like a bird in an apple, for example. Now, the fourth type of logo is an abstract mark. An abstract mark is a little bit different to a pictorial mark and here's how. So, for example, think of Nike and Adidas, right? Both brands are in the same space. Both of them communicate pretty similar messages, to be honest. But the difference is how those messages are communicated, right? For Nike, for example, it's just do it. It's like ticking the box. But for Adidas, for example, it's kind of like leveling up, right? That's kind of the message that they're trying to get across. Now, abstract marks, because they are not communicating something super direct, like an apple or a bird, they are creating something which is a little bit more unique and distinctive. It's a little bit easier to get these through trademark checks, sometimes, depending on obviously the trademark class and how unique your idea is. But ultimately, these types of logos work really well for brands that have kind of global appeal, and they want something which is super unique, which is going to work in multiple trademark classes. Now, the fifth type of logo is a combination mark. So for a combination mark, think of the likes of Burger King and Lacoste. Now, a combination mark works super well when the icon and the wordmark are together, but it also works well when the icon and the wordmark are used separately. Now, we'll get into the differences of combination marks from other logos a little bit later on, but there are some similarities, but don't worry about that too much right now, we're just covering the basics. Now, the sixth type of logo is an emblem. Now, many different brands use emblems, including Starbucks and Harley Davidson, and Emblems kind of have this aura of tradition and heritage, which is why universities use them quite a lot. But one of the things which is really useful about emblems is you can have different levels of detail of emblems within your brand identity structure and system, which means that you can have logos, which are a little bit more detailed as an emblem, but you can also have a far simpler version which can be on the end of a pencil, and you would still be able to recognize that brand. Now, the seventh type of logo is a mascot. So think of the likes of Michelin, Jubingo and KFC. This makes the brand seem a little bit more personal. It also gives you the opportunity to create a more emotional response through the rest of the brand's messaging. It can give a more family orientated feel, but also just be a little bit more playful, because obviously, look at the Geko from GEICO, for example, you can be super creative with the advertising and actually have a spokesperson almost speaking about your brand in a super creative way. Now, the eighth type of logo is negative space logos. I love negative space logos because you can actually use negative space with abstract logos and kind of mix and match them both. You can use negative space with any of the logos, to be honest. Negative space logos have a little soft spot in my heart it's really nice sometimes, like with the FedEx logo, for example, where you see that little arrow between the E and the X, and you're like, Hmm, somebody took a lot of time to think about that, created a great solution which is now memorable so that I can't forget about that particular logo anymore. Like, I always see that logo, and I'm like, Hmm, that is a great solution. It's super simple and it communicates a message, but in the simplest way possible. Now, this is a little bit of a trick when you are developing logos to kind of spot these little opportunities. Now, clients usually love negative space logos just because it's like a little added bonus on top, the little cherry that just sets things on fire. But I don't know why Cherry set things on fire. Completely ignore that sense. But usually clients love them because they just gave that little bit of extra pizaz with a logo design. And lastly, we have the golden ratio logos. They are ultimately all based around the Fibonacci sequence, which if you don't understand that, don't worry. We'll dm into it a little bit later. But ultimately, logos that just Awesome, because mathematically and geometrically, they make sense, okay? I'm not going to go into the details right now. We'll cover it more later. And there's a reason why these logos just look more aesthetically pleasing because they are mathematically more pleasing to the eye through geometry and through just the types of shapes that we see in nature. At the moment, don't worry too much about that. At the moment, just worry about being open to all the different types of logos out there, because eventually, once you kind of go through this course, you're going to see certain opportunities of, Okay, I kind of enjoy doing this type of logo best. So I should do more of that. And therefore, I want to be known for that type of logo. Therefore, you're going to attract more clients like that, and it's just going to snowball from there. One of the things which I think is super important when it comes to being a brand designer is finding work that you love to do because you're always going to do your best work in that particular arena, okay, so keep that in mind. Anyway, we've covered all the different types of logos on the course. We're going to cover them in far more detail and follow the whole process later on, and I'm actually going to show you some examples of logos that I've created in these different types. But I will see you in the next lesson, and I cannot wait. See. 12. Creating brand identity & logo systems: Now, while a logo is obviously extremely important, it is just one piece of a much larger jigsaw, okay? We're going to get to all of those pieces of the jigsaw a little bit later. But just understanding that when you're designing a brand identity, you are designing a system for that brand to be able to communicate visually, okay? And obviously, if you're doing brand strategy and brand naming and website development and stuff, that opens up a whole other world to this jigsaw that most brand designers never even think about. But by doing those other pieces, you can obviously charge more. You can increase your income potential because you can work with that client on more problems to solve more problems. And ultimately, the only reason that client is giving you money is to get a problem solved. Okay. So that's a hole of the kettle of fish, which we'll come to a little bit later on when we start scaling your agency. But for this particular lesson, I just want to highlight what typical elements are included in a brand identity system, okay? Keep things really simple. Now, the most important things that are included are a primary logo, a secondary logo, and other versions of that. Also generally include a color palette, which is going to allow you to show the client how to use color for their brand in certain ways, using the 603010 rule, for example, which again we'll come to a little bit later on, and ultimately allowing the brand to use color in a way to one symbolize that this element is part of this brand's communication. But also allowing them to create some sort of perception or emotion within the customer. Another thing, which is part of the brand identity systems Jigsaw is typography, okay? Choosing the right typography, also making sure the sizing is correct, making sure that the typography that you use for your headline is suitable for headlines, and also making sure that the font that you use for your general content is super readable and it's suitable for general content. Understanding the different types of fonts and which work better, we're going to cover all that. But in this lesson, I just want to make sure that you understand kind of the core elements that are included. Now, two of the things which you will probably have to provide if you want to offer a great brand identity development solution are brand guidelines. So this is simply just all of the things that I've just mentioned, but kind of condensed into a single document. And within the Brand Designer Pro community, you actually have a template which you can use, and you can just follow. And if you need anything else extra guidance on that on how to actually use it, just let me know, and I can create a quick video to show you how to do that. But we'll cover all that a little bit later on in the course. Don't worry. And one last thing that not a lot of brand designers actually do, but I think it is quite fun is images, icons, and graphics. So, for example, if you are branding your data company, right, that offers data to their clients and helps them organize it, they are going to need brand presentations that are branded using certain graphics, using certain icons that can be unique to that particular brand. We'll get to that later on, but I just want to kind of give very standard outline of the things that are usually included within the jigsaw of a brand identity system. Now, we're going to get into some examples of brand identity systems later on in the course. But at this point, just understand that the logo itself is one part, but there's lots of other stuff going on. And I think the best brands and the best logos are part of the best systems. So I think the system as a whole is ultimately what gives you that feeling of things just looking and, like, just giving you that spark, right, and just being like, Wow, this has been well done. Like this is superly nice designed, superly nice designed. I'm not even sure if that's a proper word, to be honest. Maybe it should be. That is what makes all the difference, harmonizing everything together, which is what we're going to be discussing and ultimately covering in this particular course. So just to summarize before we move on, make sure that all the elements of your brand system are all coherent, and they all come together in a nice, effective way. We also should probably include brand guidelines just to actually showcase to the clients how to actually use the branding that you've created for them. And lastly, when you're actually showcasing the branding, you should probably include some sort of mockups, high quality mockups and I'll show you what to get some free mockups later on in the course, which are going to be super helpful for you to just showcase the branding in different environments so the client can know, okay, I like this logo, but is it going to look great everywhere? Yes, it is. There's the evidence. See you later. Okay? That's kind of like the confidence that you need to have when you're showcasing your brand identity work. You need to know for a factor that's going to work everywhere. So anyway, I hope you enjoy this lesson, and I will see you in the next one. See you soon. 13. My step by step brand & logo design process from start to finish: So my brand identity development process. Now, just to keep things super simple, we're going to go into the full process a little bit later on in the course. But right now, I just want to give you a really brief outline. Step one, have a strategic care with the client, discuss everything about their brand, what they want to achieve. I'm going to give you all the questions that you need to ask, as well, and then you can kind of build on that and create your own framework. But that is the first step, making sure that you ask the right questions and get everything so you can go away and do step two, which is research, okay? Research the market, research what colors your competition are used. How the oppositioned, et cetera, et cetera. Then step three, you start to take your ideas for how to position the brand visually in regards to their visual communication, and then you start a sketch. You start to look at different ways to communicate the message that you want to convey. Once you sketch, you then digitize. Once you digitize, you then bring your ideas together, polish them up, and put them in a little presentation to send over to the client. These are in black and white. Remember, black and white first. Once you confirm, which icons the client likes best, you then take them away and you create the brand identity. This includes color typography if you're not doing a wordmark or letterform. Also need to include mock ups. You need to showcase what the ideas are and why they would be a good solution for the clients. Then you send these to the clients and you get their feedback. And you discuss it as a partner because remember, we're not service providers, we are partners. We are there to help them. If we need to do a few more revisions to get things super tight, it's going to look better on our portfolio, and it's also going to look better for the client, as well. We're together on this, ok? So remember, that is ultimately my process in a nutshell, okay? We're going to simplify it a little bit later on, and you're going to have a set structure that you can use for your own business, and it's going to literally make everything super organized and super structured, including the questions that you need to ask the clients what to say when clients say certain things, if the client doesn't get back to you within a certain time, what to do, you know, all that stuff. We're going to cover absolutely everything. But that is my structure for brand identity design in the simplest form possible. On that note, I'll see you in the next lesson. 14. The neurological reason some logo are more memorable than others: It makes some logos more memorable than others. Now, we don't have to make this neurology lesson, but we can cover some simple things to basically make sure that our logos can be more memorable from a neurological standpoint. So why do we remember certain things or logos? Now, there are two reasons why. Well, three reasons, really. But the first is ultimately repetition, okay? So if we can see something more often, then we will be more likely to remember it. For example, the song that has always played on the radio that all of a sudden you start to like and start to become kind of favorable towards. That's one way that we can remember something. The second is emotion, okay? So if something impacts us emotionally and either hurts us or it's like a really happy memory, that is more likely to be stored in our long term memory. Therefore, we are going to be able to recall that memory in our mind in different circumstances which remind us of that particular moment in time. Now, another thing, which is super important and the last thing is distinctiveness and being unique. If we create something which just kind of fits into the crown and doesn't really stand out. It doesn't really get someone kind of either emotionally charged or it doesn't really connect with them. That is very unlikely to actually be able to be recalled, okay, which is ultimately what, you know, being memorable is. Creating a memorable logo is our ability to recall that logo from our hipocampus, which is our long term memory, okay? And bring it forward into the frontal cortex, which is the limbic system, which is ultimately the part of the brain that allows us to make logical decisions. So when we recall a memory, it comes forward as a neuron to the frontal cortex, which allows us to remember certain things. But also, for example, if you're hungry and you want some fast food, the neuron which gets to the front of the brain first will ultimately, whatever, you know, say, for example, you want a burger, and you have been inundated with McDonald's adverts for the past three weeks, that is going to be the first neuron to come to the frontal cortex because that is the one which is the most populated. It's the one that has the strongest associations and connections with you as a person in your mind and your long term memory. So the strongest neurological connections win, okay? They are the ones that are going to be able to be recalled far more easily. So from a logo design standpoint, so just to summarize, they make sure the logos memorable. We can repeatedly show that to the customer again and again, but that's completely out of your wheelhouse. That's more down to marketing. But lastly, we can connect with the customer emotionally, which is much like the Nike logo, the Nike logo symbolizes something that the customer can see themselves being part of, okay? It makes the customer the hero of the brand story. And that is where things get very interesting. So I'll see him in the next lesson, but keep that in mind as we move through the process, because that is going to set you out from the crowd pretty much instantaneously. I'll see you soon. 15. What makes a timeless & iconic logo design?: Actually makes a logo timeless or iconic. Well, there are lots of different things. But in this lesson, I want to just cover some of the most important things so that we don't fall into the trap of creating logos, which are kind of destined for a very short shelf life, if that makes sense. So the first thing that we need to make sure of when we're designing a logo that we want to last the test of time is to make sure it's simple. The more complicated the logo, it simply means that it is more likely to be kind of adjusting towards design trends or things that you're kind of seeing out there in the world. We need to make sure that the lines are simple. We need to make sure the design is simple. We need to make sure that we can see this logo in a world that is more futuristic and also a world which is, you know, 6,100-years-old. We need to kind of test in both dimensions or times, if that makes sense, or periods, to make sure that it has that kind of timeless feel. That is going to dictate whether your logo will actually last a test of time. Now, another thing which is super important is being relevant over time for the logo. Now, that is one of the most important things because, for example, if a brand wants to communicate a message, the logo that we currently have communicates that message. But then in five years time, they completely change their message and they change everything about what the brand stands for and what they sell, that logo isn't going to be timeless anymore. So we need to make sure that we understand that the brand itself has a vision for the future. Therefore, you can then relate the actual logo to the actual brand itself and the message that they want to convey for the long term, what they're going to be selling long term as well. And obviously, you need to make sure that the actual concept and the story behind the actual icon, the brand itself, it needs to be strong enough, and it needs to be captivating enough and unique enough. Okay? It needs to be memorable, okay? And this kind of leads into brand strategy. And obviously, within the brand designer program, you do have the brand strategy course as part of that as a bonus course, which I think from a brand design standpoint, it makes so much sense to learn how to do brand strategy because then you can actually generate more value for your clients, and you can make sure that that messaging is super tight and done properly before you actually move on to the logo design stage. So those are kind of a couple of things to think about as we begin to move into the other areas of logo design and brand I didnty design later on in the course. But for now, just make sure that you understand that to have a tnless logo, it needs to be relevant. It needs to be simple, and it needs to be memorable. And most important of all, it needs to have a strong concept or story. So keep that in mind, and I'll see you in the next lesson. See you soon. 16. What is an abstract logo?: So what actually is an abstract logo? Well, an abstract logo doesn't have any obvious objects as part of the logo, but it instead uses geometric shapes to create an emotion or communicate a message to symbolize the brand. Unlike a pictorial logo that uses more recognizable imagery, an abstract logo creates a message or communicates some sort of emotion. Using symbolism and conceptual design. So how do abstract logos actually work? Well, the first thing is symbolic representation. Abstract logos tend to use more geometric shapes that are a little bit more creative and indirect. And ultimately, these shapes come together to symbolize or represent the brand that the logo is associated with. Now, a great thing about abstract logos is because they have so much freedom in regards to creative expression and they're not set to pre existing associations to an image, they can be super creative and distinctive. This means that the form and what the actual icon is can be anything, which leads me on to the next point, which is emotional connection. Now, because abstract logos have no real set form, they can create emotion and feeling through the likes of shapes and also movement in the form of those shapes. And again, because of this creative expression, this ultimately makes abstract logos generally more memorable. Now, abstract logos are usually best for companies that have a deep sense of meaning and purpose and ultimately want to communicate something which is much larger than just one single product or service. And also as well, because abstract logos can be more distinctive and unique, it does serve companies best that do want to protect their brand across multiple classes and across multiple geographical locations. A really great example of abstract logo done well is the Pepsi logo. What does the Pepsi logo mean? I'd argue not a lot of people know, but does it actually matter? Really. Now, there are tons of different things that you should be thinking about as you're actually designing an abstract logo, and we're going to get to that a little bit later on in the course. But for now, I just wanted you to understand the pros and the cons of abstract logos so that you can understand why an abstract logo might be best for your client or you, for your brand. So anyway, I'll see you in the next lesson. See you. 17. Abstract Logo Development Brief & Research: Start to the abstract low design process all begins with understanding the brief and doing some research. We need to generate some IDs. Okay? Now, for the real life client project that we're going to be developing today in this very mini course, we're going to be looking at developing a logo for a brand called lumen. Now, Illumin essentially creates strategic presentations for clients. So people who are looking for investments or startups who are looking to ultimately employ people. We are developing a brand identity for Illumin. Now, the first thing I'm going to do when I start to speak to the client and understand their brief is I want to narrow them down to a couple of directions or ideas that they think might work for their logo. Because obviously, when you're working with a client, you want to make sure that you develop a logo which can work strategically and that makes them look professional and good. But also you need to make sure that you actually develop a logo that they like. That's the two things that you're trying to balance at all times. When I was speaking to the founder of Illumin, she said that she wanted something that was pretty minimal, quite simple, which is good because abstract logos are better when they're minimal. She also wanted something which was clever, and she also wanted something which kind of suggested presentation, but not in a super obvious way because that would be a pictorial logo, but she also wanted something to suggest that we could help to elevate the client's business or presentation by developing a really strategically well designed presentation for. So we're going to dive into Pinterest and Google and basically get some ideas for this. So let's just start with presentation logo, okay? Let's just get some ideas. Okay? There is literally nothing here, okay? Let's go down here. Okay. This isn't really given me a whole lot of promise, to be honest. There's nothing really here that I can either use or even discuss with you. So, okay, no problem at all. That's fine. Pinterest is not going to help us here. Let's move on to Google images, okay? So presentation logo. Okay, now we're getting somewhere. Now, when I'm looking at these icons and these existing logos, I'm looking for ways to communicate the thing that I want to communicate, which is ultimately presentations and elevation, right? That's the idea that the founder has said is kind of, you know, what she wants to communicate. So I'm like, Okay. How do I communicate elevation visually and how do I communicate presentations visually? That's what I'm looking for. And a really great place to find icons in universally understood icons. So for example, if you put this icon in front of anyone in the world, they would know exactly what it's trying to say. So if I go to this particular website called Flat icon and put presentation that is not how you spelled presentation, but you get the idea. We're starting to see this square kind of pop up again and again and again. Specifically, I really like, and this is kind of the whole discovery phase. I really like this kind of curved square. Because that looks really, really cool. I really, really like that. I think that looks awesome. Okay. Perfect. So I want to pop this into my little folder here, it doesn't matter at this point, whether it's a screenshot or whatever, I'm just taking the ideas so that I can then come back to them a little bit later on. Okay? Here as well. I'm going to take this Perfect. Okay. I'm actually just storing ideas. That's all I'm doing. I'm just storing ideas there just so I can understand. Okay. In terms of presentation, I'm pretty happy with what I have, okay? I'm pretty happy with where I am right now and how to communicate presentation. In a really simple and minimal way. Okay? So let's move on to elevation. Let's look at elevation. Also as well, when you're talking about elevation, elevation can be an indirect way to say a lot of other things, like improvement or clarity or, you know, elevating, obviously, levitation, which obviously isn't that relevant, but a really great thing that you can do if you're struggling to find things that are relevant to the thing that you're actually looking to communicate. Elevation, synonyms or you could say other words. And what this is going to do is going to give me other words. So ascent, uplift, rise. Okay, so now we're getting somewhere. How can we communicate elevation? It's going to be going up or it's going to be going kind of, you know, bigger or something. There needs to be a way to communicate improvement in a visual sense, using the visual language, right? Okay, so let's just have a little look at elevation. Okay, so we're getting elevators, which is obviously not what we want, okay? Improvement. Let's help it out a little bit. We're getting somewhere with this. Obviously, this is a kind of a paid thing, but we have this upwards trajectory thing going on. We've got this as well, which is obviously extremely it doesn't matter if that little piece of wooden is in there as well. That doesn't matter at all. I'm literally just collecting ideas just as inspiration. We've got this one, which is a little bit cleaner, I think. At this point in time, I basically have these images. And this is literally what I do for pretty much every single direction for the client. So for example, with this client, I will probably do, depending on the package that they choose, I have packages which range from four logo designs to eight logo designs, which is usually a little bit too much to be honest. Four to six is usually enough. That will give me this direction and then three more directions to explore, this one being presentations and elevation, and then another one might be, I and presentations on transparency, which will obviously be a slightly different approach, which then I would just search for how to communicate transparency, which I think is fairly obvious. And when you confirm the direction of the logo and the message that you're trying to communicate before you actually go and do the research and the discovery, and then sketch and then digitize and then showcase, there's never going to be a situation where the client is like, Nat, this logos terrible. It's not what I expected. As long as you follow this process, you can't really go far. It is kind of like little milestones along the journey. Every single time that I've went away from the process and tried to think I was too good for the process, which doesn't happen very often now because I understand how bad I am when I don't follow a process, it always ended badly. So at this point, I am literally just looking through the different icons which can communicate, elevation and presentation. Those are the two things. I don't want to overcomplicate it. It's an abstract logo. It should communicate either one or two things. That's literally it. I understand what it is going to be in play here, okay? You can literally see the shape which is consistent. And if I use a shape like this, we should be able to get some form of instant perception that this is a presentation focused company that develops presentations for clients, right? That should be pretty obvious from just looking at the icon. If you look at this, there's a couple of different ways that we can focus on communicating, elevation or improvement or something like that. So at this point, I have the ideas and I understand kind of what I need to include. I need to bring it together now so that it geometrically makes sense so that kind of the shapes look nice together. I need to make sure that it looks aesthetically pleasing. I also need to look at, you know, what thickness is the icon, so it kind of marries well with the wordmark. So at this point, I'm going to keep my images, and I'm going to ultimately move on to the next stage of the process, which is sketching, okay? So on that note, I will see you in that video. See you soon. 18. Abstract Logo Development Sketching: So now we understand the brief and we've done the research, and we have some inspiration that we've captured from Pintest and Google, for example. Now it's time to start sketching our abstract logo. So if we actually look at the icons that I've collected for lumen, you can see that we have kind of the presentation icons here, which are essentially something like, what, like, a square like this. Something a little bit similar to this. And then we also have this sort of upwards or kind of elevation, you know, like getting bigger, getting more. And I'm wondering how we can actually communicate that in the actual icon. So we're going to look at, okay, how can we do it? We could maybe do it in this sense here. Okay, so I mean, this is kind of Okay, that doesn't really work, but at this point in time, all we're doing is simply exploring different options. So I'm not even really thinking about what I'm doing. I'm just looking at different ways that I can interject this message with this type of shape for presentation. That's all I'm doing. And if you can do that and just kind of take the pressure off it, it actually makes things a lot easier. So again, I'm just using this presentation icon to look at different ways to ultimately communicate improvement or better Okay, this doesn't look too bad. I actually wanted to be a little bit more square and kind of compact, but you can see kind of where it's going. Um, maybe inside? No. Okay. Um, yeah, that doesn't really communicate the improvement or the enhancement or the cla kind of the clarity if this was kind of transparent potentially, maybe, but, okay, let's just do another one. Ah, bum, bum, bum, bum bigger, okay. Like this, maybe? It is not bad, but again, I think we would need some sort of transparency here just to kind of bring things together. I mean, usually, what I would do is I would look at kind of maybe 20 different options for each direction. So kind of like 80 little quick sketches like this. But for the purpose of this little mini course, I just want to show you kind of how I'm thinking about things. So we can bring something together that looks half decent, okay? So again, I'm looking at I'm looking at this one, which I like how it sort of has, like, a structure. It kind of looks like this is the first slide, and this is the second slide, and this is the third slide. So it's kind of like a progress. It's kind of like you're progressively getting better or you're progressively improving with the actual slides that you're getting developed for you. I'm wondering, is it worthwhile maybe looking at so this is kind of like phase one of the development process, right? Like I'm literally just looking at the initial ideas. And again, I would do like 20 different ideas for this, and then I would go on to phase two, which is basically picking one or two of these ideas and then developing it further, doing different variations of it. So for example, I'm going to choose this one, and I'm going to look at, okay, this is too kind of rectangular. This is, again, too rectangular, but I like the kind of the message of it. This is a little bit too. From a transparency standpoint, this one isn't going to work. I like this one out of all of them a little bit more than the others. So I'm going to develop this one a little bit more, okay? So we're going to take this, and we're going to look at different options, so maybe three different options. So, okay, so let's so we're looking at, like, progressively getting better. Okay? So what about this? We kind of have that, and then we have, like, the three different presentations. But that kind of communicates getting bigger, right? So we kind of have that progression of getting bigger or better, okay. These could be potentially more transparent than So, okay, so this gets less transparent. So this is more kind of solid. This is, like, maybe like 90% transparency, and this one's 80, so they're still pretty solid, but this one's 100. So it kind of, like, gradually becomes, like, better or clearer or okay, that's making a little bit more sense. It's a little bit long, though. It's a little bit too long. So let's try and compact that a little bit. Okay, so let's do this. Let's do the last one first. Then we'll work backwards from there, okay? And then we'll maybe curb these slightly just to see how they look. Okay. I just do this. And again, these are just quick sketches. We're not trying to create a masterpiece here. We're just trying to get the message communicated in a nice simple way to start off with, okay? Okay, okay, okay. So we've got that there. That's the first one. What if we did something like this, potentially? You can see now we're starting to be a little bit more kind of careful with where we're putting the actual pencil, but still not too careful. Okay? Then what if we did this? Just to show a little bit more structure. Okay, I mean, you can kind of see where it's showing a little bit of potential here. Obviously, this needs to be curved again, so let's curve this. Okay, so we've got the two messages. We have the presentation. And although we're not using these specific shapes, we are still looking at kind of showcasing improvement or progression or something like that. Then let's put another one there just for the time being. Okay. So, I mean, this isn't perfect, by any stretch of the imagination, but I definitely like how this is kind of starting to look. It's starting to look a lot better. Like, this is actually a pretty decent a pretty decent idea, I think. Like, it isn't actually a bad idea. What I would like to look at just as like an additional little idea, which I've just had, and this is fine just explore these different ideas is when I'm looking at this, I'm kind of seeing this presentation slide here. So, what if we looked at doing like a presentation slide like this? So there's a presentation slide here, and then maybe doing, I don't know. Then maybe doing another one here. There may be another one on top. This could look terrible or it could look good. I'm not 100% sure. I don't think it's gonna look as clean as the other one. Okay. So I'm looking at this now, and I'm like, Okay, it was I'm glad I exploreed it, but Uh yeah, I'm not in love with it. I'm not in love with it, to be honest. I think there's too many parts. It doesn't look as clean. Okay, let's knock that out. I think this one has the best potential at the moment. It looks clean. It looks it looks cool. I don't like this. I would probably refine this a little bit. I'll just get rid of that just because it's currently There we go. That looks a little bit better. Okay. I mean, we're kind of at a place where I think I think that looks okay. You know, if we look at that. So it's communicating improvement, it's communicating presentation. And I think that this could be a real contender. Okay, so I'm actually really happy with how this logo for lumen is coming together. I love how simple it is. I love how it tells a story. I love how clean and modern it looks, but it also looks a little bitraditional. I'm not sure if it's going to go well with a Sam seraphon or a serapon yet. We're going to kind of figure that out afterwards. We don't need to figure that out right now, but the main thing is the icon tells a great story, and ultimately, that's all that matters at this point. We're just trying to ultimately showcase that the icon tells a story of the brand and something that can tie into the copy of the website, the story of the brand, all that good stuff. So, yeah, let's get this digital. Let's get an Illustrator. Let's start to play around with things, and yeah, we'll see how things go from there. Anyway, I'll see you in the next lesson. 19. Abstract Logo Development Perfecting Digitally: Okay, so we've got a great design for Illumin, and now it's time to dive into Adobe Illustrator so we can start really bringing the logo to life. And so with that said, let's dive into Illustrator. Okay, so now we have our sketch for our logo for Illumin inside Illustrator. Now it's just a simple case of recreating it and seeing if it works once it's been kind of digitized. So we have the presentation. We would then just create, like, a nice curve on that presentation, and then just kind of replicate, I guess. Do we want it? Okay, so we're not actually sure. Okay, so let's do this. We'll just get it to stage like that. Then let's just put it as like 90. That doesn't work. 50, 80? I mean, it kind of looks a little bit better, right? It does look better than what it did before, but let's do it like 70 and 40. Okay. Okay. So it looks okay with all of them the same size, but what I want to try is what if this one is just slightly big? What if this one's slightly bigger? And then if this one's slightly bigger, it actually looks like they're getting bigger. That's far more interesting, right? That's far more interesting because here here there's depth through color and through transparency, but there's no depth through size. I think this one looks 1 million times better. Okay. Then what if we actually pull them in a little bit tighter? I want to actually see them side by side so I can actually decide which I like best. So pull that in a little bit. Pull it in a little bit. What I don't like is I do not like how they don't fit together, if that makes sense. That doesn't look good at all, no. Let's just tighten them up a little bit. No should. Give us a little bit of an idea as to what it looks like with a wordmark. Let's get a wordmark. There you go. And then Then let's get the pattern, which I created for lumen in a previous lesson. Or in the lesson that you are going to get when you get to the color phase of Brand Designer Pro. We've got this Got that. If we change this to white, it starts to look a lot better. I still don't like how. I don't I think this needs to be like high 95 or something, or even 100 to be completely brutally honest. I doesn't quite look good at 95. Okay. Okay, I can live with that. I can live with that. Okay. Now, I think all we need to do now is just to size it up. Maybe make it a little bit more. Maybe make it a little bit more kind of flat as well. Like that a little bit. Instead of being too, like, vertical, just make things a little bit flatter. That looks a lot more realistic, I think. I think that looks a lot better. Okay. Okay. Let's see how this looks with. On top? Okay. It looks good on top, okay? Awesome. This still looks like it's kind of in front of the other one, which I do not like at all. This needs to be less. This needs to be like maybe 25 or something. There we go. Now it looks a lot more. Actually, I think it's because of the Okay, this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to divide those, and then I'm going to connect this with this, and then I'm going to add the transparency because at the moment, just ain't do enough for me. It's a little bit too Yeah, I was just cutting into it a little bit too much. It just looked a little bit weird. I think we can definitely put another little bit to maybe 30 or something. Now we've got that. Yeah, I think that looks a lot better. It looks 1 million times better, actually. Because if there's just too much going on, it's just not going to look very good. Okay. Awesome. So now we have this one. And then we can also add this as a horizontal mark as well? If you wanted to. Now, obviously, we could spend more time, you know, fiddling around with this, making it perfect, but all I wanted to get across in this little mini course is how to take an idea and then ultimately create a digital polished version which looks and feels great without having to, you know, make it super complicated. Just keep it simple. This is ultimately what Brand Designer Pro is all about. It's all about creating these logos and brand identities which can help the client look super credible, super established to tell a story with their brand identity and their visual expression without having to cost thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars, right? So, ultimately, I hope this has been helpful. I hope you have kind of picked up a couple of things from just watching my process over the past couple of lessons. Yeah, hopefully, I'll see you again in the future lesson. I'll see you soon. 20. What is a pictorial logo?: So what is a pictorial logo? Now, pictorial logos are quite similar to abstract logos. However, they are different in the case that instead of using random geometric shapes and trying to create emotion and connection or communicate a message through those shapes, pictorial logos are a little bit more simple and a little bit more direct. For example, the Apple logo on the Twitter logo, two logos that do their job perfectly, and they take the pictorial approach in Ma grass to design. But how do pictorial logos actually work? And in what situations are they used best? Now, one of the first situations that they use best is when you need instant recognition, for example, if you have a brand name that is quite descriptive like Apple or Twitter, for example, you can create a pictorial logo, which is already associated to a pre existing memory in the mind of your customer. However, if the name of the company is Google, for example, which let's face it, nobody really genuine knows what that means, it doesn't really allow you to create a picture for that particular thing because we don't really know what it looks like, if that makes sense. On the other hand, if there was a company out there called Link, for example, you know what a Link looks like, right? So you can create a pictorial logo focused around how to visualize that particular word. Now, the great benefit of pictorial logos, as I've said before, is they're super simple and effective. So if you do have an opportunity to use a pictorial logo, you should definitely take advantage of it or at least explore the opportunity. Now, pictorial logos, because generally, an apple looks like an apple anywhere in the world that you go, it does have global appeal. And it can be super direct and easy for anybody to understand, no matter what language you speak, pretty much anywhere in the world. Now, again, the Twitter Bird is a really great example of this type of logo done well. But one thing that you do have to watch out for with pictorial logos is if you're going to create a pictorial logo around a bird, for example, it needs to be unique and distinctive. So making sure that you create a unique and distinctive approach and take a fresh approach to designing the icon for the brand and the logo, that's super important because if you are going to go for global appeal and you want to protect it globally as a brand, you need to make sure that the actual approach that you take for the logo design is unique and distinctive. Now, we're going to go into pictorial logos in more depth a little bit later on, but I just wanted to give you a little brief outline demograph to what they are and what the benefits and pros and cons are so you can ultimately understand if it is the right type of logo for you personally. Anyway, until then, I will see you in the next lesson. 21. Examples of great pictorial logos: Okay, so let's look at some great examples of pictorial logo. So you can understand what actually makes an incredible pictorial logo. So the three logos that I think are the best representations of pictorial logos are Apple, Twitter, and Target. Now, one thing all of these logos have in common is not only pictorial logos, but they also use the golden ratio to make them look more aesthetically appealing. You can see this predominantly in the Twitter logo and the Apple logo. You can see both designs are using the golden ratio method to make the designs better in proportion and also more aesthetically appealing to look at. With the Apple logo, for example, you can see how they have taken a fairly common object being an apple and made it more distinctive by taking a bite out of the right side of the apple. Now, there are lots of little stories about why that bite was taken out of the apple, but most predominantly, you can probably imagine that it was to make the icon more distinctive, because if they just did a symmetrical icon, which didn't really have anything unique or distinctive about it, icon would ultimately be more forgettable and also less unique. And if an icon is less unique and it just looks like anything that you could find on like a stock imagery website, then it's less likely to be able to be trademarked, which is obviously going to be a massive problem for a company like Apple, who obviously sells products everywhere across the world. Now, for Twitter, you can kind of see the bird looks quite positive, right? It kind of looks free. So this is subconsciously communicating to the user or to anyone looking at the logo that this app is going to provide a free way to communicate with other people, right? Now, obviously that's a little bit ironic because of what happened when ALO Mus took over and stuff, but you get the idea. Intentions in the beginning were good from the brand designer. Now, the target logo is probably one of the simplest logos out there, but it's also one of the most powerful because it does exactly what it needs to do, and it does it in a way which is memorable, not really unique, but it's very, very focused on communicating the brand's messaging, which is ultimately focus, accuracy, and also reliability. Now, the target logo, I think we can all agree, is not difficult to do. It's not the technical aspect of logo design. Which designers usually struggle with. It's actually the thought process of simplifying things and creating something which is super memorable, but also related to the brand's messaging and which can be used pretty much anywhere on any given environment. That's the main struggle that brand designers face. So anyway, those are a couple of examples of pictorial logos. What I want to do now is I want to actually move into the phase of designing a pictorial logo with you. So on that note, I will see you in the next lesson. 22. Pictorial Logo Development Brief & Research: First step designing an incredible pictorial logo is the discovery phase and the brief, ultimately. Okay? So what we're going to do is we are ultimately wanting to understand what the client is trying to achieve with their brand identity and with their logo, what they want to communicate, and then we're going to discover different ways that we can do that. Okay? Now, for this particular mini course, I am going to be designing a logo for a real client called Ginger. Now, the founder of Ginger has said that she wants the logo to be quite minimal, o? She wants it to tell a story. She would also like it to include some form of negative space, if possible, and she would also like it to be balanced so not too masculine, but also not too feminine. Just to let you know a little bit about what ginger is and why it exists, ginger is a holistic app, which ultimately helps to harmonize Eastern medicine with Western medicine. So the best practices from both because Eastern medicine is more kind of herbal and using very natural ingredients, whereas Western medicine is more about prescriptions and pills and stuff like that. So with that said, I wanted to ultimately confirm some messaging with the founder of Gina. And one of the ideas that I came up with and ultimately what I would do is when I was talking to a cliens I would ultimately talk to them about what they wanted the actual logo to communicate. One of the things that the founder of Gina said is, she would love to see something where Eastern medicine and Western medicine was harmonized to come together and to create one single mark, okay? Which is perfect, right? It sounds like a challenge, so I am well up for it. Now, the first place that I would start is I would ultimately start to look at what are the icons for Eastern and Western medicine. Okay? So let's start, okay? So Eastern medicine. I always start on pin tress, but then it obviously goes off track sometimes. Okay, so we're getting kind of some leaves, we're getting some pills, those vitamins, yeah, okay, vitamins. We're getting, to be honest, Oh, we're getting some kind of, like, dried herbs and stuff. Okay, awesome. Okay, we're going to move on to there's ginger, okay? Perfect. We're also going to check out this as well. Because, to be honest with you, Google images is usually a little bit better. Okay, so we've got this. We've got kind of these like a pestle and mortar with some kind of dried herbs and beans and stuff. We've got leaves again. Okay, so we're kind of let me put icon in there. Okay, so we're getting a pestle and mortar. Gotcha. Okay. And I'm just going to pop them in this little folder here just to save for later on in the process, which you'll see what happens afterwards. Okay, so what I'm seeing here, there's leaves popping up left right and center. There's a pestil mortar, but I feel like a pestillo mortar is a little bit too complicated. If we do a pestilumta, the geometry of a pestillo mortar it's very distinctive and you can definitely see what it is. But if you look at it, it doesn't leave any room or any space to fit anything focused on Western medicine in there, it doesn't have that much flexibility, I don't think. Whereas a leaf, a leaf is a little bit different. A leaf has that flexibility because the shape can be slightly different, and I think we can do something with it. Okay, awesome. I've got enough stuff to understand how to symbolize Eastern medicine. Okay? Perfect. We're going to use the leaves. Perfect. Okay, so now let's look at Western medicine and see how we can communicate Western medicine. So we've literally just got pills and this syringe needle slash thing, kind of like a Zen thing, but to be honest with you, there's the circle pill and this kind of long rectangle pill. Or ovo pill, which is very much the prominent shape that I'm seeing when I'm looking at this. Now, this is interesting. Okay, I've just spotted this. Now, this icon actually looks pretty interesting. Now, it's terrible quality, and it's very pixeld at the moment. But what if we took this icon and we tried to kind of change it so that here was a leaf. And on the other side, there was a leaf, as well. That actually would not be a bad idea. That's just kind of inspired me to try that. This sometimes happens a lot faster. Then other times, sometimes it takes a little bit of time to really figure things out, but I think we could be on something. And with a client, ultimately, what I would do is I would have depending on their package, I would have maybe four different journeys that I want to go on to try and explore. So this is one trying to harmonize Western and Eastern medicine together in one single icon. But I think this could work. I think we've got Eastern medicine, which is the leaf. We've also got Western medicine, which is the pill. Put them together into one icon is ultimately harmonizing them. I wonder what that's going to look like. So we've did the research. We understand what we're going to do for this particular direction. The next step is to get sketching and I cannot wait to do that. I will see you in the next lesson. See you soon. 23. Pictorial Logo Development Sketching: So now we understand the brief, and we've done the research, and we have some inspiration that we've captured from Pinterest and Google, for example. Now it's time to start sketching our pictorgal logo. Okay, so we've already got our icons ready, and we've kind of realized that there are two things that symbolize Eastern and Western medicine for ginger, okay? We've got the pills for the Western medicine side. Then we've got kind of leafs and kind of pestilu mortar. But the pestil mortar, the geometry of it is going to be very difficult to fit inside. A pill, right? It's not really going to work very well, but a leaf, I think it's got more potential. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to structure out my sketch pad into two phases, okay? Phase one and phase two. And usually what I do is I would develop like 20 different variations of the idea in phase one so that I can then refine the ones that I like in phase two, okay? That's kind of how I like to work. So We've got a pill. Let's just get a pill drawn. And at this point, as well, I'm not trying to, you know, reinvent the wheel. I'm not trying to, you know, do a piece of art here. I'm literally just trying to get my ideas down on paper to see what works and what doesn't work. So let's just look at this here. Then let's just break this down into two, wow. Like this little curl here, actually. That's a nice little that looks like a good leaf. Okay, let's look at this. Let's look at that. I like how this is, like, curling around. I like that. Okay. That looks pretty nice. Okay. Okay, okay, okay. This looks that's not bad, actually, for a first try, right? That's not actually bad for a first shot at this. Okay, cool. Alright, let's try another one. Let's Let's Let's do it sideways like this. Just try a little pill. This actually looks more like a dog poop, to be honest. What am I even thinking about. Okay. But if we get the pill, and we just think this off and then how else could we do this? Um, we can make it a little bit more kind of, like, structured, I guess, and just make it a little bit more 'cause this is more like here. I wonder if we can make it a little bit less I don't know, dramatic, make it a little bit more predictable and just see because then it would make the leaf a little bit more kind of, like, rounded instead of long. I wonder if that looks better or not. So it actually looks pretty cool, to be honest, but I'm not sure if it's better or not, but I kind of like the elegance of this because it kind of suggests like a seamless experience within the app. But I don't like how these are kind of, like, cutting over the actual pill shape. It kind of comes outside, and I don't like that very much. But I like how these are kind of structured. And it kind of looks a lot more rounded. Okay. And what about putting something in the middle, as well? Like I don't know, maybe like a leaf or something? Mmm. Okay. What about doing it like this? Is that going to this is kind of spoiling it a little bit, right? I think, maybe. Maybe? Yeah. Yeah, I think this is maybe spoiling it a little bit. Okay. Okay. We're getting there, though. We're getting there. I think we're getting somewhere. Okay, let's just take a little rain check. I like how this one looks a little bit more elegant, but I also like how this one looks a little bit more round. So let's kind of take the roundness of this and let's take the elegance of this, but without these little bits popping out, I also want to take a sip of coffee because coffees very important. Oh, yeah. That's what I'm talking about, baby. Okay. I also don't like these little details. I think we can put a little bit of detail in that, but not too much. So let's try again. I also don't know if I'm loving the up or down approach or that approach. So maybe we need to kind of put it like sideways or something. Okay, let's try it like this. And then let's do it like this. Let's just get the pill shape right first. That's the most important thing. Let's try and make this one not look like dog poop. Perfect. Okay, we've got this. Okay, so let's try and create something in the middle. So we don't want to too, like, extravagant and sort of elegant, but we don't want it too round either. So here we go. And then let's merge things off like this. And then I think what I'm going to try and do is basically look at creating a little stem in the middle. I think that's probably going to be the best way to do it because I don't want to be, like, too detailed with it because then it's going to be very scalable, and that's going to be a huge problem. But if we just curve it around here and then that kind of gives us the shape of that and then if we put it around here like this, we're kind of creating a little frame around it, which I kind of like because then the leaves are in the negative space and they're not actually just kind of floating in mid air. So I kind of like that. And then if we do put a little stem in there, maybe that's going to make things look a little bit better. I think slowly but surely, we are getting somewhere. I do like how we've got, like, a little frame around it now, which gives a little bit more structure. I like how we kind of have the pill, but I think these stems need to be a little bit longer, actually. I don't think it looks like a leaf, to be honest. Um, do we want to do, like, stems? I don't like how much those kind of things, but maybe little ones like this. This is starting to look better. Okay. There we go. That's starting to look a lot better. Okay. I like that. I like that. I like that. I like that. Okay. Mm. I'm just kind of looking at it. And I'm not 100% sure how I feel. Just gonna sharp my pencil while I'm I'm not 100% sure how I feel about the pill and how it currently looks, 'cause it kind of just looks like a little bit all over the place. It's got ups downs, blah, blah, blah. Um, right here. But what if If we switch that. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Okay, check this out. I can't believe I've just caught this on camera. So we've currently got the logo going up and down. We've got a pill, we've got leafs, right? Watch what happens when I do this. We now have the pill and the leaves going east and west. Eastern and Western medicine. All my life. Oh, my God. Okay. So how would I do that? It needs to be It needs to be like this. So from top to bottom, right? Right? No. Right. Okay. Let me just try this. Okay, so we need to do it like this. I cannot believe that this is actually happening on camera. I cannot believe it. Okay. Is this recording? It's definitely recording, right? Yeah. Okay. Right. Let's do this. And I'm gonna just keep the same, like, frame and stuff. Okay. And then I'm going to, obviously be able to tie this up in Illustrator. But do we do, like, a three D version? No. Okay, let's keep it simple. Okay, so we've got this here, we've got this here. We can, like, tweak this and move it a little bit, but the fact that it literally has, like, east and west I'm so flipping excited to get this down on paper just so I have it saved. And again, this is just, like, really, really rough. I'm just getting it down. For phase two, once I have the idea that I really like or a couple of ideas that I like, I'll just basically develop it and get it in place so that I know exactly what I need to do an Illustrator. Okay, perfect. And then it's just literally a case of just refining things a little bit, getting that stem looking good. So this stem definitely doesn't look great right now. But again, I'm not trying to change the world with this logo just yet. I'm just trying to get something down which looks half decent. And at least just confirms the idea that I'm trying to communicate. Okay. Listen, this isn't perfect, but it's definitely going in the right direction. I love how we've got the leaves. We've got the pill inside. I also love how we've got, like, a nice frame, so it actually has some structure and it's not just kind of floating around like this. I actually like the structure of this one a lot better, so I'll take these both in Illustrator and kind of use them both, but I do like this, how we've got one leaf pointing east and one leaf pointing west. This is one of those little happy accidents which sometimes happens with logo design, which I absolutely love to the world and Black. So to the world and back to the Earth and back. To the moon and back. Okay, we got there in the end. Okay, so I'm actually really happy with how this logo has came together for ginger. I love the fact that we've managed to harmonize both Eastern and Western medicine, which was the main thing in the brief that the client wanted. I also love how clean it is. I love how professional it looks. I love the fact that the carob looks like an app icon already, which is super great. I just can't wait to get this design Illustrator, so we can start tidying things up and making things super professional. And so on that note, I will see you in the next lesson where we get this design, put it inside Illustrator, and make things look super also adding color, adding a wordmark, and all that good stuff. I'll see you in the next lesson. See you. 24. Pictorial Logo Development Perfecting Digitally: Finally time to take our design for ginger and put it inside Illustrator. So we can really start tightening things up and just making things look super clean and professional. And so with that said, let's dive in Illustrator. Okay, so now we have our sketch inside Illustrator. It's now time to start refining things. Now, I actually prefer, I think, this one here. I think this one, it looks good, but I think the shape of this one is going to be a little bit easier to work with. So I'm going to just take that away. Now, the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to make it easier for myself and make this here rectangle. I can just get the pill shape and then we can go from there. Let's just make this nice and thick. Maybe I don't know, maybe 60 or something, Something like that. Yeah, 60. Okay. And then we're just going to make it into a pill shape. Now we go. There is our pill need a little bit thicker actually, I probably want it to be about 80 roughly. That works. And then I'm just going to throw this sideways. We've got that has our pill shape. Now it's just a case of getting the leaves in there. Making it look like a pill with two leaves in it. Let's just change the color very quickly. Then how can we do this? One way that we can do it is really simply, if we look at it here, we've got the pill shape, but then we also have this line in between it. We literally just take this line, put it in the center, and then just separate because you basically have the two leaf shapes there already. So all you would need to do is very slightly change the width of it. Let's just save this now because we've got a little milestone that we've just made. Okay, so that's perfectly in the middle. Once we have that outline, let's just delete that little line there. Let's create a division here so that we don't have anything that we don't need. And then we can basically get everything and just create that. That definitely didn't work. Okay. Let's just select these that instead. I get that. Now we have basically our leaf shapes, but we don't have them in a way which they look good, basically. We need to do a little bit more refining. A way that I thought would have been good would be to just basically get this and then just basically remove that, but it doesn't look good at all. What we probably need to do is to create another anchor point here, remove this anchor point here. And then it should allow us to do it a little bit more. There we go. So that's a little bit better now. Does it look good still? It doesn't look great, does it? Let's try it again. Let's get another anchor point in there. Another anchor point. Here here and here. Then it doesn't matter if that looks square because we're going to curve it now anyway. That looks a little bit better. It's still not perfect. But we can now tweak it a little bit, that's why I get you, you get. Let's get this off. There we go. Now we've got that. We can then take this and even things out a little bit manually, which is going to be the best approach, I think. You see here, it's a little bit square. You just give me a little bit more width there. Probably pull this out slightly. Okay. Again, I'm just literally playing around with this in real time, so feel free to watch on double the pace. But we basically have that now. If we look at that, that's kind of what we wanted, apart from the fact that I think I wanted some kind of curve inside here. So what I'm going to do is just to kind of save the time is I'm going to not do that. Why do I keep doing that? I'm going to take this section here. I'm going to take this here. I'm going to flip this around. Then that will give me two sections together. We have that curve now. That curve is set. Now the thing that's annoying me is this little part here. This is the bit that's annoying me a little bit because what we want is we want to create a curve here. What we can do is we can maybe do it with this anchor point and just curve it like this and then pull it out here. That's maybe a way to do it. We are literally pulling this to the end of time, apparently, don't mind me. We've got this. Now we've got that little curve. But that wouldn't actually help with that, would it? Hm. Okay. In check. This is basically what, when you're actually developing logos for real, you're going to run into things like this as well. You're going to run into little issues like this. Ah, I know how to fix it. Got you. Okay. Got you, got you got go, gotcha. The reason that it's not working is I'm trying to fix it here. It's actually here, you can see the amount of space here. I need to pull this corner into here. And then I need to adjust this part. Ah, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. Now I know. Now I know. There we go. Now it looks a lot more balanced. Can you see that? Okay. So now the width is about the same as everywhere else, and you could obviously get a little rectangle in there and check it out yourself, real. But what you can do now is you can basically create like a Okay here, maybe. I actually works really well, to be honest. Okay. So now we kind of have that leaf shape, and now all we would need is just to basically get the leaf elements in there, and we can just draw those in to be completely brutally honest. We don't need to go crazy with it. We just need to make sure it actually looks half decent. So that's tie these into here. And again, I wanted to make this as organic as possible instead of making it super polished and sort of not very raw. I want to show you, like, the fact that I'm figuring things out in real time with you instead of, you know, kind of manufacturing it so that I know exactly what's going to happen. And then it basically makes you think that logo design is, you know, just all smooth sailing all the time, which just is not the case. Yes, you know, some people are better than others, and obviously, you know, with practice, you can become faster or better or whatever. But at the end of the day, you know, everyone's just figuring it out, and some ideas take longer than others to create, to, you know, develop Okay. So we've kind of got that. Do we want to put those little vines on there as well? I can maybe keep the same do I actually want to do that or not? I mean, I could I could do it. I think I want to make them a little bit thicker than that, though, if I am going to do it. I don't like how thin those are. But as I was saying, it's not a case of everything just being absolutely perfect first time. When you design logos, it's about figuring things out as you go along and developing your skill set. And as I've said before in previous lessons in previous videos, especially in Brand Designer Pro, you do not have to be an absolute wizard at Illustrator to develop great logos. You just don't can be pretty average at Illustrator, and as long as you know, a few core tools, then you're golden. You don't really need to, you know, be an absolute expert. So if you limit yourself and think, okay, you're not good enough to work with this client or blah blah blah, blah. Like, I am not the best person on Illustrator at all by any stretch of the imagination. I've worked with some huge clients, clients you know, turning like hundreds of millions a year. And, you know, I don't let my lack of Illustrator expertise stop me from doing that. And, I mean, obviously, you know, this could be refined 100%. This is definitely not, you know, perfect. But it just gives you an idea I'm a grant of the process and also how I would approach things going forward. So I think might be a good thing to do is if I just take a little bit of time to actually refine this, and then I've got it to a certain point where, you know, I'm not disgusted in the effort. But if I take a couple of hours to basically refine things and get things in place, then I think I could make this a hell of a lot better. So that's basically where I am now. I'm currently at this point. Well, wait that. I'm currently at this point. This is what I currently have and through the magic of time travel, I'll see you in a little bit. Okay, so we have a new more refined version, which I'll bring down for you now. Which is basically the exact same approach. The only difference is I adjusted the stem on the leaf a little bit. I made a little bit of curvature here just to kind of help to kind of harmonize things a little bit better. I curve the corners here, and here I made this a little bit bigger so that now it looks a lot better. I also made the overall kind of outside a little bit thicker as well, so you can see the difference between the two now. And, you know, ultimately, you can see how valuable it can be to take the time to just refine things. You can see the difference between this one and this one, and the difference here is literally just time, taking the time to refine things, make things better, and that is ultimately, from a client's standpoint, going to be super valuable because they are going to basically see that you are putting in the time to refine things and not have them, you know, basically tell you how to do your job. I also put little curves as well. On the edges here just to make it look a little bit less scary. Be yeah, be beforehand, they were, you know, being very pointy and very kind of yeah, sharp. I didn't want that. I wanted to make it a little bit more approachable, so that's why I did that, and I punted it here as well. So yeah, overall, really, really happy with the result for this particular lesson. So yeah, hopefully you took something away from that, hopefully you'll learn something. Hopefully you can take something away from my process to implement into your own. And yeah, hopefully I'll see you again in the future lesson. I'll see you soon. 25. What is a wordmark logo?: Okay, so what is a wordmark? A wordmark, it's kind of in the name, right? It is simply a logo focused around text, okay? So text in a distinctive or unique way. This could be manipulating the font to just be more distinctive, or it could be something like that X ray example, where it has a little hidden message hidden in the letters. So instead of depending on an icon or some sort of symbol like abstract and pictorial logos, wordmark just focused on the alignment of text, the formation of the text, the kerning, and the actual style of the font itself. So how do wordmark work? Well, a wordmark is essentially a custom font or a custom typeface formed as a logo to ultimately symbolize the company and give some sort of suggestion in regards to the company's character and their values. And you can do some really cool things with wordmark that can really push you as a brand designer, for example, using a certain type of spacing between each letter or the kerning, you know, as I'm sure you to create a certain perception and to make the logo either look more futuristic or more kind of modern and simple, you can use different weights. You can use certain fonts and typefaces that allow you to curve certain corners to make it a little bit more distinctive. There's tons of different ways, and we'll go through them all a little bit later on in the course. But I just wanted to highlight some of the pros and cons just so you can kind of understand ultimately what a wordmark is and also how and when you should use them. So when should you actually use a wordmark? Now, a great situation to use a wordmark is when you just want to make it look super professional and simple. So, for example, if we were to rebrand Berkshire Hathaway you know, to fix that curning that is extremely concerning, we would use a wordmark to choose a typeface or a font that suits the brand's message and characteristics and DNA. Then we would fix that curning 100% because it's absolutely terrible, and we'll learn more about curning a little bit later on in the course. And then we would ultimately refine the color to make sure that that color is distinctive within that market and the brand space. Now, if you understand how to do wordmark, it can really help you not just in regards to wordmark, but also every other type of logo as well, because every single type of logo includes a wordmark in some way, shape, or form. So if you can master wordmark as a separate skill, it's going to elevate every single type of logo that you do from now until the end of time. So let's take some time to summarize everything about a wordmark that is important and when we should use it. And then we can start to actually understand how we can create grid wordmarks and I can give you some tips in order to do so. Now, Google's a fantastic example of a wordmark done really, really well. And it isn't even that complicated. So we're going to cover how to actually create wordmark, and I'll give you some tips in regards to how to, you know, create wordmark, which are a little bit more, you know, interesting and distinctive. And I'll also show how to use wordmark and manipulate them and refine them to match your icons better, because that's going to be a whole other lesson and approach and process. Anyway, we'll get to that a little bit later. I hope you're enjoying the course so far, and I will see you in the next lesson. See you there. 26. Examples of amazing wordmark logos: Let's look at some incredible wordmark logos as examples of how a wordmark should be designed and what makes a good wordmark from a bad one. Now, a wordmark should be unique enough to stand out in the market. And in Maga standing out, there are a couple of ways to do this. You could take an approach like for example, Coca Cola and Disney, where both of those fonts are just super unique and super distinctive to the brand. For example, if you take the Disney logo, and then you just take the D from the Disney logo, you still know that it's representing Disney. That gives you a branding system to allow you to use that wordmark in many different ways. You can have the Disney logo with the castle, which is kind of the full brand mark. Then you can have just the wordmark, which is just Disney by itself, and then you can just use the D as an icon, as a favicon, or if you need to apply it somewhere super small. And then you've got the Coca Cola logo, where you can not only use the wordmark itself as a word, Coca Cola, but you can also use the typography as a pattern to decorate something. So you can actually take that particular wordmark and blow it up to a huge size and then use it to actually decorate a background or, you know, just a square or something that is related to Coca Cola with that red, and you're still going to be able to relate it back to the brand itself. Now, I think we can all agree that Disney's logo and Coca Cola's logo are great, and they've got tons of different ways that you can use them. However, Google's logo is just as good, and they take a completely different approach. Now, Google's logo is developed using the font product Sands, and that was a font specifically created for Google. Now, this might not look like a very distinctive logo to you or even a very distinctive typeface, but trust me, there's a lot of thought that goes into developing a font like this for a company like Google. And the reason why Google has essentially created their own font is because instead of licensing a typeface for them to be able to use worldwide, it's going to be far cheaper to just peer a designer to create a custom font for them so they can use it however they wish forever. And there's also tiny little details in regards to Google's logo, where the G, for example, is designed in a very specific way, so it looks like it's symmetrical and it looks like it is kind of designed mathematically. But there's actually a lot of nuanced little details which the average person is not going to see. We can kind of maybe cover that a little bit later on in the course, but just to let you know that this logo is a lot more complicated and well thought out than it appears to be at first sight. So anyway, with a wordmark logo, you don't have to be super creative and do something that's like handwritten and script related. Can do something which is a little bit more simple, and it all comes down to refinement. It obviously depends on the client and what the client's trying to achieve. But just keep that in mind, if you feel like a wordmark logo is something that you want to become a specialist in in the next lesson, we're going to actually cover the process of developing a wordmark logo, which we're going to go through together. So on that note, I will see you in the next lesson. I'll see you soon. 27. Wordmark Logo Development Brief & Research: Okay, so the first step to developing an incredible wordmark for a brand is to discover. Okay? We need to go out and explore the world of wordmark, and ultimately, are we going to communicate a message which is distinctive and unique to the company within letters? Okay. Now, I know it seems difficult, but it isn't, trust me. The first step all starts with talking to the founder and getting a really nice brief of what they're trying to achieve with their logo. Now, when I'm speaking to a client, I am ultimately looking to get direction or directions, should I say? For example, within the package that we're working with with this real client that we're going to design a logo for together, they have four logos to choose from. I'm going to be developing four different ideas with different approaches, then they're going to choose which one they like best. For this one, the direction that was confirmed with the client was all around ascending, improvement. Okay? So how can we do that with letters? Now, there's tons of different ways to do it. Some are slightly more distinctive and some are used again and again and again. Anyway, we'll get to that. For this brand called ascenter, we need to create a message of ascent or improvement or elevation or something like that within the letters themselves. Now, how are we going to do that? We're not going to put pencil to the paper just yet. We're going to first look at actually understanding how we can communicate elevation, ascending, improvement, something like that with visual cues, and a visual icon or something like that. Although we are going to be putting it inside a letter, let's start with this. So Elevation. Okay, we're going to look at elevation. This does not help me at all, okay? Icon that's some. That's not how you spell icon, but I'm sure, okay, we're get somewhere, we're getting somewhere. So we have buildings again. And we've got this, and by the way, everything that I find, I'm going to just stick in here. Okay, so this is interesting, right? So we've got this. We're going to stick this in here. Elevation. I get it. Elevation I get it. Okay. Perfect. Now, this doesn't mean that we're going to use these icons or use stairs for the icons, but I'm just trying to understand when we see something, what do we associate instantly with improvement and elevation and ascending, that sort of stuff? Ascending is going to be good ascent icon. Let's check that out. That's going to be interesting. So this is kind of interesting, but also, there's a lot of just arrows going up, right? There's a lot of arrows going up, upwards trajectory, okay? Okay, okay. Okay. I think we've exhausted pinterest. Okay. So let's go on to this one. Okay. Ascending icon, we have arrows. We have, we've literally just got arrows. That's literally it. Okay, Ascend, what about ascend? Ascend icon? We've got Oh, okay, so it's basically giving me a paper aeroplane for ascend, which is weird, okay, fair enough. We've got stairs again. I don't know what it is with stairs. Why are there so many icons with stairs? It's crazy. We've got another one here. Um Okay, what else could we search? Elevation icon. See if there's anything else that comes up on Google. Okay, so now we're starting to get like mountains and stuff. Now, this particular brand that we're developing the identity form, the wordmark, they're a technology company. So we can't really use a mountain. That's not really going to wash very well, but what we could use is the shape of a mountain, just not like it being too obvious. But if we look at the actual icons that I've sort of captured, they all seem to have a very similar kind of vibe or feel. So they're all kind of looking to either going this way or that way, like this. These two here, the rest of them, not really. I mean, even this one, to be honest, it's going top left. This one, going to the top right. This one top right, top right, top right, and this one's just going up. I think what I need to do is to take the actual letters of the center, and in some way, shape, or form, communicates something like this. So going upwards or to somewhere, it needs to go somewhere. Now, from a process of elimination, the two Ss, that's going to be very difficult to do. So I want to take those out. The E, maybe. The kind of has this sort of elevation thing going on. So that's potential. Maybe we can cut that out or something. So it's like a single line and maybe that can be kind the elevation part, the T, not really. We're kind of with the As, maybe we can do something. Okay, so the As kind of bookshelf, the actual wordmark, if that makes sense. So what if we kind of had them? Because I mean, here, we've got them going this way, we've got them going this way. What if we had the two as either side kind of coming together like that? That could look cool. And the only other way that I can think of it is because the two Ss, the E, and the T, kind of, like, it's kind of impossible, at least in my opinion. So we're kind of left with the N of that kind of ascending and the kind of middle the middle part of the E, which the good thing about the two As is we kind of start and stop with the E. So if we kind of bring them together, we could actually create something absolutely awesome. Okay. I'm going to ultimately start trying to craft some as to bring something together that can look good as a wordmark. I'm not sure what font I'm using yet, that'll come a little bit later. I just want to understand how I can use the s to bring something together, which feels like the actual wordmark comes together. Also because it's the start of the name for a seminar, we're also going to be able to use that as a fabricon as the icon if we can make it distinctive so okay, awesome. I'm happy with that as the discovery phase, at least for this particular direction. Again, with the actual client, I'll be looking at three other directions as well, but for the purposes of this little mini course, I'm going to be focused on this direction, and we'll be developing it together. So on that note, I will see you in the next lesson, which is the sketching phase. See you there. 28. Wordmark Logo Development Sketching: So now we understand the brief and we've done the research, and we have some inspiration that we've captured from Pinterest and Google, for example. Now it's time to start sketching our wordmark logo. Okay, so for a center, we are essentially looking to get an ear or two ears that can kind of come together to create a message of ascending or improving or basically having a positive impact, right? Now, we kind of have this sort of upward trajectory thing, which I kind of like. We also have the actual letters for a center, and I said in the last lesson that the N or the As are going to be the best approach. So let's just start sketching some stuff and let's see what we can do to ultimately create something that looks cool. So let's start with the actual sketch pad itself. So, I like to break things up into two different phases, ok? So the first phase is at the top, and that is phase one, and the second is phase two, okay? That looks like an R, but never mind. Now, with this phase, I'm essentially looking to take a very short amount of time to develop some IDs. I'm not trying to paint in the mon laser here, okay? I'm trying to keep things super simple and basically get my IDs down on paper, okay? So we've got the E and the N. So that's just a typical E and N, obviously. Now, why or how can I get this sort of shape or kind of upwards trajectory installed inside the E or the N. Obviously, with the N, it's a little bit simple, right? I can just take this away. I can just kind of maybe do something like this, which looks pretty cool, right? Maybe we can do both. I'm not sure if we can do both, but let's just see this looks pretty subtle, but it does look pretty cool, right? So maybe we can do that. And maybe for the ear, um, maybe for the ear, we could just do this. For example, here, so we've got the, which is kind of like pointing upwards. And for the ear, we could just do, it's a little bit cliche. It's been done 1 million times before, but maybe just do something like this where it's just kind of like, okay. It's like a triangle. So scent, and then have the other ear like this, like at the other side. Okay. And at this stage, as well, within phase one of the sketch pad, I'm basically looking to just jot down, like, 20 ideas in a really short period of time. Like, I probably take like half an hour, 45 minutes just to sketch 20 for this direction. Now, for the purpose of this course, I'm obviously not going to do 20 because it'll take, like, you know, it'll take a long time, and I want to keep the lessons as short and sweet as possible. But I'm probably going to do like three or four, okay, just to kind of look at a couple of different options. So this end actually looks okay. I kind of like it. The reason I don't like these is because it just looks a little bit too, like, predictable. So I want to look at, Okay, how can I do that whilst also including this middle bit? We could do something like this. So, for example, if we have the two ears the side, we could do something like this, where it's kind of like a bridge or something. Like that. So it's kind of like going upwards or going inwards. That's an option, 100%. But, I mean, it doesn't kind of match this where it kind of has a little bit more of a techie curve, if that makes sense, so it kind of looks a little bit cooler. We could actually try that. And I also don't like how kind of, like, long and thin these actual letters are. Let's make it a little bit wider. And also just look to make it. And I'm only focusing on the N and the E right now. That's all I'm focusing on. I do not care about any other letters right now. That's all I'm doing this is ultimately going to be the distinctive element of the wordmark. So the rest of the letters will just be built around this design, okay? So we've got this, so A and A, and then we like this kind of curve. Okay, so let's maybe try that. Let's maybe try creating some sort of curve like this, maybe? How does that look? Is that? And then do I do it okay, so I can't do it. So either I have to do it the same way as the N like this, or I need to do it like this, which is basically the two together like this, where it's coming together. I actually don't know if I want to do the N in the same way, simply because it kind of breaks it. So we've got kind of two things coming together, and then the N is kind of just like doubling up on the left to right side. So I think if I do this approach, I'm probably just going to focus on the E. But let's see. I can digitize this afterwards and play around with it and stuff, but yeah, there's kind of going to be two options. There's kind of going to be two options. Okay, we'll check that out. I kind of like this, though. I like this. I like this. I like how they kind of come together. And that was kind of the original idea anyway when I was sort of looking at the different icons and stuff. And I also think that it kind of makes a lot of sense for a center. So let's look at phase two, which is essentially to bring the ideas from here and to refine it a little bit. So let's just develop one of these A's, this one. Let's just develop one of these A's, and then we'll kind of go from there, okay? So let's just do a really simple A. Okay. Um, from here, let's just develop a really simple A, which is going to do this. Okay, so we've got an A here. That's cool. Okay, so how can we change this to be a little bit more distinctive and unique, okay? A little bit like this. So in order to do that, we'd have to change this. I'm gonna change this out, so swap that out. Then we would probably close this off, close this off. And then we need to add this element here. So I'm not sure if we would add it and make it, like, smaller. So it starts like the full length and then basically ends like a little bit shorter, like this big. Or if we just keep it the same size, I think just talking from experience, if we make it different sizes and widths, we need to replicate that throughout the entirety of the wordmark, which I'm not sure is going to look very good when you get to, you know, letters like S, like E, like T. It's going to just look super unbalanced. So I think we need to keep things the same width, just to keep things super consistent. So let's do this. And then let's try and join these together. Okay, so wait a second. Okay, so let's do something like that. Okay. Sketching this out. Okay, I can already see I can always see just by looking at that, that it kind of, like, droops down, and it doesn't feel very positive, right? It actually feels quite negative, 'cause it feels like it's kind of like going downwards. I don't want that. I want it to look like it's actually got kind of like an upwards trajectory, if that makes sense. So I want it to look like it's kind of still going up, and it still looks like it's going to be going up. So let's just get rid of that. And then let's edit this so we can Okay, yeah, something like that. So that doesn't look too bad. Okay. Okay. I don't hear that. I don't hear it. I don't hear it. Okay. Okay, okay, okay. Not bad, not bad, not bad. Okay, so we've kind of got something going on here, which doesn't look too shabby. It's communicating what we needed to communicate. And also, it doesn't look too bad. Maybe even put, like, a little bit of, like, shading or something here for one of the icons. Obviously, it's not going to be on every single version of the brand mark. We'll get to kind of developing brand identity systems later on. But this is kind of in front of it, so it kind of makes sense to have a little bit of shadow, if that makes sense. But I kind of like this. I like how it's coming together. Obviously would replicate that for this version as well. So we kind of have the two playing together coming together as part of the ascender wordmark. Okay, so I'm actually really happy with how this is coming together. I love how it is, have a little story behind them. I love how they're both the end of the actual wordmark, so they're kind of coming together. Obviously, at the moment, I'm probably going to play around with a couple of different typefaces, but I like how the story is being told with the two E. I think with the N, it wouldn't have worked as well as what it does now, so I'm happy with where we are right now. The next step is to ultimately digitize this idea in Illustrator, and start really tidying things up, adding color, you know, seeing the actual logo in certain digital environments, you know, like, for example, on a business card, on a website, all that good stuff. But yeah, I'm super excited. So on that note, I will see you in the next lesson. See you. 29. Wordmark Logo Development Perfecting Digitally: So it's finally time to take the design for a center and put it inside Illustrator. So we can just make things look professional and clean and minimal and just perfect, right? Because obviously, it's digital, so we can really spruce things up. Let's dive in and let's start making things look great. Okay, so we have our sketch inside Illustrator. How do we actually start to digitize it and polish it up? Okay. So we understand the concept. All I'm going to do is for the wordmark, at least this particular wordmark is I'm just going to find a tips that I think works for it. For example, let's go for something which is a little bit thick. I want it to be not too thick, but thick enough. Maybe a mansa could work. Yeah, could work. Okay. Let's go for that. Let's go for that I'll look soon. Okay. So we have that now. Obviously, we only need to actually do some sort of animation to the ears and also, if we do it with this one, then we can just replicate it and do the exact same with the other e. Let's just copy and paste that, put this over here so it's out of our way, so we can just focus on doing the E. That was a rhyme which I did not anticipate being so good, awesome. Now we have the E. Let me just do this so we can make this slightly bigger. Let me focus back on this. Perfect. We have the year now. All we need to do now is to basically create the outline. I'm going to put this here and I'm going to put this here. Now, when I'm looking at this, obviously, we need to get rid of this part of the year here. So let's just get rid of that first and foremost, so we can create this shape here. And what I'm seeing is this has this little ledge here on the ear. Well, I'm not sure if I actually want that little ledge here. What I can do is I can try and add an anchor point here. Then I can put it literally in the same place or at least level. Then I can move it out slightly to see if it works better or not. Slightly, but it doesn't make a whole lot of difference to be completely brutally honest. I'll tell you what, I'm actually pretty happy. I've taken away the sangra point. I'm actually pretty happy with how it is now. I don't actually need this little A section, this little ledge. I actually don't need this little ledge below the A. Now we've got this. I'm going to do this. I'm going to turn this to the side or at least here. To. Okay. So we've got a nice example of how thick this should be. Then we've got a guide of how thick that particular element should be at the top. Do we want it to be a little bit thinner or not? I think we tried that in the sketching phase, right? So we want it to be the same. Okay. Let's make it the same. We know that if we connect this to this and this to this, we know it's going to be consistent, right? So that is ultimately the next thing that we need to do, not with a polygon. Okay. So I'm going to just make it green. It doesn't really matter at this point, to be honest. Okay. And then we just do this. So all we're basically doing is just connecting this little edge here with this. It's all we're trying to do. We can do that by There we go. Okay. Perfect. We've done that. Then the next step is to do the same with this. Now, we might have to make this slightly bigger because we need to make sure it's consistent with. We don't want to run over the edge. We wanted to stay consistent with Let's do this. Okay, okay. So I'm literally just playing around with this, trying to get it right. It's almost that. It's almost that. I just a little bit more. There we go. There we go. Perfect. Tweak it. There we go. Awesome. Now we have this section pretty much done. All we need to do now is to basically get this, create a box below it. Also actually no, we'll just do a box, I think. Then just get this section here to be straight against this. Actually, we don't even need to do that, to be honest. We can just literally use the ear, so it's going to be even easier. I'm actually not the best person on Illustrator to be completely brutally honest. I'm actually better at creating the actual messaging, but um, yeah. You don't need to be absolute wizard at Illustrator to make money being a brand designer. It's not necessary. You need to know a couple of things, a couple of simple things, but apart from that, everything else is just, additional. What I'm going to do is I'm just going to take this shape because if I take this shape in this shape and this shape and I just basically use this Divide tool. I can cut this off. I can cut this off. I can cut this off, which I don't need. I can cut this off. And then with this one, this one, this one, and this one, all I literally do is just this and cut them all in a different color to show you, and there we go. So we literally have the ear that we wanted pretty much ready to go. Like, it looks looks and feels great. Let me get rid of that, so it's nice and clean. So that looks and feels pretty good to me, to be honest. Is it exactly the same as that? No, it actually looks a lot better. So now all I want to do is I'm going to take this upper level because right now, what we have is the front of the ear right? It looks a little bit different to the others. So what I can do is I can merge those together, so it's one single piece. And then what I'm going to do is I'm going to create an opportunity to create a gradient. So let me just save this. Just put this to the side so that if anything happens, then we are still safe. And what I'm going to do here is just section out part of this a here. I'm going to ungroup this. I'm going to take this and I'm going to divide it again. Now the reason I'm divided again is actually really simple. I'm going to use this as well again to divide again because I want to have control over this and this. These two sections here. The reason I want that is so that when I create let's just do it like bright red, for example. That's bright red, that's bright red, that's bright red. Then what I can do is I can actually create a gradient between each of those letters and also here as well, probably. Yeah, I should probably do it there as well to be completely brutally honest. Let's do it there as well. Again, I'm just literally creating this gap. Okay. Okay. Here. I've got more control over here. These are the sections that I want control over, and the reason I want them is because I want to create a little gradient here, a gradient here and a gradient here to separate and make this look like it's in front of the other elements. The way that I can do that now once I've done all the hard work, well I see hard work, I can then take this, the gradient, make this to 90 probably and swap that round and just use my mouse to alternate that, make that a little bit shorter. Perfect. Then I just take the eyedropper tool and do that and then take this eyedropper tool and do that here presto. Looks like this. Then the best thing about this is you can literally do the exact same thing. 90 with that and then just copy and paste that so that it shares the same properties and then just move it so that the angle is slightly different, and you literally have the perfect gradient to showcase this difference in depth? This is obviously in front and you can see this is behind it looks super realistic, super fast. Then you can also do this. This isn't super difficult to do. That looks pretty good already, to be honest. You can see here though, there's a little bit of overlap and you can see it's cutting into it so it doesn't look as smooth. All you do is just obviously now, it's at the top, that doesn't look good, it looks pretty weird. So all you do is just change it. So it looks probably about, so it's looking okay there. But what you need to do is you need to just heighten this up a little bit so you get a little bit more separation. So that's looking a little bit better, right? Then just let it down a little bit and there we go. It's just kind of filling around with it until you get to a point where you're happy with how things look. Oh, what have I done there? I've knocked something out, I did something. What I done there? Well, there we go. I'd kind of move that whole thing, which obviously isn't great, great move. Okay. I'm literally just trying. What you can actually, this is a good little example. You can change it to a really crazy color so you can actually see exactly where the gradient is. I actually looks pretty cool, doesn't it? You can just manage the gradient and control it a little bit better. And then once you have it where you need it, then you can be a little bit more, a little bit more careful with the color that you select. For example, here look, you can see here there's a little bit of a layover which isn't good. Okay. Let's do a little bit more. There we go. That doesn't look as bad now. Just change that, change it to that. Here Presto, we're pretty much there. Then all I'm going to do is basically take this section here. We can get rid of that now because we already have what we need. We can get rid of this. We'll just put it down there. We'll get this, move this over. This should still be the same size. We're going to create an outline for that. I'm also going to get this. No, we won't get rid of the A just yet. We're going to copy and paste this and just get the same color. Then we're going to do the last little part, which is this while we get the A, we put it exactly on top. This is actually a really simple wordmark. It isn't complicated to do. But I'm just trying to show you the process of how to do a simple but effective wordmark which tells a story. That's the overarching lesson that I want to create. I mean, if we look at this, it looks pretty good. It tells a story. It does the job. It does the job as a wordmark and it literally took 30 minutes to actually do from start to finish as a concept, it suits the brand. Could you make these particular letters a little bit more unique? Of course, you could. You know, you could maybe curve one corner, for example, and do the same for, and this is me just kind of, you know, doing things for the sake of it. But you could definitely, you know, make it slightly more unique and, you know, play around with things. But overall, overall, it doesn't look too bad. I actually like it just the original how it was before. Maybe you could curve the corners a little bit and play around it a little bit and refine it a little bit more, put the little symbol here that either if it's a rechestered trademark, once it's rechested put the there, once it's applied as a trademark, then you can put the TM there. So overall, I mean, it's a nice wordmark. It does the job. It tells a story. And ultimately, the fact that we've achieved this in such a short period of time, I'm pretty happy with that. So yeah, I hope you enjoyed seeing inside my process. I hope you took something way that you can implement into your own processes in your own wordmark development process. But apart from that, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it, and I'll see you in a future lesson. 30. What is a lettermark logo?: Okay, so what is a lettermark logo? So a lettermark logo is ultimately a monogram, where you just use either one or a couple of letters to symbolize the company. This allows you to take a very long name like International Business Machines for IBM and condense it down into a much more concise and simple brand mark. So how do lettermark even work? Well, their initials based. So you can streamline everything about the brand into a few simple characters. Secondly, they're typography driven. So you do need to understand letter forms to a certain extent, which we'll cover a little bit later on in the course. And thirdly, they're super professional and compact. Obviously within reason, as long as you execute them properly, which again, we'll get to in a little bit. Now, when would you actually use a lettermark or a monogram? Well, there are a couple of different opportunities to do that. One, as I've mentioned before, is when you've got a super long brand name and you just need to condense it down, you would use an abbreviation of that brand name, again, like IBM and simply take those three letters and create the logo around those letters. Another time you would do this is potentially you wanted to create a sub mark for your logo. So, for example, if you had a wordmark and then you wanted to create a slightly more simple version of that wordmark you could just take the first two letters of those two words and then basically create a lettermark around those two letters. Another thing about lettermark, which is super important is they're super versatile. Because they're so simple and they come across as quite professional, clean and modern, it is a great opportunity to create, you know, a brand mark which can be used literally anywhere. And the best part is lettermarks generally look great, no matter where you put them. Now, we're obviously going to dive into lettermarks in far more detail later on in the course, but I just wanted to give you a very brief understanding of where they come from, what they are, and when to use them. But we're going to get into far more detail in a little bit, so I will see you in the next lesson. See you there. 31. Examples of amazing lettermark logos: What makes a lettermark really great? Well, in this video, we're going to find out. We're going to look at three different logos, one from HBO, one from NASA and one from IBM. Three of probably the most famous lettermarks in the world. And let's start with HBO. Now, HBO is a lettermark. The typeface is not super distinctive or unique. However, within the O of the lettermark, they do do something quite clever where they basically create, like, a little camera lens, which is obviously related to what HBO does and what they look to do in the future. So that is a little clever twist, which makes the logo a little bit more distinctive. But I think we can all agree that it isn't exactly groundbreaking. It isn't know, shattering, you know, people's creative minds when they see this logo. It's actually really simple. Most of the logos that standard test of time that are kind of timeless are overly simple. And I'm not sure if that's an approach that you personally want to take for your particular company and the work that you do, but it is something to take note of because usually clients like that type of approach, simply because they see big companies using that approach and they kind of want to emulate it. Now, NASA and the worm logo or for whatever reason they call it, that I'm not sure why. They kind of go for a more futuristic, sort of spacey type face, which is unique to NASA, but also as well, it's just super simple and modern. Now, the IBM logo is a little bit different. So IBM goes a little bit more above and beyond in regards to their logo design where they've basically created, and there's a couple of different stories in regards to why the logos created that way. Some people think it is to symbolize innovation and technology. I personally think it's actually to relate to computers and pixels. That's kind of my idea of it. Anyway, that's what I kind of assume it symbolizes from just looking at the logo a couple of times. Here that the actual logo, it is super simple. It's super down to worth. It's very professional, very refined, and it just says exactly what it is on the tin. So what can we kind of summarize from looking at these three logos? Well, simple is generally better keeping things simple, making sure that the lettermark can be used in many different environments and keeping it simple enough to allow it to do that. And the next video, we're going to actually develop a lettermark together, so I can actually show you the process and how I would personally do it using my process in Magars to logo design. So when I note, I will see you very soon. Take care. Bye. 32. Lettermark Logo Development Brief & Research: Okay, so designing lettermarks. The first step that I always take with a brand new clients, and this is a real client, by the way that we're designing a logo for is to understand the brief properly and do some discovery. Okay? So what is the brief for this particular project for this lettermark? I'm working with a company called Data Launch, and they ultimately would like a logo that is a D, but it showcases something about what makes the company special. So just to tell you a little bit about data launch, they essentially use data to help businesses to grow and make better decisions, okay? So there's tons of different ways that we can approach this from a visual standpoint, right? We've got making better decisions. We've got transparency of understanding the way to go forward, clarity. We have elevation, we have improvement. We have, making things bigger and better and kind of breaking through what you currently think about the business limitations and helping you break through them to discover new limitations for the business so that your business can grow and get better. And of all of those approaches, the one of breaking through makes the most sense for me personally. With the packages that I offer clients, we ultimately explore usually 4-6 different approaches. So we would have four to six different directions to explore together. And then we would choose the one that we like best. Okay? So we kind of have a couple of different options to choose from. For the purpose of this little mini course, we're going to focus on the breaking through message, okay? Because I think it could be really interesting. Okay? So the first thing that I'm going to do is now that I understand the brief, and I have one of the directions that I'm focusing on, at least for this particular minicurse is go over to Pinterest and Google and also to this website that I use called Flaticon, which is super, super useful. Okay, so the first thing I'm going to look at is I'm going to look at break through icon. Okay, let's have a little look at this. Okay, so we've got this kind of. Obviously, we're not going to use an aeroplane. It's got nothing to do with aeroplanes, but we have this kind of aeroplane breaking through image, and then what else do we have here? Let's go back. We've got this, which obviously doesn't really it's breakthrough, but not in a positive way. We also have this, which is like, okay, so we have some negative space thing going on here. Let's save that. I like this as well, to be honest. Let's save this as well. I'm looking at, there's some ds here, which is interesting. Let's look at this. I like how this is in three D. I take this, okay. Put this in here. Mm. That's int. Okay. Okay, okay, okay. So what I'm doing now is I'm just looking for ways to visually communicate breakthrough with a D, right? Breaking through with the D. Anyway, let's keep it clean, guys. It's a family show. So I think this is actually pretty interesting because it's not quite communicating break through, but I like how it's kind of like coming at me. It's coming through something, but it doesn't quite hit the nail on the head. This, as well. So I'm starting to see some opportunities here, and that's ultimately all what this phase is about discovery and research. So I'm just looking at, okay. How can I communicate this particular approach with shapes, with geometry, with letter D, and that particular message that we're trying to communicate of breaking through, adding clarity, that sort of thing. I've found a couple of options which I actually think are really cool. Um, we've got this one, particularly, which I think is kind of on the verge. It's very simple. It's very tech. So that's kind of one of the things that I like about it. It's kind of it's very clean and simple and minimal, which obviously relates to tech. I like how this is kind of breaking through, and it's a very visual representation of it. And I like the fact that these are nice and simple as well. I'm not too much of a fan of these two on these because obviously, these lines won't be very scalable, which basically means if we make this super small look, these lines almost become like, you know, we can't even see them. They're not even very visible. Whereas, something like this or something like this is, you know, it's very much scalable, and, you know, it can go any size, and we'd still understand exactly what it is. Okay, these here. I kind of like this. I'm not a huge fan of everything else, but that's all part of the research process. I'd love to see clarity icon? Like, how can we communicate clarity or breaking through and then finding more clarity on the other side? Kinda have something like that? I kind of like this. How it kind of feels like it's sort of breaking through there, as well. Okay. Cool, cool, cool. Okay, okay, okay. Okay. Yeah, I kind of like that. I kind of like how it's kind of got that extra line going through. This is kind of interesting as well, but I don't like having gradients. In a logo for some reason, it just doesn't sit well with me because it's not going to work on all backgrounds. It's just going to make it more complicated for the client, so I don't really like keeping it like that, to be honest. Okay, I feel like I have a good amount of stuff to work with for the sketching phase. I've got some really great inspiration, most predominantly this one, which is pretty cool, but I think we can do a little bit better for this particular brief. But yeah, let's dig into the sketching phase. Let's see what happens, and on that note, I will see you there. See you soon. Bye bye. 33. Lettermark Logo Development Sketching: So now we understand the brief and we've done the research, and we have some inspiration that we've captured from Pinterest and Google, for example. Now it's time to start sketching our lettermark. Okay, so if we're going to sketch the ideas for data launch, we need to first just section our sketch pad into phase one and two. So basically what I'm going to do is I'm going to get a really rough idea of how I want the icon to look and the lettermark. And then afterwards, we're going to ultimately refine it a little bit, okay? Now, usually, what I would do is I would do maybe like 20 different versions for phase one. For this particular direction, and then afterwards, I would refine maybe the one or two that I like best. For this mini course, we're only going to do a couple of kind of ideas for phase one, and then I'll basically just refine the one that I like best and do a final version here before taking this into Illustrator. Okay? So phase one, I remember looking at the icons and I think this one and this one kind of stood out to me. But again, I wasn't really, you know, like, bowled over by it. I just like how this looked like it was kind of coming out of the D. And I also liked how this one was kind of three D as well a little bit. But let's have a look. Let's just see what happens when we start sketching a D. So let's start there. Let's just sketch a D. Perfect. Okay, and then let's try and maybe make it look like it's sort of coming out of something or coming out of somewhere. Okay, let's at this point, like, I'm not trying to create anything super special here. I'm literally just sketching ideas and seeing what happens. Like, I'm not trying to do anything super unique or crazy. Just trying to see what ideas work and what ideas don't work. Okay, this is kind of I mean, it doesn't really look like anything just yet, but I mean, it doesn't look bad, obviously, but it doesn't look great either. Okay? I'm just trying too, I'm just filling around. Okay, we kind of get the idea, right? This looks kind of This is the inside of the D, and it kind of looks like it's sort of coming out a little bit, but also not too much, right? Yeah, I mean, Ma, it's alright. It doesn't look anything special, but let's continue and maybe try something else. Okay? Let's try. Let's do something a little bit thicker here. Let's do a thicker D here. Then let's do something like um let's put let's put this here like this, maybe. Okay. K. So we're putting the inside of the D here, then let's connect these two. Okay. And then let's do this. It's not really I mean, I'm not sure how this is going to work, to be honest, but let's see how it looks. Okay, let's just delete this a little bit here. Okay, so we've kind of got, like, the middle of the day kind of, like, busting out and bursting through and helping to kind of tie in with that message of, you know, improvement or breaking through limitations, kind of see where that's going. I definitely don't think from a execution standpoint, I don't think it looks very good. I like the idea of it. I can see the message of it kind of bursting through, but I also don't like either of them to be completely brutally honest. Like, something just doesn't feel quite right. See, I think the thing that's kind of throwing me off a little bit is the fact that this curve here, just kind of feels like it's I like the fact that this is negative space. I like the story, but I don't think that this curve and this curve matches well together. If we put this straight line here against this straight line, maybe that will work a little bit better. Let's just quickly sketch that and then we'll see what it looks like. Again, doesn't have to be fancy, doesn't have to be pretty. We're going to do that later on. We're going to refine that in phase two here. But at the moment, let's just see let's just do this. Let's let's try and break it a little bit first, and then we'll go from there. I already like how this is looking because we can kind of see the, we can kind of see how the lines make a lot more sense, as opposed to here where it's kind of like it feels like they're kind of fighting with each other. Here, we kind of have this here, then this here, and it just feels like it's a lot more consistent, right, okay? Okay, let's do that. And that? Oh, okay. I'm definitely lk him why this is going. And then let's do we color this in or this in? Let's definitely color this in obviously, 'cause this is the date. So this is, like, a non negotiable, really. Okay. Okay. Then, obviously, we would take this away, and we probably take this away, as well. And then we would probably have to obviously use the negative space here, and we would use this, right? Okay. I mean, I don't hear it. I don't hit it, but it's kind of like that, like, sort of that bursting through. Maybe it's just a little bit, like, too much. Maybe it's like popping out too much. Let's try and let's try and bring it in a little bit and just see how it looks. I mean, I can refine it. I like how this is going. So let's just refine this in phase two, and then we'll go from there just so I can do it properly. So let's draw the D. Let's keep it inside that line because the moment if it's popping out, it doesn't really look that great. So let's make the day a little bit, wider as well, just so we've kind of got a little bit more base to work with. Okay. We go. And then let's just tie it down up a little bit. So again, in phase two, we can be a little bit more careful with our strokes and where we're going with things. Then on the top left, let's just curve that around here. Then here we've got this section. Okay. Then afterwards, we have this section. No, I think this is going to work a lot better for a couple of different reasons. The first thing is that before we had some of this middle D kind of overlapping with this, which kind of made it look like a little bit weird, especially if it's just in one single color, and obviously, every single logo needs to work in just one color. But with this, we kind of have this gap where it isn't overlapping. We don't want it to kind of be not lapping, but it just needs to touch very, very slightly. So let's look at this. And let's just see how this looked when it all, kind of slightly faded in. I think this could be a really good direction. Yeah, it's definitely got a lot more potential than the other ones. I'll tell you that for nothing. Okay. Okay. I mean, it's not perfect. We need to refiner and Illustrator, but I like how this is coming around, and it's just got a much stronger feeling to it when it's been executed nicely. There we go. Okay, I'm actually really happy with how this lettermark has came together. I love how it tells a story. I love how simple it is. I love it how it's not too techie, but it's also a techie just enough to, you know, meet the brief. I'm super excited. I don't think this is going to take a lot of cleaning up, to be honest, in Illustrator, but I think it's going to be pretty straightforward. So on that note, let's dive in Illustrator. Let's digitize this bad boy, and then yeah, we'll see what happens afterwards, right? I'll see you in the next lesson. See you. 34. Lettermark Logo Development Perfecting Digitally: It's finally time to take the lettermark that we've designed for data launch and put it inside Illustrator. So we can just start tidying things up, having things super clean and precise, and just to help data launch look super professional. And so with that said, let's dive in Illustrator. Okay, so how can we take our sketch and now create a nice refined logo for a client? Now, to be honest with you, this one should be pretty easy. When you put the logo in Illustrator, most of the work should be done, okay, especially for something like this, which is ultimately a lettermark, right? The reason being is when you have a logo, most of the work is in the actual idea and the story, right? Afterwards, you're just executing on that story and that idea. So for example, here, all we would need to do is create this probably, I'm not sure if Montserrat is the best option to be honest. Let's just look at a couple of others that have, that could work. Okay, awesome. That could work. Is there a more bold one? Okay, there isn't just work with this. It doesn't really matter too much, to be honest. So we have that. We have now duplicated it and we will now create a logo where the middle version matches with this. Now, all we need to do technically is to take this, and I'll color this something different just so you can see what it is. Move it to the top corner. And then basically, take the lines from here, match it to here, and take the line here and match it to here, and we should have our logo, basically. Let's do that. We have this. Let's save this. Let's now go to Let's now go to this tool, get this connected to that. Perfect. Then let's try, let's change the color of this actually just so we can see what we're doing. Okay. That didn't work, but it's okay. There we go. Actually, let's change it to something a little bit more colorful so you can see exactly where everything is going. So we've got this here. And we basically just need something that is going to have the same angle as this. So we don't really care about anything else apart from the angle that these two met at. So you've got this, we've got this. You can see here that's a perfect match. And this is going to give us that nice polished effect that we're looking for. Now I'm going to make this super thin. Just so we can see it. Well, not that thin. Okay. Let me do five. That's probably going to be better. Okay. It's still pretty hard to see. I want to make sure that you can see it. That's the most important thing. There we go. That's a little bit better. So I want to make sure that I get it right on the edge so that I'm basically cutting off this section. Okay? Now, I'm just going to get this section here, get this. I'm just going to make sure that this cuts off the entirety of the D. So I know where it needs to be now. Now I can just cut it. There we go. So now I've got that. Now I've got that. Now, all I need to do is just duplicate this D, turn it down. And I'll do the same with this one. So I know exactly where it needs to go. All I need to do is just clear that and we are good to go. So you see here it's not that perfect. Let me go. Perfect. Now, all I need to do is just literally use the Divide tool to take this away, and then we should be good to go. We just take this away. And we should have our logo. However, you'll see up here there's a little section which isn't quite working. So let's take this. Let's take this. Let's take this just move it up a little bit. Let's see if that works. It's working a little bit, but let's just add this here a little bit and just play around with it. So that's working way better now. It's still not quite right, I don't think. I'm going to fiddle around with this little bit. I'm going to figure out why it doesn't look quite right, whether I need to add this out, whether I need to adjust this slightly or maybe do I mean, that's looking a little bit better, but it still doesn't look 100%. I still need to pop a little bit more. Give me a little bit of time, and through the magic of time travel, I'm going to refine it a little bit, and, yeah, we'll see how things look afterwards. And so we have the original logo, and then we also have this version as well, which I think looks a lot better. So you can see here it pops a little bit more. You can actually see that the middle of the D is kind of bursting out from the actual base of the D. So this looks a lot better, I think. It took a little bit of refinement and ultimately, that's one of the things with logo design, which you have to keep in mind. Sometimes you need to just take the time to get the logo looking and feeling right because you could have maybe sent that to the client and the idea is the same. But just taking some time just to get things nice and polished is always going to give you a better result. And then the client, when they see it, they're not just going to say, Oh, this is a good logo, or, you know, this isn't bad, they're going to be blown away by the end result because you've taken that time to refine it, it's going to put you in a position of power because you're not going to waste the client's time with tons of revisions. You're going to have done all the revisions yourself, right by taking the time to refine your taste and to get better at doing this sort of design. So hopefully this lesson was helpful. Hopefully you took something away from learning about my process and seeing a little bit of how I do things. But yeah, if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out. Yeah. Apart from that, I hopefully see you again very soon. Take care. 35. What is a combination mark logo and great examples?: So what actually makes a great combination mark? Well, there are a couple of things that we should probably know before we dive into the world of combination marks. And the three logos that we're going to be looking at in this particular video are Burger King, Dido's, and idas. Now, let's start with Burger King and Dido's first because those two logos are both in the exact same industry, and they both sell fast food, basically. They both sell really cheap and easy food. Now, Burger King has been through a couple of different iterations of their logo, but ultimately, they've kept things pretty simple. It's a burger, and their combination mark has allowed them to use their tie face, which is unique to Burger King, and also the icon of Burger King and also different variations of burger icons, which is unique to the Burger King brand across all environments within their branding. And Burger King gets super creative with their designs and their packaging, for example, their brand codes, which if you don't know what brand codes are, don't worry, we'll get to them a little bit later on in the course are super powerful because once you see the kind of colors together from Burger King, you can instantly recognize their packaging, their, you know, interior design for their actual stores. The outside of the stores, everything is super brand. Now, Did doesn't underhand you can see how they have taken an approach where their logo is really simple, but evokes so much energy, right? So you have the wordmark with this little triangle above the eye, which links to the icon, which we'll get to a little bit later on during the process of actually developing icons. But basically, what you see is you see this triangle, which is kind of bolting through the wordmark. Those two elements can be used separately. But the entire typeface and the entire logo itself is developed around triangles, which relates to the product itself. Now, these are little details that I really love about logo design because we don't initially see the triangles in the wordmark, for example, but they are everywhere. And that's what makes the actual combination mark look so great. And it also allows the wordmark and the icons to be used interchangeably, separately or together. Now, the Adidas logo, I personally think is one of my favorite logos. I think it's up there with the likes of Nike because it tells such a great story. Now, if you don't know the story of the AIDS logo, it's actually pretty simple. It essentially symbolizes the challenges that athletes need to conquer to improve and to become the best athlete that they can be. Now, this is obviously quite similar to the messaging from another brand that you might know. I don't know, maybe Nike. This is one of the things that I really love about logo design. You can take the same message, look at three or four different ways to communicate it, and then pick the one which you personally think is going to work best both from a personal preference standpoint and also from a strategic standpoint hopefully those give you a little bit of insight emigrants to logos which look great as combination marks and also as well, setting us up to the next lesson of the course, which is ultimately to create a combination mark of our own, which I'll see you very soon. 36. Combination Mark Logo Development Brief & Research: So now we understand the brief and we've done the research, and we have some inspiration that we've captured from Pinterest and Google, for example. Now it's time to start sketching our combination mark. Okay, so with bio advocate, we are basically looking to create kind of like a cross for medicine, but also kind of something that looks digital, a little bit like this. Now, I didn't like how this had, like, the nodes, but it didn't really look like a cross. You can kind of see it, but it's not as kind of evidence. So I don't want to be that kind of indirect about it. I wanted to look like a cross like this, a little bit like this. So let's start there. At this point, basically what I'm looking to do is I look to develop two phases. So this is phase one. This is phase two in regards to sketches, okay? And what I'm looking to do with these two different phases is first phase is I will do about 20 sketches, usually for a client, but obviously in this mini course, I'm just going to do like maybe four or five or something like that. Then once I see potential in one of those sketches, I'll then move on to the next phase, which is, okay, I need to refine this sketch. I need to make it a little bit better, okay? So we're going to start with the cross because that's ultimately what we want to develop our entire brand mark around. And at this point, I'm not trying to paint the mona lisa, right? I'm literally just drawing a really simple shape and just seeing where my hands take me, okay? I know what I want to achieve, but I'm not sure how to execute it or get there yet, okay? So I'm just looking here at this one, and there's kind of like little parts to it. So I'm wondering, Okay, let's try Let's try using maybe smaller squares and then seeing how we can kind of link everything together. And again, this is, like, the quickest of quick at this phase, just to try and get things in place, just to see how things look. Because at this moment in time, we don't even know which approach is going to be best. Okay. I feel like this isn't going to be, like, super, super scalable, right? Like, you can see here, this is a lot of squares, by the way. I don't know why I'm putting myself through this torture. But, um, yeah, I think this looks absolutely horrendous. There's so many squares. I can kind of understand now why they've only did, like, eight by eight. Okay, so this is like 12 by 12, which is far too much, okay? I kind of know that we need to use some sort of element. So, for example, we need something which is going to ultimately, create the shape of the actual cross, but I'm not sure what it is. Let's try again. But let's just try a little bit different. Let's go really light with this, just so we can kind of create some sort of shape. And what if we like, for example, did circles, but like three circles. So three, three, one, two, three, one, two, three. One, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three. And again, these are not supposed to be anything special. And you'll see by the end, once we get into Illustrator, we can actually start to look at, you know, what's working best but I just don't want to spend too much time at this point. I'm just trying to play around with ideas. Don't get too married to your sketches. Some of the best designers in the world have terrible sketches. And I'm not one of the best designers in the world, but I do have terrible sketches. So let's just look at this and then think, Okay, with this one, they kind of have something like linking between them. So I'm not sure if, like, a straight line is gonna work, but what if we did, like, kind of, like, Oh, wait a second. Okay. What if we had something like this? Where we are basically kind of linking them up, kind of, like, like if we actually sketched it bigger like this, it would be like that. It would kind of be like yeah, like a node, like a connector thing, like a data thing. A little bit a little bit like this, almost. Yeah, a little bit like that. But kind of like this. And here, I've kind of got it going like, like, side to side. But what if we did it either up, like going upwards or maybe, I don't know, maybe diagonal or something? Okay. I mean, that's an option. Okay, so we've got that. I like that. Let's move on to another one. We've got this, as well. Okay, we've got this. So let's maybe do something. Can we kind of, like, link two together, maybe. Like link two together just to kind of see what it looks like, and maybe maybe curve this or something? Let's see. So we've got this we can just curve that. Code this. Code this. The, the curve that maybe. Okay. Let's do that. Then here. Curve that. Cove this. There we go. This should be pretty decent, I think. Okay, and then let's just thicken this up a little bit and get this under under wraps. Okay. Okay. Obviously, this wouldn't be in there. Maybe it would. It maybe have a little bit of a tint? I think this is a little bit too similar to other logos and stuff that are out there, so I'm not sure if I want to go with it, but it definitely doesn't look bad. It just doesn't look very unique or distinctive at all. It doesn't really tell the story of data very well, either. Okay. Um, okay, I'm gonna just leave that one. I don't really like that one, to be honest. This is a little bit crazy. I'm going to take this one, and I'm going to ultimately start to look at how I can kind of piece this together. I want to see how it looks when I'm kind of doing it, like, upwards. And I think, like, up to the so improvement typically goes from the bottom left to the top, right, so I'm going to kind of go with that. Now, we've got that. Now let's look at creating a nice medical cross. Just to make things look a little bit cleaner. Okay. And then we basically need to should probably get a ruler for this, actually. Then let's bring a ruler in and then just do some sketches. That's the center. Just do that. Okay. Okay, yeah, yeah. That's good. I like that. Okay. We can just guesstimate at this point we don't really need to be super precise. Okay. And then, so we've kind of got the squares all kind of laid out. Now we can start to put the circles in the actual squares and start, like, linking things together. So again, just putting the circles in the squares and trying to see how this can make sense. And this could change a little bit when we get to the Illustrator stage, which is next. But at this point, I'm literally just trying to feel how many circles make sense for the actual logo. I mean, this is going to be much easier to develop and to kind of refine when we get to the next stage of the process, which is ultimately going to allow us to move circles around pretty freely. But for this stage, I just want to see if it's a feasible concept. Okay. So we've got that. Let's remove all of these lines, just so we've got a nice clean palette to work with. So we've got a nice, clean shape to work with. And then once we've done that, then we can start to kind of look at how we can link all of these circles up to kind of showcase the data aspect. So if we're going to be doing from left to right, obviously, this can't link to anything, but this can. So we can maybe do this. Okay. And then we can link this one to this one. Okay. And then this one would ultimately link to this one. Now, I see at the moment, this is a lot further away than this. So this is just a sketch at this point. But you can see how this could make sense. I'm not sure if that would overlap with that or not. Probably, right? But that obviously wouldn't overlap with that, okay? Okay, I'm starting to see how this could potentially come together. It's actually starting to look not clean, but it's starting to make sense. Okay. There we go. Okay. I'm pretty happy with how this is coming out, so I'm pretty confident that we can take this to the next stage of the process. And I think if we create something, Illustrator. Using this approach? I think it should look pretty good. Okay, so I'm actually really happy with how this logo is coming together right now for bio advocate. I think it's clean. I think it's unique. I think it tells a story of both data and medical. I think it's ready for the next step of the process, which is ultimately to take this design and this sketch and take it into the digital format, which is ultimately Illustrator. Do Illustrator. So let's take it in there. Let's tie it up. Let's add a wordmark. Let's start to add color to the actual brand. I canon't wait, okay? Awesome. I'll see you in the next lesson. 37. Combination Mark Logo Development Sketching: So now we understand the brief and we've done the research, and we have some inspiration that we've captured from Pinterest and Google, for example. Now it's time to start sketching our combination mark. Okay, so with bio advocate, we are basically looking to create kind of like a cross for medicine, but also kind of something that looks digital, a little bit like this. Now, I didn't like how this had, like, the nodes, but it didn't really look like a cross. You can kind of see it, but it's not as kind of evidence. So I don't want to be that kind of indirect about it. I wanted to look like a cross like this, a little bit like this. So let's start there. At this point, basically what I'm looking to do is I look to develop two phases. So this is phase one. This is phase two in regards to sketches, okay? And what I'm looking to do with these two different phases is first phase is I will do about 20 sketches, usually for a client, but obviously in this mini course, I'm just going to do like maybe four or five or something like that. Then once I see potential in one of those sketches, I'll then move on to the next phase, which is, okay, I need to refine this sketch. I need to make it a little bit better, okay? So we're going to start with the cross because that's ultimately what we want to develop our entire brand mark around. And at this point, I'm not trying to paint the mona lisa, right? I'm literally just drawing a really simple shape and just seeing where my hands take me, okay? I know what I want to achieve, but I'm not sure how to execute it or get there yet, okay? So I'm just looking here at this one, and there's kind of like little parts to it. So I'm wondering, Okay, let's try Let's try using maybe smaller squares and then seeing how we can kind of link everything together. And again, this is, like, the quickest of quick at this phase, just to try and get things in place, just to see how things look. Because at this moment in time, we don't even know which approach is going to be best. Okay. I feel like this isn't going to be, like, super, super scalable, right? Like, you can see here, this is a lot of squares, by the way. I don't know why I'm putting myself through this torture. But, um, yeah, I think this looks absolutely horrendous. There's so many squares. I can kind of understand now why they've only did, like, eight by eight. Okay, so this is like 12 by 12, which is far too much, okay? I kind of know that we need to use some sort of element. So, for example, we need something which is going to ultimately, create the shape of the actual cross, but I'm not sure what it is. Let's try again. But let's just try a little bit different. Let's go really light with this, just so we can kind of create some sort of shape. And what if we like, for example, did circles, but like three circles. So three, three, one, two, three, one, two, three. One, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three. And again, these are not supposed to be anything special. And you'll see by the end, once we get into Illustrator, we can actually start to look at, you know, what's working best but I just don't want to spend too much time at this point. I'm just trying to play around with ideas. Don't get too married to your sketches. Some of the best designers in the world have terrible sketches. And I'm not one of the best designers in the world, but I do have terrible sketches. So let's just look at this and then think, Okay, with this one, they kind of have something like linking between them. So I'm not sure if, like, a straight line is gonna work, but what if we did, like, kind of, like, Oh, wait a second. Okay. What if we had something like this? Where we are basically kind of linking them up, kind of, like, like if we actually sketched it bigger like this, it would be like that. It would kind of be like yeah, like a node, like a connector thing, like a data thing. A little bit a little bit like this, almost. Yeah, a little bit like that. But kind of like this. And here, I've kind of got it going like, like, side to side. But what if we did it either up, like going upwards or maybe, I don't know, maybe diagonal or something? Okay. I mean, that's an option. Okay, so we've got that. I like that. Let's move on to another one. We've got this, as well. Okay, we've got this. So let's maybe do something. Can we kind of, like, link two together, maybe. Like link two together just to kind of see what it looks like, and maybe maybe curve this or something? Let's see. So we've got this we can just curve that. Code this. Code this. The, the curve that maybe. Okay. Let's do that. Then here. Curve that. Cove this. There we go. This should be pretty decent, I think. Okay, and then let's just thicken this up a little bit and get this under under wraps. Okay. Okay. Obviously, this wouldn't be in there. Maybe it would. It maybe have a little bit of a tint? I think this is a little bit too similar to other logos and stuff that are out there, so I'm not sure if I want to go with it, but it definitely doesn't look bad. It just doesn't look very unique or distinctive at all. It doesn't really tell the story of data very well, either. Okay. Um, okay, I'm gonna just leave that one. I don't really like that one, to be honest. This is a little bit crazy. I'm going to take this one, and I'm going to ultimately start to look at how I can kind of piece this together. I want to see how it looks when I'm kind of doing it, like, upwards. And I think, like, up to the so improvement typically goes from the bottom left to the top, right, so I'm going to kind of go with that. Now, we've got that. Now let's look at creating a nice medical cross. Just to make things look a little bit cleaner. Okay. And then we basically need to should probably get a ruler for this, actually. Then let's bring a ruler in and then just do some sketches. That's the center. Just do that. Okay. Okay, yeah, yeah. That's good. I like that. Okay. We can just guesstimate at this point we don't really need to be super precise. Okay. And then, so we've kind of got the squares all kind of laid out. Now we can start to put the circles in the actual squares and start, like, linking things together. So again, just putting the circles in the squares and trying to see how this can make sense. And this could change a little bit when we get to the Illustrator stage, which is next. But at this point, I'm literally just trying to feel how many circles make sense for the actual logo. I mean, this is going to be much easier to develop and to kind of refine when we get to the next stage of the process, which is ultimately going to allow us to move circles around pretty freely. But for this stage, I just want to see if it's a feasible concept. Okay. So we've got that. Let's remove all of these lines, just so we've got a nice clean palette to work with. So we've got a nice, clean shape to work with. And then once we've done that, then we can start to kind of look at how we can link all of these circles up to kind of showcase the data aspect. So if we're going to be doing from left to right, obviously, this can't link to anything, but this can. So we can maybe do this. Okay. And then we can link this one to this one. Okay. And then this one would ultimately link to this one. Now, I see at the moment, this is a lot further away than this. So this is just a sketch at this point. But you can see how this could make sense. I'm not sure if that would overlap with that or not. Probably, right? But that obviously wouldn't overlap with that, okay? Okay, I'm starting to see how this could potentially come together. It's actually starting to look not clean, but it's starting to make sense. Okay. There we go. Okay. I'm pretty happy with how this is coming out, so I'm pretty confident that we can take this to the next stage of the process. And I think if we create something, Illustrator. Using this approach? I think it should look pretty good. Okay, so I'm actually really happy with how this logo is coming together right now for bio advocate. I think it's clean. I think it's unique. I think it tells a story of both data and medical. I think it's ready for the next step of the process, which is ultimately to take this design and this sketch and take it into the digital format, which is ultimately Illustrator. Do Illustrator. So let's take it in there. Let's tie it up. Let's add a wordmark. Let's start to add color to the actual brand. I canon't wait, okay? Awesome. I'll see you in the next lesson. 38. Combination Mark Logo Development Perfecting Digitally: It's finally time to take the design for bio advocate and put it inside Illustrator so we can really start making it look professional and cleaning and tightening things up. And so with that said, let's dive in Illustrator. Okay, so our sketch is inside Illustrator. How do we create a logo from this? Well, first step is to basically start to create a structure, right? So we want to obviously make it look nice and tidy. So what I would probably do is I would create a cross which isn't difficult even for me. There we go. And then what I would do is I just create an outline and then I'd probably create just kind of like here. I know it might be a little bit hard to see right now, but I will make it a little bit more visible in just 2 seconds. Okay, there we go. So if I just make that red, just to show you and then just heighten up the thickness slightly. All I want are just guides for where the circle should go. Okay. So we've just got a very brief outline of where the circle should go for the actual logo to look and feel tidy. So you can see here, for example. This wouldn't work. It needs to be a perfect balance of each line, right? So here, look. I'm just going to make these here. And by doing this, it's just going to save you a ton of time later on with arranging the circles if you were doing this logo for either a client or for somebody else. All I'm going to do now is I'm just going to add this over this side, add it again over this side, and then we should have the perfect format for this particular logo. So we can build it right first time and then we don't have to do it again and again and again. There we go. I think we just need to extend these maybe a little bit both ways, and then we are good to rock and roll. There we go. Okay, perfect. We've got that. We've got this. We have our red lines showing us where to go, what to do. I got these here. There we go. Happy. Now, what I can do now is I can just move this to the side. I can move my guide over here. Get rid of that square there. Okay. Now, with this, I know for a fact that I want circles in each of these boxes, but none of the other ones. So how am I going to do that? Well, the first way is going to be to basically create the actual circles and figure out how big I actually want them to be. So I think maybe around this size to start off with, potentially. Listen, there's probably far faster ways to do this on Illustrator. But the reality is, I am not interested in being super quick on Illustrator and saving, you know, seconds here and seconds there. It can definitely help. I just want to make sure that the logos are perfect, and I want to make sure that I can earn a really great living from doing logo design. So at this point, I think the best thing to do will just be to marry this on top of you once you do it once, I want you to do it perfectly. There we go, take this away. Then you can just duplicate it. It should be the same for every single logo. It should be the same for every single square that you do afterwards. There we go. Second, there we go. We're going to know if I do this, then that should give me the logo exactly where I want it to be. You can do this as being transparent or something, but, you know, it doesn't really make a whole lot of difference as long as you've got a decent IPO it's just literally a case now of adding that to the other sections, making sure it's even, doing it again. There we go. And again, there's going to be faster ways to do this. But to be completely brutally honest, I do not care. Okay, let me go. Do that again. Not that I should probably just get these ones, to be honest and just save myself a time. There we go. This one here. Now we are. So we now have the circles in the right place for this particular logo. Now, I'm going to save this because I know for a fact that I'm probably going to either have to change the size of the circles or do some other crazy stuff. But basically, all I need to do now to finish this logo is create the kind of the connection between them, and then I should be pretty much good to go. So I'm going to get rid of this because I don't need this anymore. All I know is that the actual connectors need to go from the bottom left to the top. So I actually don't need these boxes anymore either. Let's start getting rid of these. Should give us a little bit more space to work with. There we go. So now it's just a case of actually getting these elements in between. So how do we do that? Well, there's a couple of ways that we could do it. One of the ways that we can do it is to basically get two circles cause everything's going to be the same, ultimately. If these two were connected, then these two are going to be connected, the exact same. The shape in between them is going to be the exact same. So the best way to do it, I think, is probably going to be to get those out here. Then we might have to make them a little bit bigger potentially. I'm not sure. Let's see. But then basically just get a longer version of that and then just create a connection using this. There we go. That's one. Here's two. Now, I think this is going to be a little bit too much, to be completely brutally honest? Because if you can see how thick that is, that's quite thick, and that is not a lot of space. So, for example, if we put this in here, it doesn't leave a whole lot of space for everything else, right? So we need to make it a little bit smaller. So let's tighten this up a little bit. Tighten this up. Tighten that up. There we go. So I just take this replicate this. Now you can see, it's going to be a lot nicer. See here? See how the difference in space if this was colored in. Okay. So we got that we got that we got that. Now what I'm gonna do is I'm just going to at a circle around. I'm going to make everything. And again, I'm just saving myself here because I know for a fine fact, I'm gonna end up making mistakes, and, yeah, it's not gonna be pretty guys. I'm telling you. So we've got this, we've got this, we've got this. I'm gonna divide everything, then I'm gonna tie you up afterwards. Again, there's probably fastest ways to do this. I genuinely do not care. Okay. Got that? That's decent. Okay, there's this little bit like just popping out here and I'm not sure where it's coming from. But I'm not sure. Okay. I'm just going to try and get this away from those because that's where things are playing up a little bit. Okay. Whatever. We've got this here. At the moment, it needs some tender loving care, basically. So now we've just united everything using the Unite tool, and now we're just going to get in there, check the edges and tidy things up. So I'm not actually sure. Oh, that's the reason why it's a little bit weird. Okay, fair enough. So it wasn't actually wasn't actually there wasn't actually anything wrong with it. I just looked a little bit weird because of that. Okay. There's a little thing here. That is getting pulled out to smooth it off. Here we go. No, that's pretty much perfect. This here is perfect. There we go. And we literally just have to do the same with the other side, and then we are ready to rock and roll, I think. There we go. Okay, so now we pretty much have the actual shape ready. It's now just a case of getting the shape and put it inside the logo. Now, you can watch me do this, but it will be 1 million times easier if we just cut this out and just showed you the end result because it's not going to be anything super duper interesting. It's literally just going to be me adding the shape to every single circle. In this logo. So yeah, I'm going to connect everything, and then I will probably see you in a couple of seconds through the magic of time travel. Okay, so by the power of time travel, we are now back in to the process. I've managed to bring everything together, although it didn't take as long as I thought to be completely honest. Now we have the icon. I mean, you could go into, you know, the fact that these could be a lot smoother. You know, the balls could be exactly the right size to fit inside these little crevices. 100%, you can fiddle around with that as much as your heart desires. For this particular lesson, I want to keep things as short and sweet as possible so that we can move on to creating a combination mark. Now, what I'm going to do is I'm just going to create a really quick just like a navy color maybe someone like that. Okay, perfect. And then, obviously, we know that red and blue go really well together. Just kidding. Let's do something. Bum, bum, bum. Let's just oh, yeah, it looks fine. Okay, perfect. Maybe do that a little bit darker, just create a little bit more contrast, actually. Perfect. So now we have the actual logo there. Now we need to ultimately pair it with your wordmark, right? So by your advocate. Obviously with a wordmark, you can make them as complex or as simple as you like. For this, I'm just going to create something that's pretty simple just so we can understand how to merge them together. So for this, we're just going to create something really simple just so we can merge things together. So we're going to use Montserrat, maybe. Use Monserrat. Okay, we're going to use two different thicknesses. We got B on advocate a different words in the name. Looks cool. Perfect. Let's do that. Now it's just a case of actually formatting this logo with this wordmark. Let's do that. How do we do that? We take the actual logo. We will save it, put it at the top, so we can edit it if we need to. We then create a outline. And then we also make it 20% because then we also make it 20% because then I can show you why I'm doing what I'm doing. We do this, we do this, we do this. I'm just putting the Ds on top of each other so it's all consistent. I'll do it once more. So what you want is you want to have three times the wordmark for the icon. So this is the actual size of it here. You'll do the size is about three times the gallon. I'm just doing it kind of really quick for you. So that's the first thing. And then in regards to the height from the wordmark, you would literally just that's what it's currently like now. You can see it's a little bit far away. What you want is you want it to be basically half of this. So what you want is you want to take this and then essentially half it. It's about here, right? If we half it, that will give us pretty much the perfect space for this to go above this. We've got the perfect space and the perfect height. There we go. You can see here the difference basically. I mean, it could kind of come down to personal preference as well, I suppose, but I think this one looks a little bit better. I think it looks a little bit closer. It feels like they're more together. This one it kind of feels like the icons kind of floating away. Do you have to do it with this exact formation? No, you don't. But you can use this as kind of like a guideline, right? Now, what if you do here kind of a horizontal version of the logo? That's another story, right? Okay. So the best way to do it in my humble opinion is to take the wordmark again. I think you did. And we'll just get rid of that for the moment. And we will stack them on top of each other until we've got four. There we go. Then all we do is usually use boxes, but I actually just want to show you using the actual wordmark itself just to get the message across. So we've got this here. I'm going to put this as 20 just so you can actually see what's happening. So you've got these here. I'll use the D because then the D is kind of a little bit easier to manage. There's kind of like a straight line there to use. Okay, so now we've got that. Now we're going to do it this way and basically create different sections here. So we can get the lines. Then this ultimately gives us the boxes to create our sizing. And you don't actually need to use them, to be honest, you can just use this, but all I would do is I just put it from the D here to the D here, and this is square as well, so it makes it a little bit easier. But I'm basically doing is the exact same thing. D to the top of the D, there's another one here, which is the gap, then afterwards, you can see that if we took this and this, not this and this, but this and this We have that there and it looks not bad. All we would need to do is just basically center it. It looks pretty good. But then if you just literally take it halfway, and again, I'll just do this by eye just to respect your time. And you can basically get it to a point where it just looks a little bit closer, a little bit better. And a little bit more together as a combination mark, ultimately. There we go. Now you have the combination mark as a horizontal and also a vertical format, which, you know, they both look good. You can use the wordmark by itself if you want to. You could also make the wordmark a little bit more distinctive if you really wanted to. You could add some little, you know, frills or curves or something to make it look really good. But ultimately, both can be used pretty effortlessly, either together or separately, which is ultimately what a combination mark is. And yeah, I hope you enjoy this lesson. I hope you took away some value from the lesson, and I look forward to seeing you in a future one. So on that note, I'll see you soon. Bye. 39. What is an emblem logo?: What is an emblem logo? Well, as I'm sure you're probably aware of already, but we're going to dig into it a little bit more detail. An emblem logo is something that represents something like a badge or crest or some sort of seal. Now, typically, emblem logo would help to give a brand a little bit more prestige, right, because we typically associate, you know, crests and emblems with, you know, knights and, you know, really noble elements from history, which, you know, is pretty useful when you are looking to brand a company that wants to be known for being, you know, respectful, that wants to be, you know, trustworthy and have a good reputation. And this is why there are so many institutions like universities, sports teams, and also luxury brands, as well, that use emblems as part of their branding strategies. So how do emblem logos even work? Well, usually, the text and the symbol, the overall brand mark is inseparable, so you can't actually use the text away from the emblem itself. Now, typically, you can't. But I actually think it's far more effective to create a branding system around those elements, so you actually can use the wordmark outside the emblem. But we'll get to that a little bit later on, and I'll show you a couple of examples. Now, typically, emblems come across as kind of a little bit prestigious and classical. So if you ever want to communicate kind of prestige or tradition or heritage, an emblem logo might be the best option for you. Now, unlike all of the other logos, pal logos, abstract logos, wordmark, lettermarks, and all that good stuff. Emblems can be quite detailed and intricate. And what happens when you have a really detailed logo is it can sometimes be not very scalable, right? So it might not work well in a super small form. Now, we can bypass that and kind of counter that issue by having a branding system where you essentially have the more detailed emblem, and then you have less detailed versions of the emblem that you can use in other applications and other environments. We'll get to that a little bit later on. Do not worry. But it's just important to understand that with an emblem, you can have different forms of the emblem, some that are far more detailed for larger applications, and also smaller ones that are a little bit more simple. Now, why are emblems used by brands? Well, they are pretty timeless and they do their job. They give a really good first impression and they look trustworthy to do business with, which ultimately leads to them having a fair bit of authority. Right, from DAO. So that is something which is really important, obviously, if you are starting a new brand and it kind of fits for you to have an emblem, it could actually work in your favor to go down that route. Now, another little benefit is the fact that now a lot of people actually use emblems because they're quite hard to do, which you'll see in a little bit. But ultimately, when you're looking to design a logo, you're looking to stand out. So you're choosing an emblem, which is kind of one of the least popular types of logos that are out there. If it fits the brand that you're actually branding, it could actually be the best decision. Now, the Harley Davidson logo is an incredible example of an emblem logo, as well as Starbucks and, you know, tons of others, which we'll come to a little bit later on in the course. But if your client is open to an emblem logo, which some might be, some may not be. It is definitely worth exploring. And we're going to dive into the process in a little bit. So on that note, I will see you in the next lesson. See you. 40. Examples of amazing emblem logos: What actually makes a great emblem logo? Well, let's look at some examples. Let's look at Starbucks, Harley Davidson, and Harvard to see what the characteristics are of great emblem logos and why they are so great. First, let's start with Starbucks. Now, the whole story of Starbucks is actually super interesting. I read Howard Schultz's book when I used to live in China a long time ago, and his story of branding Starbucks and creating it into the juggernaut that it is today with, you know, thousands of stores worldwide, it is so important to realize that every single element of the Starbucks branding is being well thought out and it is being strategically managed to create this perception of kind of this higher end coffee, which let's be honest, there are better coffees out than Starbucks. There are so many coffees out there better than Starbucks. That are cheaper, as well. But one story that I do remember from that book, which was quite interesting from a design standpoint, is when they were designing the mermaid for the Starbucks logo, V couldn't figure out why the mermaid looked sinister or evil. And what they realized was, in order to make the mermaid look more human and more approachable and friendly, which obviously is very important for Starbucks because they want to be kind of the coffee brand for everyone, right? In order to do that, they needed to make the face less symmetrical, so they needed to make it asymmetrical, but I think they made the eye a little bit different and they made the nose a little bit longer on one side to kind of shake the face up a little bit. That made the face look a little bit less kind of perfect, which then made it look a little bit more human, which is a little bit crazy, right? But it just shows much like the Apple logo, how a little bit of imperfection or a little bit of unbalance can actually make the icon or the actual design look a little bit more personable, warm, and ultimately better. Now, the Harley Davidson logo is obviously completely different to Starbucks. But it's still emblem, okay? It's a sign of authority, prestige, and tradition, right? It stands for something. If you see a bike with Harley Davison on it, it means that, you know, you're you like your motorcycles, right? You like your motorcycles. The logo itself looks sturdy, it looks strong, and it looks rebellious, right? Those are the traditions of Harley Davidson, right? That's what Harley Davidson ultimately stands for as a brand, at least to my knowledge. And that's what I think about when I actually see the company's logo and the emblem. Now, if we compare the Harley Davidson logo to the Harvard logo, where the typefaces, for example, are just completely different. In Harley Davidson, they're kind of strong and very rebellious and just, you know, very stern and bold. With the Harvard logo, they're very elegant. They're very, you know, kind of heritage, you know, pompous almost. Like, it's just very high end, right? They want to be seen as, you know, the highest end university in the world, the university to go to. And they even have, I believe, they have three kind of books ultimately open with a saying in Latin, which ultimately means truth. So it's extremely traditional. You know, it's very prestige, and that ultimately communicates a completely different message. So you can see that just by looking at those two logos and also the Starbucks logo, Starbucks is kind of trying to be for everyone. Holly Davison is trying to be for a very specific type of customer that is, you know, very kind of stern, very bold, and almost rebellious. Harvard is trying to be for, you know, kind of the prestigious, right? The people who think they are of a higher level, of a higher standard. So hopefully that gives you a little bit to think about in regards to the different types of emblems that are out there. But in the next lesson, we're going to actually design an emblem logo together and using my logo development process. So on that note, I will see you in the next video. See you. 41. Emblem Logo Development Brief & Research: Okay, so the first step to designing an emblem logo is the briefing and the discovery phase. And for this particular project, I've stumbled across a dream client to work with. So this client is a Japanese restaurant which is opening in the USA, and they are ultimately called Banzai Teriyaki, focusing on Japanese cuisine, and this client knows exactly what he wants. And by the way, this is a real client that I'm working with. So you're going to literally see me designing the logo step by step from start to finish. Now, the brief that he's given me is ultimately very simple. He wants the logo to look Japanese, and he says that he wants a girl or some sort of kind of woman in the emblem, a little bit like the Starbucks logo. So basically, he wants a Starbucks inspired Japanese logo for this restaurant to kind of be a little bit seductive, I think. So I don't know how this is going to go, but I'm going to dive straight into the research and we will see how we get on. Now, usually, when I work with a client, I will develop 4-6 different types of logos to ultimately give him, you know, a different approach and a different variation for each of the directions that we're however in this little mini course, we're going to be focusing on just one, just to give you a little bit of a taste of how I would approach things given the brief that has been set to me by the client. The first thing I would do is I would dive straight into the likes of Pinterest, Google, and also potentially this flat icon icon website, which is usually pretty helpful. Now, the first thing I'm looking for is a Japanese go, but I feel like when I'm looking at these, they don't really strike me as kind of like a Starbucks style logo, to be honest. It's kind of like this one's a little bit too cute see. This is pretty cool. I kind of like this. This is like, okay, this is getting somewhere, okay? I mean, it definitely isn't a girl, but it's cool and it definitely looks Japanese. Okay? Awesome. Let's dive in. I love this. I love these little circles. I think this looks awesome. Nice work whoever created that. That looks mint. Okay. I like this as well. I'll take that. So all I'm doing now is I'm just looking for inspiration. That's all I'm doing. I'm just looking for ideas and like little things. Like, for example, we see these these little waves and we've seen them a couple of different times, like we see them again here. So, look, like this pattern of these little waves like this is something that is found in Japanese emblems. Pretty commonly, I believe. I've seen it about 50 times, and I'm only halfway down the page. Let's have a little look at. Japanese girl logo. Okay. Okay, so now we are getting somewhere. So look at this one. This one is a little bit closer to what we want. I don't think she looks very Japanese, to be honest. She does a little bit. She has sort of Asianish eyes. But this is, look at this now. Look at this. This looks cool. Okay, that's a dude. Yeah, these are starting to look a little bit more kind of Western. But okay, we're getting somewhere. We are getting some incredible inspiration. And at this point, I'm obviously not going to copy any of these logos, but what I'm doing is I'm just gaining a little bit of an understanding across, you know, like, why does this particular graphic look more Japanese? What types of patterns can I use? What types of colors are most commonly used? You see here, there's a lot of red, and the red, you know, is generally connected to Japan, right, because of the flag. I've got a lot of inspiration here because this is such a a direct brief. I've got some inspiration in regards to the girl. I've got some kind of waves and patterns and stuff, which I can use. So I've got this. I'm not really sure kind of what style I'm going to go for. I've got to decide that afterwards, but I'm definitely going to be using these little patterns just to kind of give it that super Japanesey vibe. Then I think also I should probably get, like, some sort of fond or typeface to kind of go with it. So I think something that's like like something like this would actually go, like pretty well. I actually don't think that's very readable or legible, but I think something kind of like this would actually look a lot better, 'cause this is a little bit easier to read. Well, I see it a little bit easier to read. It's not that easy to read. Something like this, maybe or something like this. Kingo okay. That's cool. That's actually a really cool name, right? Kingo? Kingo. Okay. And I'm going to take this as well, because this little fish looks awesome with kind of the sky and stuff diving under the water. Man, I love Japanese branding. If you've ever been to Japan and you've seen the metro tickets, they're like little pieces of art. It's so incredible. Okay. Alright, I've got enough inspiration here to keep me very, very busy. The next step of the process is to ultimately grab my Trusty pencil in my sketchpad and I will start to create different ideas based around what I've got here. So yeah, we're going to be sketching a Japanese girl for this emblem, and I cannot wait. So anyway, on that note, I will see you in the next lesson. See you soon. 42. Emblem Logo Development Sketching: So now we understand the brief and we've done the research, and we have some inspiration that we've captured from Pinterest and Google, for example. Now it's time to start sketching our emblem. Okay, so as we start sketching some ideas for this Japanese restaurant, we know that we need to achieve a couple of things. So we need to include a goal in some way, shape, or form, a Japanese goal, and we also need to kind of make the actual icon of the emblem look Japanese, okay? So that is ultimately the two things that we need to achieve. Let's get started. So what I want to do with every single logo that I develop, especially with emblems and with, you know, kind of icon focused logos, is to structure off my page into two phases. So the first phase is just getting ideas down, trying to see what format works and what works and what doesn't work overall. Phase two, is where I'll actually start to refine the idea, okay? Now, with phase one, usually with a client, I'll probably do for each direction around 20 different sketches, and then in phase two, I'll maybe take the best ones that I like, and I'll refine them a little bit, okay? And then from there, I'll choose the one that I actually like best, and I'll digitize it, and I'll actually present it to the client. Now, with this mini course, I'm just going to do maybe one or two in phase one, and then the best one that I like, I'll basically take it forward into phase two. Now, sometimes if I get it right in phase one, I won't even bother doing phase two because I like it already, and I will just refine it in digital format. But for this, I just want to start by trying to understand how we can make the girl look Japanese and also how we can get the actual emblem looking Japanese. So as I'm looking at these icons, you can see here, we've got two kind of Japanese girls here. Got another one here, which doesn't really look as Japanese as the other two, to be honest, I might just get rid of her. She does have quite Asian eyes, to be honest. So that's something which we can maybe learn from. Let's just get rid of this because we're not focusing on the wordmark right now. We'll keep this at the back, which doesn't really make any massive difference. But let's focus on the actual girl first. So there's a couple of things that are kind of jumping out at me. First thing is these little sticks. This is very Japanese, so we need sticks. Let's do sticks. I also like the hair. Like a bob or like a bubble? Is that what it's called? A bubble? I don't know. I'm not a master of women's had to be completely honest. You know, we need, like, kind of, Asian eyes, quite a slim face, I think, quite a slim face. Okay. And then, kind of, like, almost like what's this called, like a Ginsu or something? I'm not sure what that means. If you actually know what that is, then please let me know. But yeah, there's kind of, like, a traditional Japanese uniform or outfit, which is used in restaurants and stuff. So um, Japanese uniform to kind of show that she is there to serve you, right? Okay. So, and that's been actually used in a couple of different variations. So let's look at that. Okay, perfect. I'm not sure about having these little cheeks. I think that's a little bit too I don't know. It just doesn't look very modern. I don't think we need that. I like this little nose, though. So nose is pretty cool. And I like the overall feel of this. So the next after we have the girl there is, how can we make this particular logo, emblem look Japanese? So from looking at this, there are two things at a stand now. One is the red, so we'll get to that afterwards. But the other thing that I'm seeing is these, like, sort of waves effect, if that makes sense, so waves and also, which isn't in let's see, so we've got the waves there. But also, as well, there's kind of this sort of like sunshine effect, which I think is really kind of well linked to Japan and Japanese culture and Japanese kind of logo design, I suppose. So I'm wondering if we can kind of put that behind the girl itself, so we can kind of do that. So it kind of like sun yeah, so sun or rear effect. Okay. So we've now got kind of like this understanding of the two things. If we do these two things, we should have a Japanese girl in a Japanese style album. Emblem. Sorry. So basically, we have these two things confirmed. If we do a girl with sticks, hair in this kind of bubble effect, Asian eyes, slim face, and uniform, and also the kind of two variations of the weird and also the sort of sun slash rear effect, we should have an emblem, which can represent those two things. So let's start with let's start with a circle, two circles, actually. Start with two circles. Which should be pretty cool, cause I think all of them are pretty much circles, right? It doesn't mean that, this one is in a circle, but I don't actually think I like how it looks, and it's not very scalable, but I like how the circles and the rears look with circles, so let's just go with that. Okay. So if I was, like, exploring, like, 20 different versions, then I would probably do a lot more different shapes, but for the purpose of this, let's just stick with circles. Now, for the girl first and foremost, obviously, we need to give her a slim face. Let's start with that. Okay, so slim face, like a really typical slim feminine Asian face. Give her a really thin neck as well, again, to make her super feminine. And then also as well, let's give her this kind of really traditional Japanese outfit. Okay. Okay. And again, this is just rough. Like, we're not trying to create, you know, the next Monalisa here, but we're just kind of getting an idea of I remember this nose, as well that we liked from the other version. I'm not sure how attractive this woman's gonna be, but we're definitely going to try and see, you know, what she looks like. Hair wise, obviously, we wanted the bobble, didn't we? Yeah. We can even do, like, I don't know, maybe, like, a bob or a fringe or something. Do we do a fringe or, like, do some hair coming down or something, maybe? Okay. Let's do that. And then there was sticks, right? There were sticks there, so let's maybe put some sticks in her hair. Kind of popping out. This looks terrible as emblem right now, but we're going to try and give some, like, Asian styled eyes. Wow. She literally looks like she's about to fight somebody in model combat. Okay. Let's get her a smiley face. Oh, my God. She just looks even more sinister. Look at how terrible this logo is right now. Okay. Um, yeah, she literally looks like she's about to kill someone. I'm not sure why. It looks like a panda a little bit, right? Like a really slim, well chiseled panda. Yeah, this doesn't look great at all. But anyway, let's kick on. Let's continue. Okay, behind her, let's do the kind of rays of light, which I guess will come from the center, so they'll kind of go from here to here. Okay. Yeah, this definitely looks a little bit more like a panda guy, almost, right? It doesn't look like a woman at all. Okay, never mind. We'll get that. We'll refine it later in phase two here. Okay, so let's just color this in. And then we'll refine and assess what's working and what's not working, which is basically what the situation is with logo design, to be honest. You know, testing testing quickly and then moving on from there. Let me change my pencil, actually, because it's a little bit Love that one. What's go? That's nice and sharp. Well, sharp enough. Okay. So at the moment, this looks a little bit like a guy, okay? It doesn't look like a woman at all. And also, we kind of have this new approach, which I really want to make sure that in the next one. I kind of like the rays, to be honest. I think they'll look okay, which we can refine afterwards, but I also want to approach the waves to see if the waves look any good. The waves gonna be probably coming from the bottom, right? Okay, I thought it would look. Oh, that bum, bum, bum. Yeah. So we've got the waves here. I think I think the reason that it doesn't look very good is because it kind of looks like this is like a hat. So let's make a little bit of feminine and make the kind of the locks of hair a little bit more prominent on the girl on the woman, should I say? Okay, and then make, like, a nice, elegant female Fringe here, this is looking a lot like a lot more. Just to make it a little bit more. Let's put, like, a little flower in our hair or something just to make it look a lot less like a hat and a lot more like hair. Okay. And we'll do this here. Okay. It's talking a lot better. Okay, put sticks in her hair. Then let's put, let's do, like, little cute cheeks almost. Okay. So yeah, we're kind of doing some I mean, I mean, the eyes are definitely I think just doing, like, cheeks and stuff is gonna be really helpful. Yeah, the eyes are gonna be Okay, so this is definitely looking a lot warmer and a lot better. I'm still not, like, set on the eyes, but I can figure that out afterwards, but I definitely like how this one is looking a lot better. I love the hair. I like the hair. And maybe we can do, like, rays coming out afterwards, 'cause I don't think doing these waves all over the place are going to help or gonna look very good. It's gonna look very busy, or maybe we just take the waves out completely and just do the rays. I'm not sure. I looks a lot simpler, right? Okay. Uh, Okay. Yeah, I kind of like how. Okay, so just assessing this, I think we're going to go with the rise for the actual sketch in phase two. I like this hair a lot better. I'm still not content on either of the eyes. I don't like either of the eyes. The nose and the mouth, I like this one maybe a little bit better, to be honest. So eyes and mouth will be here. I don't like the waves. Let's sketch this one and do it a little bit more refined so we can start to really understand. I do also like the flower. I like that. Okay. Let me sharp on my pencil really quick. And then we will get started. We'll go from there. Nice and sharp. Look at this. Gow. Look at that. It's in focus. We are ready to go. Okay. So for this, let's first start off by doing a nice circle for the actual icon. Okay, so let's start off by doing a nice circle for the emblem. Now, let's now do the girl's face. Actually, no, let's start with the hair, because we started with the hair before and it started going quite well. So let's keep her face nice and thin. It's good. And then let's do the little bubble at the top, like this which comes down, and then let's do the sticks. Doing the same side, actually. Maybe they'll come through here. Okay. Then I really want her to be, like, attractive, right? I want her to be cute and attractive. So let's maybe do, like, maybe she has ears popping out. Maybe she doesn't. Let's do, like, little, like, cute kind of eyes. It's like a cheek almost. Oh, I'm not sure about these eyes, to be honest. I'm kind of lost, let me leave the eyes till afterwards. I just want, like, the cheeks to be there, and then I'll do this little nose. And then there's this nice warm mouth. There we go. That looks awesome. Look at that. Okay, there we go. That looks much better. Just kind of laughing and having fun. That looks so good. I love that. Awesome. Okay, so look where we've came from. We've came from literally like kung fu panda guy to this one who looks a bit like the clown to this one, which is actually starting to look like quite nice, right? She's looking kind of, you know, kind of a little bit more inviting. Okay, then we've got this, we've got the actual uniform. Awesome. Okay, and then we put the rays. There we go. And I guess I could, like, do, like, another sketch of this and really try and refine things and maybe look at different eyes and stuff. But just to respect your time for this course, I want to keep it as short and sweet as possible. I think this is looking a lot better. I'm not sure how this is gonna look overall from, like, an aesthetic standpoint because, obviously, we can't have, like, super heavy lines for the rays, and then this kind of not looking like this being very thin, so I'm probably going to have to figure out how to do that. But overall, I mean, it's looking a whole lot better. Okay. Man, that actually looks like a lot better. Like, I could obviously take time and refine it a little bit more. But ultimately, it looks so much better than the first two versions, and we kind of figured out what's working and what's not working. I'm still not sure on the eyes. Maybe I'm gonna do something on the eyes, but she looks like she's kind of there to, like, serve you, right? She looks like she's there to help you have a nice meal and have a good time, get them sticks a little bit more prominent. Awesome. Okay. Yeah, I could literally sketch around this forever. Okay, so I actually really love how this logo is coming together. I love how clean it is. I love how it kind of has that Japanese vib, but it also is, you know, including that Japanese woman, as well. It kind of has everything that the client wanted from the brief. So I'm excited to get this inside Illustrator, which is the next stage of the process, okay? We're going to take this. We're going to digitize it. And then once we do that, we can then start to, you know, showcase the actual logo in different environments and then present it to the client, which I can't wait for. So on that note, I will see you in the next stage of the process. See you there. 43. Emblem Logo Development Perfecting Digitally: So we're finally at the stage where we can take this emblem design for this Japanese restaurant and put it inside, Illustrator to actually start creating the brand digitally. And so with that said, let's dive in Illustrator. Okay, so we finally have our sketch inside Illustrator. And now it's time to really, you know, refine things, get things look and polished professional and edit things digitally. Now, the first step is to get a circle around this logo so we can start to add a little bit of structure. To what we're doing. Now, this is one of the main things with, you know, digitizing your logo design. You want to create structure, you want to make it look and feel, you know, predictable and aesthetically pleasing because our eyes like things that make sense. Our mind likes things that makes sense. So when I'm looking at this, I'm like, Okay, this looks and feels like it could work as it is. But let's just start by, say, for example, doing this flower. So let's make this like maybe I don't know, 15, and let's make some petals out here, a bum bum, bum, bum. So this kind of works okay, right? Just go to pull this in a little bit, just so they look a little bit better, a little bit more like petals, ultimately. Let's make these a little bit less big. It's a little bit smaller. There you go. And basically, all this is going to be is me just going through the logo, making everything consistent, making everything tidy, making everything make sense, so that then afterwards, I can start to make things make sense. That's the most important thing. I'll show you how I do a certain number of things with this particular logo, but then I'll use the power of time travel to basically fast track things and just show you the finished result ultimately once it's all done. You can see here, for example, I have the flower. I'm going to divide it. And then basically what I should be able to do is take these inside parts and just basically start to get rid of them. If I can find them, that's the thing. I guess that's a tricky thing, right? So I can find these, I can take this away, take this away, take this away. All I'm doing is I'm just recreating this element. This flower. Okay. Perfect, perfect, perfect, perfect, perfect. Then all I would need to do is basically take this. I've got the flower where I want it. Okay, perfect. What's the thickness like of that particular flower? What's the thickness like of it? Maybe make it a little bit thicker. It's currently very, very different. Okay. It's a little bit longer than I thought actually. What I'm going to do now is I'm just going to outline the stroke, which will give me that. Then I'm going to basically merge all of these together, and then I'm going to create this center part, which is ultimately the bud of the flower, I think. Once I collect all of these and unite them all, then I can use this and cut this out. Then I actually have the flour and everything looks okay. I can refine this later if I want, but at the moment, I'm literally just getting the structure of everything in place. I would do that with the rest of the logo. For example, the nose, I'm just basically drawing it in the same fashion. As the sketch. This, for example, what? So that makes a lot of sense. Okay. Good stuff. Maybe make it a little bit shorter, but maybe a little bit longer like that. Good stuff. Maybe I can outline this and then just make it. Unite it and then just make it a little bit less there. Keep it like that. Then we can do the same thing for the mouth. Actually, I wouldn't mind doing a little smoke type thing, like a little charming smoke. Okay, this isn't anything crazy. We're literally just recreating the actual shape of what I've sketched so that we can edit it a little bit later on. That's literally all we're doing. Again, just doing all the outlines. Cute. Do a little bob as well. Don't worry about the flower just yet. We're gonna come back to that later on. Just keep following the outlines, and then everything will come together. Let's make this outlines as well. Okay. And when you practice with the I'm not the best on Illustrator by any stretch of the imagination, but once you get used to the pen tool, you know, you can draw things pretty easily, to be honest. It is not difficult to draw stuff. Then we can probably take this and create some sticks for the hair pretty quickly. Probably get those two curved a little bit. We put these two for the hair. Here we go, there's one. There's one and I can maybe get another one and twirl that around. There we go. There's another one there. This ultimately, especially when you're designing this style of logo, it's very much the case that you're kind of just figuring things out and seeing what works and seeing what doesn't work. And then at the end, that's when things kind of all come together and you are left with, you know, a result which you should look pretty good. Okay, so we've got that, we've got that, we've got that. Okay, so we need to do eyes and the actual face as well. I'm not going to go down, you know, through every single route of, you know, outlining everything with you, but just to kind of give you an idea of, you know, what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. So afterwards, you know that, you know, you're going down and you're editing stuff yourself and you're trying to create this logo, and for some reason, it's still not looking great. It's okay. That's absolutely fine. Because by the end, that is when everything is going to come together. That is when everything is going to look and feel far, far better. Once you've done the refinement, once you've put in the work to ultimately make it more polished. Because that's one of the steps which a lot of brand designers don't do. They don't put in that work to get that nice finished feel. And as well, I'm looking at this now and I'm like, Okay, the actual sketch shouldn't be followed as closely as you may think sometimes. Sometimes you may need to go away from the actual sketch and kind of go on your own path. And all these lines are going to be all tidied up and stuff afterwards. But I'm just trying to figure out how things actually look and if the composition of everything is correct, so I can then refine things. Okay, so I'm just finishing off the face now what I'm gonna do, I'm going to finish off this face very quickly. And then once we finish off her face, we're going to do Okay. That's going to be fine for now. Then obviously I would do the neck, I would do the edges. I would play around with this a little bit. But just for the meantime, let's do the actual stripes and then afterwards, we can focus on how we're going to refine things. All I would do, the easiest way to do this is just to basically get your block color and then just refine this to the edges of the illustration. Edit them there. That's going to basically show you exactly how it should look. You can just duplicate that across every single point in the sketch where you actually have it. And say, for example, here where it's like laying over a little bit, you can see here, it's kind of laying over the curve a little bit. The way that you fix that, really, really simple. Just add this in here, add this here, there you go. Sorting. It doesn't have to be too tidy at this moment in time because you're literally just piecing things together. That's one thing that's super important that I really want to get across is the fact that when you are creating logos like this. Don't spend too much time trying to get everything perfect because if you get the flour perfect, for example, by itself, it may not be perfect for the rest. For example, here, I know for a fine fact that the flour is too thick for the rest of the mark as it is right now. But if I took the mark, for example, and I started to make it a little bit thicker, and then if I cut this out here, for example, so it was, you know, kind of, you know, a little bit more respectful to the flowers present, that's going to make things look a lot better. So do not expect for everything to be perfect straightaway. It's not going to happen, okay? You need to give yourself that kind of that lenience and have the confidence to kind of, you know, do things that are imperfect so you can then get them perfect later on. Because otherwise, what ends up happening is you end up with a you end up spending about five times the amount of time fiddling around with little details and then doing them 15 times over. It just doesn't make any sense. You need to respect your time as a designer. You need to go through things and kind of break stuff, and then afterwards, you can fix it all later on. Unless it's a really simple design, obviously, like some of the other ones in Brand Designer Pro, but ultimately, this type of logo requires you to just be fast and heavy first and foremost, get in there, get it done, and then afterwards, you can do the refinement. Spend the time in the refinement stage because that's where the magic happens. So again, I'm literally I'm going to show you exactly what this looks like after we finish just adding this little up a Okay, so we've got a bit of a crazy one here where we are essentially trying to kind of shape this around here, but it's okay. We're going to be right. I'm going to just not that in here, and then put this here. Okay, perfect. And then just so we can actually understand how everything's looking, let's just save it. Let's save this. I'm going to finish things off afterwards. Don't worry. I know it looks terrible. That's all part of the plan. We're going to outline this. Here. We're going to divide it, and then we're going to be able to should be able to do this. There we go. You should be able to think it out as well, to be honest. There we go. Perfect. So that's what I mean by a slight little refinement, right? That's just one thing out of all the things that we need to do to basically take this to the next level, where we can actually start to look at it and say, Okay, this could look pretty good with a little bit of work, right? So again, we're going to put this down here. We're going to put this side by side. And now we have, obviously, I need to add the neck, I need to add the little shoulders, et cetera, et cetera. Then it's just a case of literally refining things until things look a lot better. So for example, here, I'm taking a little bit of time to assess. This is the most important part of the entire process, by the way, assessing what is looking good, what needs work, and then moving on from there. So the mouth, the nose, and the eyes, it's not looking great at the moment. It needs a little bit of work. The hair looks okay. The flower looks okay. I can tell that these need work. So you can see this, here, how I'm looking at things and I'm literally highlighting, Okay, this particularly doesn't feel right. How do I fix it? If you do that, and if you work through things systematically, you manage to get so much further, so much faster. Again, we're literally just working through things. Okay? Now, the sticks look 1 million times better. Can we all agree with that? Of course we can. Now here, we look at this. Okay. So that's the same thickness now. Obviously, this is not going to fly. Let's get this up here. Maybe make it a little bit curved and get that get that pressed up against here, so it's not so it's kind of not cutting away at the circle, so it's nice and clean. There we go. Looks better. A little bit better. There we go. Okay. And obviously, we're going to add the shoulds, we're going to add the neck and everything. The face as well here, that is, again, very thin. Want to make it a little bit thicker. But you can see here how Things are not perfect, but they're definitely better just by me changing a couple of little things, okay? So what I'm going to do is through the power of time travel, I'm going to refine this a little bit and basically tidy things up and spend a little bit of time just going through, you know, the tiny little details, and then we'll see how we get to afterwards. And on that note, and we're back. So what I did is I took this logo and I spent some time just reviewing it, fine tuning it. I actually sketched an alternative just to kind of get the lines right and stuff, and this is what I ended up with. Now, you'll probably see a couple of things. I actually think the eyes could be a little bit better. I think currently, they look a little bit of sinister, to be completely honest. Like they don't look as welcoming as they maybe could. But ultimately, the other changes that I made were, I refined the hair slightly. I added some As just to make the girl look a little bit more human. I made the neck a little bit longer. I also made the lines around the actual girl a little bit more organic and not as structured. You can see here how everything's the same width. I wanted to make a little bit more organic and almost like an illustration, so I did that. And then I also created an outline outside those to separate the actual sunburst rear effect from the actual woman. So it kind of looked like it was behind her and she was the main attraction. I made the flower a little bit more interesting and less kind of structured, right? Because obviously, here, it was literally just, you know, set shapes. And then, so, yeah, I also did a little thing as well, and I'm not sure if you've actually saw this before, but let me show you something in regards to the Starbucks logo very quickly. So with the Starbucks logo, I'm not sure if you've actually realized this, but the Starbucks logo has two eyes, but there was a huge thing with Starbucks that the people who were designing the Starbucks logo made the person look super sinister and they didn't know why. The reason was because they basically had the two eyes look exactly the same. So let me just sinister. Let me try and show you there's an actual story about it. So there's basically a big story about the fact that when the eyes look the same, they looked like they were too perfect, so they didn't look um, human enough. So they had to make this kind of this little slight asymmetry to make the Starbucks logo look more appealing and more inviting, basically. So I try to do a very similar thing here, but it still looks a little bit too I don't know. I still looks a little bit too sinister. I mean, she looks happy, obviously, but it feels like she's kind of ready to I don't know. There's something not right about it, so I'll probably need to take a little bit of time just to kind of refine things and get things into a place where, you know, it feels a little bit better. Maybe it's because this is a little bit too sharp. But I also made another version. Which basically has the outline taken away. And instead, it basically has the rays as the frame for the actual logo. I like the way that it's more organic than the original design. I like how it feels a little bit more human, but I also think that the eyes could do with a little bit more work. And that's ultimately one of the most important things when it comes to designing these types of logos, right? It is all about taking the time to refine and refine and refine until you get to a point where you're happy with it, and then you can send it to the client. Here, for example, the eyes are the biggest thing for me. I think once the eyes are refined, that's going to be a huge, huge weight off my shoulders. I like how the mouth is like that, but I also think doing something like this a little bit where it's a little bit less symmetrical and more human. I think that could be better, or even something like that. I think that looks a little bit I mean, that looks a little bit more a little bit more inviting already, I think. But that is ultimately what a lot of logo design is all about. It's all about playing around with things, filling around with things. What works? What doesn't work, what works better. Then if you can do that, then you wind up with a result, which I mean, that looks a little bit more inviting already. So that's what I mean by moving a little thing here and there, you can end up creating something that looks completely different. At the moment, it kind of looks a little bit like Batman, to be honest. So that's kind of the thing that I would be juggling with and trying to get right. But hopefully this lesson has been helpful for you. Hopefully you've learned a thing or two in regards to my process, something that you can take away to implement into your own process. But yeah, it's been really great to spend some time with you, and on that note, I will hopefully see you again in another lesson. That's Es. 44. Mascot Logo Development Brief & Research: Okay, so developing a mascot logo for a brand, where do we start? Well, it always starts with the brief and discovery. That's always the first step. Now, for this particular mini course, I actually have a real life client who wants me to develop wave for it, a logo for a brand called Wild West Waffle. Okay? Don't ask me why Wild West waffle, okay? So what we're going to be doing is we're going to be developing a waffle mascot for this waffle brand, right? And for some reason, Wildwst. I don't know. But it's exciting, and the founder is super passionate about the project, and I love working with this founder. I've worked with her many times, so I can't wait. Now, there's a couple of things that this particular founder has said to me that she really, really wants as part of this mascot, right? She wants it to be fun. She wants it to have a very simple color scheme, but also one that is very realistic. She also says that she wants butter for her nose, which I think is kind of fun, and she also wants it to look quite cartoony. Shees want it to look super realistic but not too cartoony, as well, kind of somewhere in the middle. So with that said, I understand the brief. Now, what I would usually do with a clime is I would give them anywhere 4-6 different options of variations. For this mini course, obviously, I want to respect your time. So let's just do one together now, okay? So the first step is to look at some examples of waffle mascots out there now. Straight away, I just want to get kind of a feel for the different types of mascots out there just so I can kind of see okay. This is the style that I kind of want to do. This is how I want to use color. Do I want to go more simple or do I want to go more kind of, like, graphic we'll see what happens. So I'm looking at these now and I'm just using Pinterest, Google, and this icon website that I sometimes use called Flat icon. Now, I see this one and I like what I see. I'm just put this one here. I like the fact that the colors are kind of flat. I don't like this black outline, but I do like the waffle kind of texture in the middle. So I want to see that Um, I do like this one's quite charming, right? I do like the fact that this one's quite charming. This one's cool, but again, I don't like the black outlines. I like this one. I love the eyes on this one. Look at the eyes on this one. Super cool and really happy, right? Happy and fun. Okay. This one's pretty cool. Look at this. Look at how happy and fun this one looks. That's the kind of the vibe that we want to give, right? Okay, there's some butter there. No. Okay, so we're just getting some butter. I think this is quite a nice shape for the butter, actually. And what about for the mouth? What about for the mouth? Do I want to go for something a little bit like this? Or do I want to go for something a little bit more kind of like this where it's kind of like open? I think something a little bit more open and a little bit more expressive, right? Yeah, something like this would be good, I think. Okay, Okay. Let's do that. Let's have a look at the waffle. So this is far too realistic. We look at this, far too realistic, and it looks like it's been done in three D, actually. Whereas something like this is far better, I think. I think it fits the brand better. I think it's going to serve the actual Kline a lot better. So I'm going to go for something a little bit more simple like that. So let's have a look at the buttered nose. Buttered nose? Okay. Yeah, this is not waffle. Okay, this is not how I intended it to go. Waffle waffle character. Are there any with a butter nose or not? Okay. Interesting. So there's none that's actually got a butter nose. So that's cool. We can figure that out kind of maybe in the sketching phase, which is next. Yeah, I really like this kind of style, so I'm just looking at the different styles now. And you can see here there were lots of different ways that we could approach the project. But you can see here with these particular styles, they all kind of have a very similar vibe. Very minimal kind of outlining. We've got kind of different textures with different, you know, shades of yellow and orange and beige. I think this is kind of where we need to be in regards to the look and feel. I like the eyes. I like how we've got little cheeks coming out, which is going to kind of give it a more friendly vibe. We obviously need the butter for the nose. We're going to have a nice, smiley face. Okay, we're in a pretty good place. I also want to, as well, maybe try and incorporate some sort of, like, icon on top of this to kind of create, like, a little maple syrup, um, butter pancake or waffle or something. I think that's also going to be something interesting to look into. But anyway, I like where this is going. I'm going to move on to the sketching phase now to kind of really, see how we can take what we've got in the research phase and put it down on the paper, and then we'll see why we go from there. Anyway, I'll see you in the next lesson. See. 45. Mascot Logo Development Sketching: So now we understand the brief, and we've done the research, and we have some inspiration that we've captured from Pin test and Google, for example. Now it's time to start sketching our mascot. Okay, so we are starting to look at how we can sketch out this waffle mascot, right? We want to try and create a mascot for this waffle company that looks and feels great like these examples that we've brought together. Now this is obviously not a mascot, but what I'm trying to get is I'm just trying to get a feel for how I want it to look so that I can take inspiration from these different ideas, right? Now, you can see here, I said that this kind of texture and stuff was pretty cool. Now, we're not going to obviously be able to add any color at this stage. I've done, is I've just sectioned off my sketch pad into two phases like I always do. Phase one is just, like, a really rough sketch of just, you know, how things look. And then phase two is a little bit more of a refined approach, okay? Usually, I do around 20 different, you know, variations for phase one. Phase two, I'd do around kind of three to four and then choose the best one to take to the digital stage. For the purposes of this mini course, I'm only going to do maybe two or three. And then for the main one, I'll just basically do one. I might not even do one. If I get it right in phase one, then I'll just basically leave phase two, and I'll just take it straight at the digital stage. It all depends, right? It depends how things go. And obviously, we don't know how things are going to go. So let's start by just getting the circle right. Let's just get the circle in there. Obviously, it's a waffle. So I mean, we could do a square waffle, I guess, but I think a circle just looks and feels a little bit better. We can also do something a little bit like this. Let's test all of them. So we'll just see so we've got a circle. We also kind of have like this, like, sort of, like, waffleish shape, which it feels a little bit too kind of all over the place. It kind of looks like a splat, but anyway. We'll run with it, and we'll see what happens. Okay, there we go. Okay, we've got this. Then we've also got the square shape as well. So we've kind of got like a three D square shape, which looks and feels a little bit. I'll probably do it like this so it kind of looks up like this, like a square waffle. Okay. Okay, so let's do three different ones, then. That looks good. Okay. Awesome. Okay, let's start with this one. Let's just tied this with a little bit. Again, we're not trying to create, you know, a perfect sketch here, but we're just wanting to keep things really simple. This is just getting some ideas down on paper and then kind of taking things from there. So let me just change my pencil actually, just to get something a little bit sharper. That looks a lot better. Now, with the eyes, let's start with the eyes because the eyes are really important. I like this little cheek effect here with this approach. These are actually exactly the same, but this is a better quality one. I'm not a big fan of this. I kind of liked, I do like this little cheek approach. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to just create like some cheeks on this. Let's do like little ones on halo. And then also do this one, which is a little bit more kind of square, right, to match that. And then this one's like a little bit more kind of cutesy and this one's like, just very cartoony and very kind of bubbly, right? Okay. Then with the eyes, I think I want the eyes to be quite kind of close together. Um, I mean, here they look wide apart, but it kind of looks a little bit, gormess almost. Like, it just doesn't look very kind of, like, disney esque. I like how these are kind of a little bit closer together and a little bit more kind of concise. So let's actually edit this a little bit and get this a little bit closer. We go, and then let's just get these big like this. Wow, I like how this is looking already, to be honest. Okay, I got this one. And then let's do some here, which are a little bit smaller, so we've got something to compare with. We've got that nice cheek effect. And then with the square one, let's do, slightly more square eyes. Okay, let's see that. Okay, then we put some pupils in there just to see what it looks like. This one's a little bit, uh This one's it little bit **** eyed, I think, but this one is this one's going to look a little bit more kind of this one looks like it's got a sugar rush already, which is kind of I guess kind of relevant for a waffle company, but it depends on how much maple syrup you stick on there, but, yeah, it does look a little bit scary, as well. So I'm not sure if we can fix that in Illustrator, but we can certainly try. But this one certainly looks a lot habier. This one looks a little bit weird, to be honest. And this one we'll just do something like this, which should look a little bit better. There we go. Okay, so I mean, I'm kind of looking at this one, to be honest. I don't actually like it. I actually want to just take this one out of the equation because it just looks a little bit crazy, but I think this one looks good. Obviously, it needs some refinement. But I also think this one looks good as well. Now, if you remember, the client said that she wanted, like, a butter nose. So I'm going to add a little kind of slice of butter here for the actual butter nose. This one actually looks more like a robot, to be honest. Obviously, you need to add the waffle effect. But yeah, like this one actually looks like a robot mow. Now for this one, obviously, that's a little bit too big. Let's look at this. Okay. This kind of looks a little bit like Thomas the Tank engine, right? So I'm not sure how much that's gonna change when we have the waffle effect, but yeah, anyway, once we've got that, I wanted to look at the actual mouth. So, again, I kind of like the mouth of this one, but I don't like how detailed it is. I don't want it to be super detailed. I kind of like this one. But let's do something kind of like this, but not as detailed. I don't want it to be as detailed as that. Um okay. Let's do something like this. And let's do, something, let's let's give him some teeth, maybe. And then like a mouth like this and then the tongue like that, and then obviously some shadow in the mouth. Okay. Okay, so we're kind of there with that one. This looks a little bit scary, actually, to be honest, at this stage, which I'm a little bit concerned about. Then for this one, let's do something a little bit more like cheek, like cool almost. Laughing. Yeah, I think that looks a lot better, actually. I think that actually looks a lot better than this version. I mean, they're technically very similar, but I just kind of like how much cleaner that one looks. Okay, okay, okay. I don't think we're gonna give him ears, right? Should we give him ears? Do waffles have ears? No, this definitely looks like a robot. This actually looks like an actual character. Like, this actually looks like a decent, like, character, right? This doesn't look like a waffle at all. This looks a lot more like a waffle. I feel like a waffle is more round. Like, I'm not sure if I identify with square waffles. So I'm going to go with a circular one, and let's just, for example, just put some sort of effects on here for the actual waffle, just to see how things actually look. I mean, obviously, this is gonna look a lot better an Illustrator. I think one T one looks a little bit too human to me. So I think I'm going to move forward with the circular one just to basically see how it looks once I actually start refining it. And I think that's going to be the best option out of the three. Okay, so I'm looking at all of these, and I think that we can kind of make it look a little bit cheeky. Like, you see how this one's a little bit cheey. It's kind of got the eyes looking back. I think we can do something very similar with this. So let's take the circle approach again for the waffle. So let's just make sure that we've got the circle, right? And then let's start with the nose, actually. Let's start with the nose. And then once we've got the nose right, then let's try to add these kind of I think with these, like, this looks like it's like this literally looks like it's just inhaled, like a full bottle of maple syrup. I don't want it to look kind of so, like, energetic and stuff. I want to look more like, like, cool and, like, nice. I don't want it to look super, super, like, you know, like, I'm about to bite your head off. Like, I don't want it to look like I want it to look a little bit more kind of, like, cool and chilled. Like, just happy. I want it to look more happy and chilled. Um, okay, let's maybe do this. Okay, let's do something like this. I still like how these eyes are, like, more, like, sort of rounded and stuff, though. So let's do something like that, maybe. And we want to be looking like, looking back. So let's do okay, let's do this here. And then the eyes are going to be looking this way. So let's do I don't really like how they use like fill up 'cause it makes it look like it's like, ah, like, like, really, really energetic. I just wanted to be chilled a little bit. So let's just do, like, like, some pupils, but not like super, super, super crazy. Just do some, you know, pupils like this. Okay. Maybe put, like, a little light life flare in there as well, just to make it look a little bit more kind of chilled. Okay, we've got that? Okay. I kind of like where this is going. So we've got some color there, which we'll do. This is obviously the piece of butter, so this is like the I don't know. Maybe we'll put some maple syrup on there if we can, let's see. And then let's see what mouth we want to do. Now, obviously, the mouth is going to be smiling, but because this is kind of like we kind of have these little flicks let's do, like, the cheeks up here. And then let's try and I don't know, maybe get um it kind of works. It definitely works with the cheek, so it definitely works with the eyes and stuff. And then let's do, like, do we do, like, a small mouth like this, or do we do, like, a one which is more like wide? I think if we do a small one, if we do a small one, it's gonna look a little bit weird look. So I'm like, sketching that already, and it still looks it already looks like a little bit weird. Even if we put, like, teeth, it just looks like goofy, right? Let's have a little look. And if we make it a little bit wider, let's check this out. So let's do it a little bit more white. And kind of welcoming almost, there we go. And then let's continue that shape with the teeth as well. So it looks like a little bit more kind of yeah, I like how that's looking, actually. And then we'll put it, like, a tongue in there or something, just to see what it looks like. Color this in. I mean, this is just like a rough sketch, but it's already looking so much better than these ones, right? And it's just because I'm taking a little bit more time with it. Obviously, there's still a lot of tidying up that needs to be done in Illustrator, but it's still looking a lot better. I mean, from a character standpoint, it does look quite good. I obviously now just need to kind of start to look at where this waffle aspect can come in. Now, the elements of the actual so the eyes, the nose, the butter nose, the mouth and stuff, that's all going to be sort of there. But then the actual circle itself needs to have some sort of waffle based effect. So now, I guess, if we look at the different examples, we kind of have this sort of, like, subtle background effect for the waffle. This one's a little bit more prominent, but I think if we did something like this, and we just had, like, squares, basically. So if we did, like, a circle here of, like, the square that the squares can be in, this is kind of like the crust almost of it. And then, basically from that, we kind of have like squares coming out for the actual waffle. So they're kind of just in the background almost. I think that could look okay. Because it's kind of like the waffle face, but it's also letting the actual elements of the face, like, sort of shine through. And I know it looks super messy right now, but once we actually have the color in there, it's going to help to segment things a lot better and just help things stand out a lot more. Okay, so I'm actually really happy with how this waffle mascot is looking right now. And I think we're ready to take it into the digital phase where we can start really tweaking things in Illustrator and just making things look super clean, and then adding a splash of color. And on that note, I will see you in the next lesson. 46. Mascot Logo Development Perfecting Digitally: So it's finally time to take the design for the waffle brand and put the mascot into Illustrator so we can start adding color and bringing this mascot to life. And so with that said, let's dive in Illustrator. So we finally have our waffle logo in Illustrator. I never thought I'd say that sentence, but never mind. And now we're going to take it, and we're going to ultimately digitize it and make it look good, okay? So we're going to start off. And what I'll do is I'll show you kind of the start of the process. Of me taking this and, you know, getting it to a certain point and then I'm going to go away. I'm going to spend a couple of hours really refining it and getting it looks super polished. So you can see what the end result should be after a couple of hours. But I'm obviously not going to stream this or record this for a couple of hours because you'll be both stiff. So the first step is always to kind create your structure, right? So you can create your shape and you're just working with outlines right now. You're not doing anything super duper crazy, right? You're just literally getting the overall shape there, so then we can work with it a little bit afterwards. Now, with this, obviously, we've got the butter nose, which I think would be a nice thing to get in place first. Let's do that. Let's make this a little bit more of an rectangle. There we go. And we can sort all of the sizes of the lines out and stuff afterwards. That is not my concern right now. I think the pen tool is going to be best for the other elements. So we're literally just popping in each of these little details of Mr. Waffle's face or whatever his name is. And we will basically just continue to the faster you get with I'm not the best Illustrator by any stretch of the imagination, but the faster you get with the pen tool, the quicker you'll be at doing this sort of thing because it does take a little bit of practice. But ultimately, you can get pretty fast, pretty quick, at outlining things and just with practice. So it's not, you know, it doesn't happen overnight, but once you get the hang of it, it's pretty easy. Okay, so I didn't like how that looked, see, even though I made mistakes. Okay. There we go. Okay. We're good. Now, the thing to just remember with these lines is they're not 100% confirmed yet. We are going to refine things, we're going to make things a little bit tidier afterwards. But for now, we're not going to waste too much time. We're just going to get the most basic things in the bag so that we can then start focusing on the details afterwards. We're going to get the teeth in, get those teeth done, perfect. Then we're going to do the tongue. Perfect, perfect, perfect. Perfect. All done. Excellent. Then we are going to do let's do the eyes actually, let's get the eyes arranged. You've got the eyes, got these nice little parts outside. Beautiful. Then this one. Okay. I got these nice little cheap bony things out the side. Looks good. Looks good. Okay. Then we're just going to do this, do this, do this, do this. That's the first eye. And the second eye is going to go like this. And what you'll find is I'm not being perfect with it. I'm just trying to get the lines in place so that I can then refine things afterwards because I know from doing mascot logos before that things change, you know, little opportunities pop up with the design and at the moment. I know that if I spent too much time trying to get everything perfect and trying to fiddle around with things and follow the sketch exactly, it's just going to be a complete waste of my time by the end because I know for a fact that things are going to change. Once you get things into the digital format, you can change things however you want. You can add things, you can take things away far easier than when you're sketching. When you're sketching, you have to erase things. It takes time, it takes energy. You're almost scared to do something wrong with a sketch once you get on a good role. But with this, it's you're just moving lines around and you can duplicate, you can do as many copies as you want. It's just easy. So okay, we're at a place now where we have kind of the main outline pretty much ready. So I'm just going to get this, get this there. This here. I mean, look, I mean, it doesn't look bad, does it from, you know, the first little draft, right? I just copying this. So what I'm going to do now is I think I'm going to create a circle. I'm going to make sure everything is unlocked. Then I'm going to lock that circle. Then I'm going to take this. I think I'm going to yeah. I think I'm going to copy and paste it because I know for a fine fact that if I don't copy and paste it, then I could potentially lose it in future, which is not going to be great. I want to put it down there. Then I'm going to take this maybe I'm not going to put it down there. Okay. I'm going to try that once more. It's like the first time I used Illustrator. An absolute disaster. Okay, so we're here now. We've got this here. We're going to outline this so that we have kind of a structure to what we're trying to do. Then we're going to start taking things out like, for example, this and this, divide this, get rid of that, this and this, divide this, get rid of this. What else? T and this. Let's tie that up a little bit. We probably can put this here actually. There we go. That looks a lot better. Put this here a little bit, actually. There we go. That looks a lot better. Okay? Were there, were there, were there. We'll sort those out afterwards, I think. Okay, okay. Okay. Everything looks okay, to be honest. Okay, good. Right. Now the next step is to basically, we've outlined everything. Everyone's happy. We've secured that. Now we're going to not do that because that's not a good idea. But what we will do is we'll get this. We'll create the fill effect just to get those out, just so we know for a fine fact that they're not going to come and bite us afterwards. Then we have this stage. We're going to create this circle, which is essentially going to be green bright green, just so I can show you exactly what's happening. And we're going to copy and paste this. This here is two versions here. We now have this version here. Which is together completely. We also have this version here, which is also going to be together completely. Let me put that back on top. Then I'm going to put this in here. And then I'm going to take it and I'm going to cut out the sheaf from the green. That's all I've done. I've just taken the sheape away from the green. I'm going to delete everything else because I don't need it. Okay, so now all I've done is I've taken away now all I'm going to do is I'm going to take away the shape from the green. I've got two copies. I've got this copy as well, but this copy is going to go afterwards. I'm going to take this shape away from the green right now. We're going to end up with an outline of the actual mascot. Now, this copy is the actual outline itself. I'm going to show you why this is important in 2 seconds. But for now, we want to take this. We want to get rid of that because we don't need it. Then we're going to take this and this and we're going to ultimately get them pretty much directly on top of each other because that's where we need them to be. Then once we do that, we can then start to color this character in and start to add some effects and do some other great stuff. So when we get to the stage, we're now at a point where we can start with that, there's just something now which has crept in. Now we're at this stage. We can now start to be a little bit more creative. Now I'm going to ungroup everything. So I can pick up separate parts. I don't need that anymore. I need this. I need that, I need that I need that, I need that, I need that. Now I'm going to do is I'm going to get some references in regards to color from the examples that I had before for the waffle logo. And so here we are. So now I have the colors that I can use for this logo design. I can use this color for the butter. I don't have to use this exact color. I can edit it a little bit and make it a little bit more unique to what I need. But it just gives me a really good starting point. Obviously, this part is going to be white. This part here is going to be white or an off white almost. This part here is going to be a dark color, like a blacky color, I'm assuming, something like that. Maybe, let's make it a nice blue, a nice blue. That's going to be cool. Let's do that. Then let's make these nice blue eyes. Cute. Okay. Yeah, similar that doesn't look too bad. Perfect. Okay. It's now we've got that. The next step is going to be the teeth. Let's get the teeth in play. Let's get this. We want to use similar colors, to be honest. We don't want to stray too far away. Let's just get this yellow and then we can move that up to the red. We have the same type of color. So this yellow and this red in the same family. Obviously, it just creates a color match that is just a little bit more harmonious. Then we've got the actual waffle itself. Which is basically here. And then the outside crust, which is basically like I don't know, like the slightly burnt part of the waffle. Okay. And then I think this is a little bit too I want this to be a little bit lighter. Do I want it to be lighter? Actually, I quite like that how it is. Okay. But let's make this a little bit more yellow, so it kind of stands out as being butter because I don't think it doesn't it currently stands out as being butter. I'm going to add probably some effects and stuff to that afterwards, but for now, it's not really worth it. Okay. So we've currently got this, which is, okay, okay. I'll probably add some. I'll figure that out afterwards. I'll figure out how I want to kind of refine things and stuff after. But anyway, that's beyond the point. I can take some time afterwards in a few hours to refine things, but at the moment, it's not really a massive issue. Now, you can see here how they have these these waffle shapes. They're kind of squares almost. And they're essentially like pieces of the waffle but in front of the actual waffle shape. So they're in the background. So I don't think it'll be full transparency. They're probably like, it's just like a behind the features element. Well, you can probably put them diagonally, just to try and make it a little bit more realistic. But basically, that's what it's all about. It's all about trying to get the feel right. Okay, we don't need this one, that's fine. But then afterwards, what we can do is these go the same? Yeah, they do? Okay. I was going to do them diagonal like bricks, but then I realized this isn't a house, this is a waffle. Okay. Got this here, got this here. Got this here. Okay, this should look. Once I pull all these behind the actual features, this should look a lot better. And again, I'm just speed running this. Like, I'm not doing this with any real kind of detail or care at this point, because to be honest, it doesn't really matter. I'm just trying to get an idea of what's working because I've got the outline. I know kind of roughly what he's going to look like. But the details are going to come later. I'm not going to spend all my time going through super fine details. Group those. Perfect. We don't need this one, we don't really need this one. Yeah, I'm not going to spend all my time going through all these details when they're not going to matter. Once I get to the refinement stage. Okay. There we go. Okay. So that looks a lot better than what it did, but there's still obviously some things poking out here which are not great. There's like white lines and stuff around, but I'm not worried about that at all. I'm going to figure that out afterwards. But you can see here how we've went from, you know, literally this outline on this, and we've literally create something in real time, like it hasn't took an incredible amount of time, which doesn't look half bad. I definitely think we can work on a few things. I definitely think that this is a little bit too, I don't know. It's a little bit too prominent. I think it would probably look a little bit better if it was a different shade or something. I mean, that looks good. That looks good. I can probably put some shading and stuff in between each of them. Like, if I really take the time, which I will now, and I really kind of, you know, added shading in certain places like the eyes, like the tongue, these little crevices, if you could see on the previous versions, see how they've got little shadows and stuff inside. If I can do that, then it's going to look 1 million times better. So through the power of time travel, I'm going to refine this, get it looking a little bit better, add some shading, add some magic, and just like that. And you can now see the difference between version and this version. I did a couple of things. I kept the nose pretty much the same. I took away the outline, and I just added some outlines between the eyes and the mouth and stuff just because I thought it was a little bit too cartoony. I added some shading to the butter here, which I think works well. It just helps to elevate the butter a little bit. I also added little things as well like shadows, for example, behind the butter just to elevate it a little bit more. I changed the direction of the eyes. I did actually like how these eyes were looking at the same place, but I ended up making them a little bit more around them, bringing them a little bit further into the center of the eye. I created some outlines here which basically were a little bit more I don't know, kind of interesting. Cause usually when you use, like, really structured lines and they're all kind of the same thickness, it just looks a little bit uninteresting. So that's why I kind of wanted to edit things. I made him look a little bit more goofy. I thought that looked a little bit cooler. I created a cool little effect with the mouth, as you can see here, where you kind of have like a gradient with the darkness in the back of the throat, which just gives a little bit more depth. I added a little chin under here. And also, as well, I did a gradient where essentially the orange sorry, on the right or the brownish orange gets lighter as it goes to the left, just to add a little bit more contrast and also added some shading to the actual crust of the waffle, and that's pretty much it. I mean, you can see here the difference and the development on the first version to the second version to then the version which I would send to a client, which is basically this version here. And the difference between this here, which is essentially the first sketch that I did from the research phase. This step here, which is essentially what I just whipped together within 20 minutes of talking to you on this video, and then this version here is time. I took the time to think about, okay, what do I like about this? I went back to my research and the examples that I liked. Okay, I like how this is like this. I like how the smile looks a little bit better when there's more teeth showing and it's kind of a little bit more structured. I liked how there was shading and stuff within the actual waffle, so it made it come to life a little bit more as opposed to being flat like this. It all comes down to refinement. If you can just go away, grab yourself a quick coffee, then come back and just refine things a little bit more, you can create incredible logos like this for clients that, you know, they're going to love. And what most people do is they probably design something like this and they'll sell it to a client and expect them to give feedback, and they'll just want to get the project done. Don't do that. It's the stupidest thing you can ever do. What you should be doing is refining yourself and going back, having a coffee, coming back and saying, Okay, how can I make it a little bit better? Okay, I can add a little bit of a thing to the butter on the nose. Okay, maybe I should put a top hat on him. No, no, okay. Top had probably isn't a good idea because that's going to be too much. Okay. Let's pull it back. And making those decisions is over time going to help you to create much better logos. I hope this lesson has been helpful or at least it's given you something you can add to your own process, or you've enjoyed yourself, and I look forward to seeing you in a future lesson. So on that note, I'll see you soon. Take care. Bye bye. 47. What is a golden ratio logo?: What is a golden ratio logo? Well, the golden ratio is inspired by the Fibonacci sequence, which is seen in nature and lots of other great stuff, which we'll get to in a little bit. But in its simplest form, it is a mathematical way to design logos. It helps to create more aesthetically pleasing and well balanced, harmonious designs that just look like candy to the eye. And you can find the Fibonacci sequence or golden ratio in things like art nature and architecture. So, you know, like when you see something in either nature or art or wherever, and it just looks really nice for some reason, that's why the Fibonacci sequence. So how do golden ratio logos actually work? Well, every single golden ratio logo is built using a certain grid system and circles in certain proportions. Now, we'll actually get to creating the golden ratio grading system in a little bit. But the reason that the golden ratio logos always stand out, at least to me is they're so visually appealing due to the perfect proportions and also the harmonious ratios that are at play within each of the designs. You'd actually be surprised how many logos out there use the golden ratio method to design their logos. Apple, for example, uses it, Twitter uses it, and many, many more. So why would you actually use the golden ratio method? Well, you can use the gold ratio method with abstract logos, with pictorial logos, combination marks with any other type of logo design, but it just helps to elevate the design to the next level. And the first reason why people use it is there's a timeless aesthetic to it. It just looks so simple and so well balanced and so harmonious that it kind of draws you in to the brand. It kind of draws you in to wonder, you know, this brand looks really great. Why? And that can ultimately lead to the actual branding company just looking more professional and high end. You see, if a brand's logo is refined and well designed and well balanced, kind of assume that the company's well run, too. And when you apply the golden ratio properly, there's just a symmetry and a flow to the logo, which you can't really comprehend unless you actually understand why the golden ratio is so special. Now, we're going to dive into the process of actually using the golden ratio method in a little bit. But I just wanted to give you a little bit of an outline in Mg to what it was and obviously, why you would use it in certain situations, just to give you the foundations before we start building. So anyway, I will see you in the next lesson. See you there. 48. Examples of amazing golden ratio logos: Okay, so what is the secret to golden ratio logos? And what are some great examples of logos out there that are using the golden ratio method to look aesthetically pleasing to the eye? Well, there are three logos that kind of stand out. Well, actually, four, Mastercard, Pepsi, Apple, and Twitter. Now, the mastercard logo is literally just two simple circles, slightly overlapping. But did you know that? Those circles are placed strategically so that the gap between the edge of the transparent part and the edge of the circle is perfectly aligned according to the golden ratio. Now, someone could maybe argue that, you know, this is a little detail that no one will ever even think of or even notice. For example, you could move those circles and change it slightly, and no one really care very much. But that's kind of the point. The average person doesn't have a clue what Fibonacci's sequence is. They don't really care to be honest. But when we actually see the logo, for some reason, it just looks better. And this all comes down to proportions. So for example, if we look at the Twitter logo, you can see here that the circles for the Twitter logo are all in proportion to the golden ratio. And by using the circles in the correct proportions, according to the golden ratio method, we can make sure that the bird icon looks and feels as perfect as possible. We can see the exact same thing about the Apple logo because that logo uses the exact same approach. The reason that the Apple looks so great is simply because the proportions are perfect from a natural standpoint, using the golden ratio method. Now, Pepsi is kind of another story because Pepsi is more of an abstract mark. It isn't a pictorial mark like Apple and like Twitter. Now there are tons of different stories about what the Pepsi logo even means. And there are even some memes of the little white part of the blue red white logo being the belly of a really fat person, obviously, because Pepsi focuses on sugary drinks, ultimately as their main product. And not many people know this, but the usage of red, white, and blue in Pepsi's branding is actually linked to World War two. It was used as an act of patriotism to ultimately support the people who were fighting in the war. And it was also used to essentially differentiate from Coca Cola, who was obviously using red. So in a nutshell, the Pepsi icon doesn't really mean anything, I don't but that doesn't really matter. What matters is it is aesthetically pleasing to the eye. And I guess it's just a really great example, actually, of how powerful the golden ratio method is because we don't even know what it is, but it still just kind of looks captivating and very aesthetically pleasing to look at. Anyway, I think looking at these examples, has really set us up well to actually develop a golden ratio logo of our own. So on that note, I will see you in the next lesson. See you there. 49. Golden Ratio Logo Development Brief & Research: Now, for this particular client, one of the approaches that he really liked was infinite energy. Obviously, with the sun and solar power, you can get infinite energy, which I thought was a great idea. The thing that I don't think is a great idea is just using an infinity symbol, which isn't unique. That's the thing that I was kind of jostling with. I was like, An infinity symbol, if we are going to even look at using that, you can create one which does look good with the golden ratio method, but at the same time, it's not going to look unique. It's going to be very, very kind of forgettable ultimately and kind of symmetrical and it's not going to be good. What I wanted to do is the start this process, I wanted to look at how we can make it more interesting, is this direction. Using the Golden ratio method, but how can we make it look a little bit more captivating, right? So anyway, the first step is to look at how can we take this infinity symbol and make it look a little bit more interesting, memorable, dynamic as well, and just overall, a little bit more memorable. So for example, we see things like this, for example, it looks a little bit. Interesting because it's asymmetrical, but at the same time, it doesn't really fill me with an incredible amount of confidence. It doesn't look very good. Can you see how this just looks super heavy? And then there's no balance there, but I do like the approach. I just don't like how it's being executed. See, can you see how this, even though it's a little bit weird? It still looks balanced. It still looks like it's kind of, like, consistent. And I'm not saying we need all the line to be the exact same width, but I just think that it could be better executed than the one that we saw before, but I like this one. I like this one a lot. See, this is interesting, as well. It's not an infinity symbol, per se, but it is, you know, kind of more unique. I like this one, as well. This is what I mean by dynamic. It's kind of got like movement. I kind of want ours to have movement. It's gonna look good anyway because of the golden ratio approach, but I wanted to have movement. I want to have life and energy, right? I want the infinity symbol to look like it has energy, not have to see it directly. I want the actual icon to feel alive like it has energy. A little bit like this as well. This is pretty like this, like this. What was that? What was that? Like this, like this. Look at this. This looks like the fact that it's got tons of different colors, and this is scalable here, you can see how this is super pixelated, especially if we get this super small. You can see how this is more pixelated. We don't need to be that clever with it. But I like the fact it has energy. I like how this has energy as well. That's cool. That's cool. That's cool. From an execution standpoint, I think we can do better. But I think I now understand if we're going to create a company logo for this Skywals brand, it needs to have energy. It needs to have life. We can use an infinity symbol for this direction because that's obviously something that the founder specifically wanted. But I think we're onto something here. I think from taking these directions and taking a little bit of inspiration from the infinity symbol, but just executing in a way which is obviously scalable, relevant, it has life, it has energy. It feels dynamic. I think we can create something really good. We just need to make sure it's balanced, obviously, use the golden ratio approach. I think this could look awesome. Okay. Incredible. I'm going to crap on with the sketching phase, but on that note, I'm super excited, so I will put pencil to paper in the next lesson and I will see you there. See you soon. 50. Golden Ratio Logo Development Sketching: So now we understand the brief and we've done the research, and we have some inspiration that we've captured from Pinterest and Google, for example. Now it's time to sketch our logo so we can then reformat it digitally using the golden ratio method. Okay, so we have this idea for Skywlls to have this sort of infinity symbol for the brand's main logo. Now, what I'm going to do is I'm going to break down my sketch pad into Phase one and Phase two. Normally, what I do is I would create maybe 20 kind of quick sketches for phase one with the directions that I've confirmed with the client. Then the second thing that I would do is move on with phase two, where I take the direction which I think is working best from a design standpoint, then I would refine it, okay? So in phase one, we're not trying to create, you know, the most perfect sketch in the world. We're literally just taking all of our ideas and putting it down on paper and seeing kind of how the shapes work, because usually what will happen is we'll create things like little happy accidents which just kind of come to life, which we didn't even comprehend before, okay? So we've got the infinity symbol. I kind of like how this one's looking a lot better. So let's kind of just base our idea around that. I like how it's a little bit bigger on the left hand side. So let's just kind of start with this and just kind of create like a nice, okay, I like how this is sort of looking, but let's just look at. And I'm just moving my pencil around and just kind of seeing, you know what lines make sense, which lines don't make sense. I like how Okay, so I'm looking at this, and I'm looking at this. I wanted to have a little bit more of here an upward balance if that makes sense. So I wanted to if we kind of switch this around, I like more how this looks. But I also want it to be kind of inverted. I wanted to be switched so that this point here is on this side, because when I put it to the left of a wordmark, it's going to be balanced on the right side. So I ultimately want the wordmark to be like here, for example, and then I want the actual logo to kind of come like this, okay? So the balance of it is sort of here. A little bit. Obviously, I would like, you know, obviously, this doesn't really matter at the moment. I'm just kind of playing around just with balance and stuff, but I want the main balance of the logo to be in the top left up here, and at the moment, it's at the bottom left. I needed to be at the top left because I wanted to balance well with the wordmark afterwards, which is just something that you will kind of pick up as you do more brand identity projects. You want to make sure the icon and the wordmark is balanced really nicely, so you can do it both from a horizontal standpoint and also from a vertigal standpoint as well. Okay, obviously, that would be centered, but, you know, we're just kind of playing around here. Now, I know that I want it to be a little bit more prominent in the top right, so let me just get that right first. Okay, that's not working at all. And again, at this stage, listen, these are really, really basic sketches. And, you know, I'm not the best brand designer in the world, but, you know, I'm just trying my best to get something which looks and feels. Okay, so Okay, that's a little bit better. We're kind of getting somewhere now. Let's be a little bit more adventurous and try to really kick this up at the top. So I'm trying to kick it up at the top to get a little bit more energy. Okay. Then afterwards, what we can do is once we get the shape right and the feel right and the energy right for the logo, then we can start to add the golden ratio approach and really start to make things look smooth. I love how this is looking, by the way. I'm not sure how this little curve is going to feel. I don't quite like that as much. I want to kind of flatten it out a little bit, but I like how it has that little kick at the top, because then if we put a wordmark to the right of it here, it's going to look good. Okay. I actually like this straight away. I actually don't think we need to do that much more exploring. I quite like how it's just and I think we're going to have to probably make it a little bit thicker on this left hand side, and then obviously, where it is creating more movement. So here look, you can see how here it's kind of slow. So the thinness and the thickness of the mark demonstrates the speed. So here it's going to be a lot faster, and then here it's going to be a little bit slower, which is why the thickness makes sense. Then here it'll be a little bit fast but not as fast. So it's kind of like a roller coaster. Like if we had a spray can on the back of a roller coaster, where it's slow, the paint's going to build up. So it would build up a little bit here, and then it would build up and it will build up and it'll build up. And Then obviously when it goes down, because the roller coaster is moving at such a velocity and such high pace, it will ultimately leave a thinner trail behind it. Then obviously, again, it'll pick it up and it'll actually start to become a little bit thicker. That's how we need to think about creating movement within an abstract mark. Okay, if that makes any sense. If it doesn't, then let me know and I'll make, you know, a more detailed lesson on that. But I actually like how this is looking. Like, if I move this to phase two, all I would do is I would just basically take it and I would just redraw it exactly the same as this. This actually came out a lot better than I thought from the first sketch. I mean, we could try and do some other options. But I just feel like, as long as we you can see here how this has the same kind of approach. Like you kind of have that speed there, and then it kind of droops down, so it kind of makes it look a little bit more interesting. I actually like how this one's looking. And I don't want it to kind of have this SED effect. I want it to just be like one solid shape. And I also this one does the same thing as well with the speed aspect, right? This one actually looks like it's, you know, being really well done. This one, can you see how this Because it has kind of, like these folded approaches, it just makes the actual logo look a little bit less dynamic. Whereas this everything's the same width. So it's again, it's not very dynamic. This looks more dynamic. This looks more dynamic. This looks more Well, not as dynamic because you kind of have this, like, blockiness to it, and these don't really have, like, a flow to them. They're kind of more, like, sort of structured. I like it. I like these better, so I'm actually going to delete that. I'm going to also delete that and delete that. I like these better. This is kind of the approach that I want to go for Skywal. So I would essentially just take this and refine it a little bit here. And I would basically just sketch this out and essentially do the exact same thing as I've done in phase one, which obviously, I want to respect your time, so I'm not going to basically reschetch it exactly because I'm actually quite hppy with this. You know, don't make too much work for yourself, you know, if you don't need to, you have something which you're happy with, I can scan this now, put this straight into Illustrator, and there's absolutely no need for me to resketch this all again from scratch and really kind of tidy things up because I'm going to be using the golden ratio method anyway to really get this super clean and looking really nice. There's no need to reschetch it again, so I'm going to go straight and Illustrator it from here. Okay, so I'm actually really happy with how this Skywlls logo is looking right now. I like how dynamic it looks. I love the curves really working together. I just can't wait to get it inside Illustrator, so I can start applying the golden ratio approach and ultimately bring this bad boy to life. I cannot wait. So anyway, on that note, I will see you on the next lesson of the course where I will be taking this design into Illustrator to really tidy it up and make it look super professional. I'll see you there. 51. Golden Ratio Logo Development Perfecting Digitally: So let's take the design and the sketch from Sky Wells and put it inside, Illustrator so we can make it look super clean, super professional, and super tidy. And so with that said, let's dive in Illustrator. Okay, so we currently have our sketches inside Illustrator. And we also have this up here, which is the Fibonacci sequence or golden ratio method. Now, these circles are exactly 1.618 times bigger than each other, okay? So this circle here, is 1.618 times bigger than this one. This one is bigger than this one, et cetera. Now, what we're going to do is use this particular approach to basically create our logo. If we can do that, then it should look pretty aesthetically appealing. Okay? So you can see here, we're just going to break everything down and I'm actually going to make this available to you. So you can ultimately use this exact same file for your own golden ratio logos. Okay? We're going to just keep it nice and simple. We'll put it as red just so you can see exactly where I'm putting things and we'll also make them all the same size. And then we'll also make it a full circle just so you're not, you know, guessing at where things are, et cetera, et cetera. So now we know exactly what we have. We have our golden ratio circles here. So what we need to do now is take these circles and basically draw the logo again using those circles. So I'm going to use this one because I feel like it has more energy and it just has a better overall feel. So I'm going to take this. I'm going to make it, I don't know, maybe 50%, and then I'm going to lock it in place. So now, all I need to do so she used my circles to make it look great. What I'm going to do is I'm going to first start by fitting one of these circles inside this crevice of the actual logo. Okay? Now, it obviously isn't going to be perfect because this is hand drawn. But what you can see here is, if I take this one out here and I just organize these here look. So these are my circles and I'm going to be using to actually design the logo. You can see here, how I have this here. That's the circle there. Now with this one, I'm going to take this here. Okay, that one doesn't fit, so I'm probably going to need this one. I'll take this here and put this here. Awesome. You can see how that fits inside there, and then I'm going to take this one maybe and see if it fits inside here. Not quite. Let's see this one. Here. Yeah, that ones that one fits pretty well. Good stuff. Good stuff, good stuff. Then I'm going to see this one. I'm going to see if it fits inside here. Um, to an extent, but I actually think this one might be a little bit bigger, to be honest. Uh, kinder. Kind of, kind of, kind of, kinder. There we go. I think that works a little bit bad to be honest. Okay. You can see here how it's not exactly going to be on the actual logo itself, but we're going to work around it basically. So I actually think this one's going to be a little bit better, to be honest. Now that I'm looking at it, but Here we go. All I'm doing is I'm just marrying it up to this so I can basically use it to then cross everything over. Okay, so we've got those, we've got those, we've got those. Now what we can do is we can start to use the bigger one to basically get the bigger curves so you can see here look how this is going to be this curve here. We're not going to be able to draw the entire logo with it, but we can create a good amount of the logo with it. We've got this one here, then we'll take this and we'll add this on top maybe. Yeah, maybe here. Okay, good stuff. I like that. And then actually, I'm going to say we don't actually need that. I'm going to say we don't need it because it's annoying me a little bit. Let's do not this one, need a smaller one, I think. Actually, we might need that one. Let me see. I might need to kind of mix and match these, to be honest, because it's not quite fitting for some reason. Let's just keep it like this for the moment. Okay. Okay. Let's keep like that, and we'll see how we go. Okay. So then we're going to do this one. And, I mean, this one needs to be a little bit bigger. So what I can do is I can just times 1.618, and then it makes an even bigger one. Excuse me. And this is still part of the golden ratio method because it's the same proportions. So I can use this if I want to to basically create. You can even make it a little bit bigger to be honest, if I wanted to. 1.6 0.8. There we go, make it even bigger. Let's move this down here. Put this here. I'm just trying to marry this up, but we might need to free hand this a little bit because it seems like it could be we can try it, we can try it. We can try and see what it looks like. That's not an issue. I'm just trying to marry up this here with this. I'm not sure if it's going to work or not, but you can see here how I'm starting to actually create these lines and just capture them. So if I add these actual so I'm going to add this, if I add this, then basically what I've done is I have created the line for this particular section and the same for this look. Again, here, I want to add this here and add that maybe here, and then I can take away the rest of this. There we look. I've got that line now. I'm just going to do that with the rest of the sections. Do this here as well. A here we go. Q. Maybe even less actually. I'm just getting some of the key curves confirmed with the Golden Reassure circles and just getting them in place so then I can actually start free handing it and start getting in some of the more obscure shapes. Okay. There we go. Because this is given me the structure and the format for how things should potentially look, just to give it a little bit more. Okay. I want to go with here, I think. We go and then here probably probably here maybe. Okay. Okay, there we go. And then afterwards, I'm not sure if this circle is actually going to work to gums. I'm not sure if the circle is actually going to work to gums, so let's get rid of that. But basically what you can see here is we currently have this structure for the actual logo currently coming together. So we have this, we have this. We see that these need to connect together in some way, shape, or form, so we can have a look at that. And then we can start to piece things together like here, for example. There we go. You can see how these lock in together now and how we now have a much better idea of how things should fit together. There we go. So we can start to follow and we can tie this up afterwards. It's not a big deal, but it's all about getting that initial structure down so that we can then Edit the logo afterwards and see here, this is okay, so that's kind of hitting it off a little bit. Okay, so we've got that. That's going to need tiling up 100%. That there is definitely going to need tiling up, so I'm just going to pull that down now straight away and tie that up. Okay, there we go. Looks a little bit better. Okay. Again, we're not trying to get things perfect first time. It's going to take a little bit of time, but we are starting to understand how each of these corners and curves need to be Okay, so we'll do that. We'll curve this around here. Again, I'm kind of following the actual illustration and the sketch that I originally did, but I'm also using my eye to just make the best judgment possible because ultimately, I'm going to refine things afterwards anyway, so it doesn't really matter too much. I have the golden ratio curves kind of guiding me and giving me kind of start and end points. But ultimately, the end result is going to be dictated by my refinements at the end. Okay. That's just Okay. So let's do this. There we go, and then we are literally on the home street, I think, try and keep this curve. Okay. Awesome. Okay. So now we have a really rough idea of how things should look. And if we kind of do that, then we move it, and then we basically create this. Then we kind of have this sort of shape, which at the moment, you know, needs a little bit of refinement. But if we just move this out of the way, we can see we've kind of got a pretty decent now you can see here that there's certain spaces and certain places where it needs refinement, like here, for example, like here, here, and it just needs smoothing out. But here, for example, it looks really good, from here to here, if we take it from there to there, this point looks awesome, and that's because of the golden ratio method. It's because we're using these curves. Also from here to here, it looks great as well. The places that it doesn't look good are the places where the golden ratio method could not be used. That is where we need to tidy things up a little bit, which through the power of time travel, I'm going to do right now. And we're back. I've been playing around with this version of the logo and managed to develop this cleaner version. Now, you can see here the idea is exactly the same. The only difference is I took some time to really perfect and refine the edges, the curves. I changed this a little bit as well just to make it a little bit more consistent with this. I didn't like how small it was here and how big it was here, so I balanced it out a little bit more. You can see here now, it's the same approach, but it's just executed and cleaned up a lot better, which ultimately gives you this approach where you have the infinity symbol, but it just looks and feels a lot cleaner. It looks and feels a lot more refined. And this is all done by just using the golden ratio method to fit into these curves to ultimately give you proportions and give you sizes which are going to help you to make the logo look far more aesthetically appealing. So anyway, I hope you enjoy this lesson on the golden ratio method. I hope that you can take something away from this lesson to essentially use in your own process. And hopefully, if you can develop a logo, using the golden ratio method, which I would definitely advise, I think that it's going to really help you to ultimately develop far better logos in future because once you understand this technique and you can use it to your advantage, it helps you to create far more aesthetically appealing logos and overall, you just become far more confident as a logo designer. So on that note, thank you so much for your time, and I'll see you in another lesson. 52. What is a negative space logo?: So what are negative space logos, or what is negative space in logo design? Well, negative space is referring to the empty space, which is purposely left out of a logo design to create some sort of hidden meaning or in depth story. This technique can ultimately lead to surprise and just to help the logo become more memorable. But how does negative space actually work? Well, with negative space, you can have in picture or image or logo idea, but then you can also have a secondary one, which is hidden, which you don't actually realize until you look at the logo for long enough. This kind of gives you, like, a eureka moment, ultimately, which can make the logo more memorable. Now, the trick to utilize a negative space in the right way is to be minimalist but clever. It can actually be quite difficult to do negative space well, but a little bit of practice, and by following the process that we're going to cover in a little bit, you're going to be able to do it just as well as anyone else in the world with a little bit of practice. And I think one of the main benefits of negative space, well, from a brand design standpoint, is one, you can create some really great and clever logo two, when you use negative space in your brand identity design in your logo design, clients tend to love it. They just really like that little creative spark which can really help to elevate their company and their logo to the next level. So when should you actually use negative space? Well, always, every day. I'm joking, by the way. What you should do, though, is you should be open to opportunity. So if there's an opportunity to use negative space or even just explore the opportunity to use negative space, you should 100% do it. One, it's going to be better for your portfolio, and two, the client is often going to look at it more favorably. They like extra dime mentioned. It's kind of getting a free logo within a logo, if that makes sense. Another great pro negative space and using it is the storytelling aspect. You know, you look at the FedEx logo, for example, with a little arrow. That is the simplest form of communicating, delivery and speed and everything that FedEx is about. It does it in the simplest way possible within the letters that are already arranged and formatted. To create that particular shape between the E and the X. And ultimately, if you do negative space well in the right context, it can come off as quite timeless and modern. Now, obviously, it takes a little bit of practice to get the right mindset when you're looking for opportunities in regards to negative space. But later on, we're going to go through some examples, so do not worry. And on that note, I will see you in the next video. See you soon. 53. Examples of amazing negative space logos: So what actually makes a great negative space logo? Now, there are three main logos out there that use negative space pretty much better than anyone. First is FedEx. Second is Pitborugh Zoo, and third is Toblerod. Now FedEx, by far is the one that gets talked about the most. One because the brand is the biggest, probably, and secondly, because it's the most simple and minimal and just the most genius. Now, Toblerod on the other hand, is a little bit more subtle, but also clever. So within the logo, they actually have a little hidden bear. In the mountain, which is a symbol of where the chocolate originated from, a little place called Bern. And if you don't know where Burn is, it's just a little town in Switzerland. Now, not many people actually know that this bear is here, probably. It's actually probably the best hidden bear in the entire world. However, it's not the point. The point is that it is there. And the point is that it's a little story to tell, and it actually communicates the little town of Burn in the most subtle and most charming way possible. Zoo takes the bear and basically times it by three. And they do this by ultimately creating a lion and a gorilla inside a tree silhouette. Now just by looking at this logo, first, you see the tree, and then afterwards, you get kind of the bonus of the gorilla on the left and the kind of lion or tiger on the right. But one thing that I do want to point out Mags to this logo, in particular, is it isn't very scalable. And that's one thing which is going to become super important a little bit later. And of course, when we start to actually apply the logo to things like mock ups and different environments, this logo, although it's super clever, it is unscalable. So it's actually due a little bit of an update, in my humble opinion, but what do I know, right? But anyway, in the next lesson, we're going to develop our own negative space logo. It's not going to be unscalable like the Pittsburgh Zoo example, but it is going to be a little bit more simple, a little bit like Fedex. So on that note, I will see you in the next lesson. See you there. 54. Negative Space Logo Development Brief & Research: Designing a negative space logo for a client, what is the first step? Well, brief and discovery, okay? What is the brief? So this client is a logistics company, okay, who essentially take packages and ship them all around the world super, super quick. So they're a critical logistics company called Center fi. Now for this particular client, they did say that they wanted something focused around negative space, a little bit like the FedEx logo, for example. What I wanted to do was to give them four to six different directions in regards to, Okay, this is how we can communicate that you're a time critical logistics company so that you can ultimately choose whichever one you like best. Now, one of the directions, an idea that I was to try and communicate logistics, time, and also the letter S for centify in one single icon, which I'll be honest, I don't even if it's possible to do all three in one single icon, but I'm going to give it a try. Who knows, right? We might get lucky. Anyway, with this next step, I want to look and do some discovery in regards to icons that can communicate logistics, time, and then obviously we have Letter rest. Let the rest, I think we've got to let the rest down. We know the letter S looks like. But how can we communicate visually Time and logistics. So let's have a look now. However, the real question is, how do we communicate time and logistics in the similst way possible, so we can form it inside the geometry of the letters. I don't know if it's possible, but let's have a look. If we look at logistics, we can see a couple of things. We can see vans, we've got an arrow or something. We've got an arrow here with a, we've got a box. We've got a box. That's one thing. Let's put the box inside. But we do have an arrow here as well, which is pretty promising. Okay, with that, what's this? Okay, with her. We've kind of got two so it's supposed to be a letter L, a human I. I'm not quite seeing that, to be honest, but finger framing. But this also kind of looks like a little bit like an arrow look. Look at that. That kind of looks a little bit like a letteress. It doesn't give us the time aspect, but that kind of looks like a letteress. This definitely looks like a letteres. Look at it. And logistics, you're essentially taking the package from one place to other. So you're distributing the package. It actually looks quite dynamic and fast as well, so I think it could be a pretty decent approach. Obviously, it doesn't look like the letteres, but it kind of does as well. I think arrows, so look at this, as well. So we can kind of see lots of different ways to do letters. But I'm just looking at the arrows. Like, I keep coming back to this one for some reason. It just seems it just looks so kind of like cause letters is in the negative space as well. And what about time then? Because we need to set time in there as well. So Okay, so we're looking at this. So we've got clocks, clocks everywhere. We're like an alarm clock, which ultimately what we're looking for is we're looking to be able to fit the geometry of the clock, the S, and also the arrows for logistics in one single icon, which is, you know, near enough impossible. We've got like an hourglass. That's something else. Another way it's a little bit simpler, I guess. I mean, this kind looks a little bit more simple, I guess, right? And workable. Okay, okay, okay. Now maybe we're getting somewhere. Okay. So at the moment, at least for this direction, again, this is just one direction out of the five or six that I'll probably do for this particular climb with the package that he's secured, we've got kind of arrows for logistics. We've kind of got a couple of ideas of how the rest could be brought to life and I've actually got the same icon like three times there, I think. I don't think that the clock is going to actually work, but I think the hourglass might be a better solution in MoGrass to time, because from a geometry standpoint, the lines are not I also think this one won't work as well, because it's kind of like curved and everything else is quite sharp and straight. I think if it's going to work, it's going to be one of these, something like this, that's going to fit together. But fitting it together, that's the hard part. So I've got my worker out. Anyway, let's move on to the sketching phase together, and on that note, I'll see you in the next lesson. See you soon. 55. Negative Space Logo Development Sketching: So now we understand the brief, and we've done the research, and we have some inspiration that we've captured from Pinterest and Google, for example. Now it's time to start sketching our logo ideas so we can use negative space in a creative way and create something truly memorable. Okay, so we're going to be sketching the icons for sendipi and now it's just a case of trying to pull together the ideas that we brought together in the research phase, right? Where we were trying to kind of figure out, okay, how can we get together logistics, S and time? Okay? And we kind of found that the hourglass was probably going to be the best option to try and kind of fit into things. But it's going to be a challenge to do this, to be honest. I do not know how we're going to get the arrows and the hourglass and S together. I've literally got no idea because none of these look like they can fit an hourglass in there. And let's see. Let's just see what happens. Okay. So with that said, let's look at the actual sketch pad, okay? I like to section off into phase one and phase two. With phase one, I'm literally just looking at getting my ideas down on paper. Let me just change my pencil actually. And then let's look at phase two. And then phase two, what's going to happen is we'll essentially look to take the best ideas that we have in phase one and move it into the refinement stage, right, where we'll tidy it up a little bit before going into Illustrator and tidy it up digitally. So with phase one, we're not trying to create art or sketch the perfect masterpiece. We're just trying to get our ideas down on paper, ok? So with this, we have arrows, right? So what's the S here? So, this has two arrows and it has kind of S, but it doesn't really look like an S, really. This looks like an S. Could we kind of get It's not really gonna work. Let's try and get, like, the arrows here. Um okay. So arrows, an arrow here, an arrow here. Okay. Then maybe another arrow here. I can already tell this is not gonna look great, to be honest. Okay, we've got that. We've got that. And what if we did I mean, this is kind of like an hourglass, right? That's kind of like Ah, what about that? What about that? What about that? Let me see. Let me see. Let me see if we can get this hourglass together in this one, 'cause this actually looks like it could potentially work. But then we need to basically try and get it to a point where it looks like es still. Okay, so this looks absolutely terrible, by the way, but just sketching ideas down at the moment, but I like how we have managed to get this in here. So maybe what we could do is potentially if we wanted to, we could I don't know, put this here, put this here, and then just take this off and take this off. That's potential. So we kind of have the S. We have the S here, but we also have the hourglass. But then we've kind of lost the arrows, right? We've lost the arrows. We've lost the arrows, so it's kind of like a square now with an hourglass in the middle, which doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Okay, so let's go back to the drawing boat. So, um, we've got arrows again. Okay, obviously, we need this here. Okay. And then maybe this again, here. And then maybe this again here. There's your S, basically. Kind of got the SG on. And then our glass would go like this maybe. Is this going to work better? Okay, we've kind of got the same thing again, right? Okay, okay, okay. That's, um I mean, at this point, I'm kind of looking at I'm kind of looking at this. But there's no hourglass there. So how can we I mean, an hourglass is essentially just two triangles on top of each other in the simplest form possible, right? And these just look like squares, which don't make any sense. It doesn't look like an S or kind of arrows at all. How can we kind of pull this together where it sort of looks more like an S? I mean, what does an S actually look like? An S is like that, so it's straight on this side, but it's like curved here and here. So maybe we need to curve in a little bit on certain edges or certain sides. Let's try that. Let's try that here. So we've got this here look. We have another block here, just to try and create the shape of it and then this here. Okay, so we've got this, and let's actually make these a little bit longer and flatter. Okay. That's me it's a little bit longer and flatter, just so we've got something to work with. Okay. So if we're looking at the S shape, we've got curves here and here, so we need to curve this and curve this here. Okay, so then let's get rid of that. This now, we can keep this straight, I think, because in an S, obviously, it would be straight on either side, okay? So we can keep those straight. That's fine. I think, at least in the meantime. But then how would we do that and that? Could we do something like this? I mean, that definitely looks like an S, but it also doesn't look like an arrow anymore, or it doesn't look like an arrow to begin with. So what about if we did I mean, if we put those I mean, what if we put the hourglass in the center here. But it just looks like an hourglass in the middle of an S, right? Ah, okay. I'm just trying to see how everything could kind of connect together, and I guess that could kind of connect to that. Wait a second. What if? So we've got Okay, so we need arrows. We need arrows. We need an S, and we need an hourglass. We've got the S. We've got the hourglass. Now we just need to refine this to make this look more like an actual like an arrow. So we need to make two arrows. So we need the two arrows. We need the hourglass, and we need the S together. Okay, let's have a little look at how we can make this work. Okay, let's move this to the refinement stage, and let's see in phase two, if we can make this work a little bit better. So let's again take the sketch of the overall shape. And we'll structure that into three. And again, with phase two, we're not trying to, you know, create an absolute masterpiece. That's gonna happen or at least hopefully happen when we get to the digital stage. But for now, I just want to get things looking and feeling pretty good. Okay. I'm gonna put the hourglass in first. I feel like that's going to dictate where everything else goes. I'm going to just stretch a little bit more then there. Okay. So in order for this to work, we need to create arrows in two different places. Here, and here. So let's start by doing that here. So that's the start of the arrow here, okay? And then obviously the arrow needs to come along here. So then let's do maybe this something. But that's gonna look like a z, I think. Is it? Let's see. Okay. And then all we need to do is we need to develop, like this. We can't do this as we can't do it as like this because then it's gonna look like a zed. So we need to have the curve there. We need to have some sort of curve there. We're going to curve this over here. And we're going to curve this down here, which then gives us this kind of as well, because this is a time critical logistics company, we're essentially showcasing that that kind of dynamic. Oh, my God, that actually looks pretty good. Look at that. That actually looks like it looks fast, like it looks dynamic. Oh, my God. That's like super, super good. I love how this is looking at the moment. Look how great this looks. This actually looks very, very promising. Now, I'm not sure if I'm going to go for a more straight edge. Here. Or whether I'm going to go for the kind of the curved approach, or whether I'm going to go for kind of the more cutting edge approach. I'm not sure yet. I do not actually know, but what I do know is this is ready for the digital stage. Okay, so I'm actually really happy with how this centerfi logo is coming together. I love the fact that we've managed to use negative space. I think it's creative. I think it's unique and distinctive. I cannot wait for the next phase while we can start to digitize things and really make things super polished and then start adding color and typography and all that good stuff. And on that note, I will see you in the next phase of the course. 56. Negative Space Logo Development Perfecting Digitally: So we finally got the design for centify and we're ready to put it inside Illustrator to just make it look super clean and professional. And so with that said, let's dive an Illustrator. Okay, so we have our idea for the centifi logo. How do we digitize it? How do we start to make it look and feel nice, right? Now, this is actually a pretty simple icon to digitize, right? We've got the idea. We understand what we want to do. We're not sure if we want to cut it off here or if we want to actually add the full kind of S because we don't look like a Z. But let's start by literally just creating, I think, maybe just using a four box might actually be best. Let's see. Let's see what happens. Okay. So we've got the four box. And then actually, let's just get a full square just so we know it's perfect. Then let's just chop this down into three sections. By the way, I'm not the best on Illustrator from a shortcuts perspective. There's probably better people out there who do it far quicker, but you don't really need to have an incredible amount of shortcuts to make money as a brand designer. Trust me, I know from firsthand experience. So we've got this, then I'm just going to center everything so everything's good. There we go. Okay. So we have everything now pretty much what we did actually before I screwed everything up. So we've got everything now. We essentially have three boxes that are perfectly stacked on top of each other to ultimately help us to make this a little bit cleaner and a little bit more professional. So the first step is going to be to create the time in the middle, right? So let's just copy paste that. We've got this, which is good. Then we need to create these lines. Let's get this pen tool and let's just get the angle first of where we need to be. Then let's just see if we can put that. Can we put that literally like that? Corner to corner? Just copy and paste that. Yeah, we probably do that, right? At that? That makes a ton of sense. Okay. Let's do this. Let's pull this all the way over. Okay. So I'm just trying to make sense of things now. We're just literally trying to structure out everything so that we can then let me just see of this because this is going to probably need to be used again in future maybe. Let's put this down here. Okay. Then what we can do here is we can just take the divide tool and divide it, then we can start editing things and taking things away. I say, for example, we're going to be using the approach that I mentioned before, and we can use this. We can use that. We can take this away, we can take that away. That's already started to look pretty decent, right? Okay? And then we need to do this little curve section up here. So let's do this. Let's do this, and then let's For some reason it's hot letting me do that. That's probably because there's two sections, there we go. That's why. Okay, so we're going to take this away. Now it should let me do it, hopefully. Let me go. Okay, so we got that. I'm gonna get rid of that box behind. Well, there's plenty of boxes behind. See, I told you I wasn't the best on Illustrator. Okay. So there's going to be tons of boxes behind each of these boxes. So we just need to get rid of those just so it's nice and clean so we don't have to worry about it later. Okay? It seemed like that one was okay, actually. There we go. So we should be good at going now, to be honest. Perfect. And if there's anything else that comes up, we'll figure it out as we go along. Okay? Now, this one's going to be the same. There's probably going to be another little there we go. We found it, get rid of that. And that's why it wasn't letting us pull this in, okay? Now, let's do the magic and pull these inside. There we go. Okay, so that looks decent. Then basically we have another one here, I think, where we basically cut it here and here. So if we cut this here and here, maybe we shouldn't do that first. Maybe we should do that afterwards. Okay, I get. I got you. Let's do this to this again, just so we've got that angle and then let's get this here. And all I'm going to do is create this angle and put it here between these boxes. We've got that. We're putting it there. That's going to cut at the exact angle that I wanted at. I just replicate that and put it here. There we go. Now we've got it perfect. And all I need to cut is just this box here look. I need to cut this box with this. That's all I need to do. I want to take this. I want to ungroup everything so I can just cut in piece, divide. Life's good. So long. Okay. Now you can see here the proportions are way off. We'll figure that out afterwards. That's not a big deal. Okay. We've got this. There we go. That looks good. Perfect. Okay. Now we are talking. Now we're talking. So now we have this section. Which is a certain thickness, and this is a much higher thickness here. We can see here how the proportions here look good, but the proportions here and here need to be the same, how are we going to do that? Well, first, what I want to do is I want to save this because if I don't save it, I know for a fine fact, I'm going to regret it later. So I'm going to put this down here. Perfect. Now, this has a certain thickness. I'm going to solidify these and use this tool here to unite everything. Then I'm going to just get this to a point where I have the actual thickness here. Then I'm going to create. Again, I am not the best on Illustrator. But what I can do is I can take, take this and not do that. I can basically create a ruler to give me the perfect amount of height as those other lines as well. If you see here, There we go. So this is basically if I drop these down to this height, it basically means that everything's going to be the same size, which is exactly what we want. There we go. So this is just our little guide, okay? Now, how we can do this? We can use a divide tool if we want. There's plenty of ways that we can do it. We could do it manually if we really wanted to, which, you know, we can do it tons of different ways. But the reality is, it doesn't really matter that much. Because, you can pull this down like this, you would probably do all three, right? Together. And then you would pull this down. I mean, it's probably not gonna work, to be honest. Yeah. Actually, let's do it the other way. See? You know, I ain't perfect. I'm just trying to work straight about on a daily basis like anyone else. There we go. That's better. Right? There we go. So we've sorted that now. That's sorted. We'll do the same here. Okay. Let me go. Perfect. So now we're at a stage now where everything's in proportion. Everything looks good, okay? The next step is to add these curves and that should finish things off nicely. So we're going to add this. We're going to unite these together if we can. Okay, so for some reason, that's been a little bit of a pain. I think it's because there's the gap between these. That's why. Okay? So they're not actually united. That's why they are that's why it's been a little bit funny. Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay? So what I'm going to do, Okay. Is I'm going to add the curves here first because then it's going to show me how much I actually need to change. Okay. So I'm going to add them up to here because then the rest of the curves are going to come from here. That's basically where it's going to come from. It's going to come from these two being connected. These two here, it actually curves into that dip, which is going in there. Okay. So what's the easiest way to do that? You're asking me. Okay. Let's have a little look at this. On what the situation is. I think there's some sort of gap here. That's why I think. So once I've connected that together, then I might need to do a little bit of do a little bit of tender and care for this. Okay, oo. It's going to be that type of project. Got you. Got you, got you. Got you. Okay. We understand what we're doing now, so we don't actually need this anymore. I want to just put this to the side. What we want to do is we want to increase the height of this. So we've got a little bit more to play with. Then we can create a little bit more leverage. We want to get rid of this if we can. Then we're going to take this and we're going to potentially get rid of this as well because we don't actually need it. Does that change much or not? All right, but definitely changes that. Okay. Definitely changes that. There we go, so we are literally just tidying up these little corners just to make them super, super sharp. You can see here how even this one has these little tiny corners that just these little tiny imperfections. If you come out outside, you literally cannot even realize that they're there. But because of how Illustrator works and it isn't pixel based, it's shape based, you can't get away from it. So this section here is basically the difference between it being perfect and imperfect. Okay, there we go. So now it's perfect. Now it's perfect from a shape standpoint. There we go. Now it's perfect. I'm not sure if it'll allow us to there we go. Now it's allowed us to do it. There we go. Awesome. Now you can see how they need to be slightly different. There we go. So now what we need to do is just essentially get this. I mean, we could do the exact same thing on the other side, but it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. We can just literally take this exact same section, put it here. Make sure it's exactly on top. Yeah We can just take it off. There we go. Now we have this mark, which again, we have the arrows, we have the time in the center and we have the S and everything's there. If we did want to create it with the S like this. We can do that. We just need to drag this along a little bit. Not difficult. We could even drag it all the way to the edge if we wanted to. But I think we can all agree that this just looks 1 million times more dynamic and just better overall. Then all we would do is just basically tidy it up, decide how we want it to look, and then essentially add it to a wordmark, add it to mockups and showcase to the client, and then would be good to go. So yeah, I hope you enjoyed this lesson. I hope you took something away from it to enable you to use negative space in your own way when you're creating logos. But yeah, thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate it and I'll see you in the next lesson. See you. 57. The Basics of Design Fundamentals: Okay, so what are the fundamentals of brand design? Now, let's put this into a context that I think everyone can relate to. Imagine you're trying to cook a gourmet meal for someone super special that you really care about. But you don't know how to chop an onion properly or season properly. That's kind of what it's like when you're trying to design a logo, but you don't understand the core principles of design. You can still develop a logo, but for some reason, it just doesn't feel quite right. And by understanding the core principles of design and the fundamentals, you can create a foundation of understanding to help elevate your design work pretty much by double, simply by understanding these basic rules. These rules help you to create order. They help things to make sense from a design standpoint. They help to take something which looks confusing and make it super easy to understand. And that's ultimately what design is all about, especially with logo design, right? Less is more. And if we can do more with less, then that's when we get to pay the big bucks. Now, at the heart of design, we have a couple key lessons that we need to cover. Now, there are seven things we're going to go through within the fundamentals of logo design. And those seven things are balance, contrast, alignment, repetition, proximity, using textures and white space. Now, mastering these fundamentals is going to allow you to not just create better logos, but just be a better designer overall. You're also going to be able to spot when a client comes to you with a pre existing logo, which is, you know, not great. You're going to be able to spot why it doesn't look great, so that you can fix it and you can rebrand it in a way where it looks more aesthetically appealing to anybody that looks at it. Okay, so now you know the seven principles. Let's go through them in an organized manner so that you can understand each of them and take your design work to the next level. I'll see you in the next lesson. 58. Balance: Okay, so what is balance in design? Have you ever saw a design that just everything just feels right, but it also looks a little bit chaotic, right? Well, there is some form of balance in action with that design because balance brings kind of a stability but also a harmony, even in chaos. Like, if you have elements dotted all over like a poster, for example, you can bet your backside that each of those elements are related to each other to create some sort of balance or harmony within that design. If it's designed properly, think of balance a little bit like a seesaw, okay? If it's a little bit too to the left and too heavy, then you're going to end up kind of seeing it, and it just doesn't look too stable. It doesn't look trustworthy. It kind of feels a little bit off. Much like the Apple logo, for example, the reason that they took the bite out of the right hand side, and then the leaf is pointing to the right hand side is for that exact reason. The logo feels balanced even though it's missing a huge chunk out the right hand side, and that is how optically, we're looking at the apple. And even though mathematically, it's a little bit off balance, optically, you see it as being balanced because that leaf makes up for the bite on the right hand side. Balance is super helpful because it helps everything in your design to one just look better, but also to make sense to the person looking at it. There are a couple of types of balance to look out for. One is symmetrical balance. Now, symmetrical balance is usually used in kind of premium or luxury branding. It basically means that both sides are exactly the same, and it's perfectly balanced with symmetry. An example of symmetrical balance would be the target logo, for example. Now, asymmetrical balance is obviously very different. Asymmetrical balance is essentially looking at the Apple logo, for example, where both sides are not identical. But they are compensating for each other by using clever approaches to design, which, again, we can cover a little bit later on in the course with some of our examples. But this just gives you a little bit more of a distinctive and unique overall feel, and it also makes the actual icon feel a little bit more human. Now, another type of balance is something called radical balance, okay? This is where everything kind of radiates around a central point, okay? Now, with radical balance, there are a lot of different ways to use this. One of them is to simply make sure that each of the elements in the design, whatever you are designing, is focused around a certain point, but that they are all related to each other in some way, shape, or form. And there are different ways to actually achieve balance within a design. So the first is visual weight, and this simply means that all elements should be kind of related in regards to density, size, and color. The second is hierarchy. So that simply means that you kind of guide the user's eye using hierarchy within the design. And the third is spacing. So that simply means that you are spacing things consistently and in a way to guide the user's eye to make it easy for them to understand what they're actually looking at. Balance is literally found throughout every single element of design. So, for example, a magazine article 0R layout. You can see how balanced the layouts are and you can see how they make it easier to read and easier to kind of flow through the actual content. There is a structure and there's a balance and a harmony between the text that's actually on the page. And this can be found in logos, of course, as well, where all of the lines, for example, are the exact same thickness. Or, for example, if you have a wordmark and an icon and the icon and the wordmark balance each other out. If you have the icon, which is either too big or it is really thick and really solid and the wordmark is too thin, it's going to feel unbalanced, again, go back to the seesaw analogy. So in regards to balance, it's very much a case of kind of judging based on the eyeing, taking a step back and thinking, Okay, does this look balanced to me? And if it doesn't, ask yourself why. You know, is the wordmark maybe a little bit too thin? Do I need to thicken that a little bit? Or do I need to bring the thickness of the wordmark down and the thickness of the icon up to marry better together? Because they should share some sort of characteristics, so the thickness should be very similar. Balance is super important to getting your logo designs, but also just designs in general, looking and feeling great. So hopefully that all made sense, but let's move on to the next lesson so we can develop your foundations of brand design understanding further. I'll see you. 59. Contrast: Imagine for a second, trying to read yellow text on a white background. Contrast is one of the most easy to get wrong, but also one of the most important to get right elements and fundamentals of design. Now there are tons of different ways to create contrast, but one of the easiest and the most well known is color. If you've created something like a logo, for example, or written text or whatever, and then you put it in a context where it's hard to read or see, it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. So making sure that you have an element or text that has a good amount of contrast with the background make sure that the person who's looking at it can make sense of it and read it easily. This is especially important for website design, for example, because if you don't have enough contrast on certain pages, it could end up in some legal trouble. Now, another type of contrast is size contrast. So you can use this to create a hierarchy between the text that you are actually using within either designs or on a webpage, for example. By having zero contrast in regards to text, it's really hard to see where I should look first and where I should look second, and then third and fourth, et cetera, et cetera. But by adding a little bit of contrast in regards to size, you can tell which is the headline, which is the subheadline, and then which is the general content you should read third. Now, another way to contrast is by doing shape contrast. So, for example, imagine you are trying to communicate a message of standing out in the crowd, and you have a full pige of triangles and just one single circle in that sea of triangles. That is going to make you stand out, right? That is the contrast of shapes. And you can use that in many different ways to ultimately communicate a message or a story for the brands that you're working with. Now, another subtle way, but not a very well known way, often used is the contrast of texture. Now, we actually used the contrast of texture in a recent project, where I was looking to create a background for a presentation company called Lumen who we helped to name to basically give them a background which had two different dimensions. So I wanted to kind of make it a little bit more creative. So first and foremost, we had a gradient, which was the background. Then on top of that, we had kind of a texture which added a little bit of contrast in regards to the background and the frontal element. So, for example, the text or the logo, whatever. This helped the brand to just stand out. It just helped to create a little bit more intrigue and a little bit more interest in regards to the overall design, and this matters. So why does contrast actually matter anywhere? And why is it so important? Well, the most important is it increases readability and accessibility. Secondly, it can help to create a really strong visual hierarchy. And third, it can make designs extremely dynamic and visually appealing. And you can see contrast literally everywhere on the likes website design and in poster design, for example, but also in logo design. Because if you have contrasts, say, for example, in the mastercard logo, where you have the red and the orange of the logo, you have a visual contrast straight away with color. Therefore, you are then able to capture someone's eye and then ultimately do what you will with that attention. So that's pretty much everything for contrast at the moment. But I will see you in the next lesson where we will be talking about another fundamental of design. I'll see you. 60. Alignment: So how important is alignment when it comes to brand design? Well, have you ever saw a menu, for example, and it just looks super messy and kind of all over the place? Well, that is alignment. It is super, super important. In fact, there was even a big issue with a graphic designer many, many years ago, during a politics voting scandal or whatever in America, where essentially alignment ended up having the wrong person on the voting cards voted in as chosen president or politician or whatever. As you can tell, I'm not that interested in politics, so I don't know the full story, but you get the idea. Now, alignment helps to create order and clarity within a design, but there are different ways to align things, obviously. Now, most of the time, especially when it comes to text, you have left alignment, okay? Now, in the Western world and in most cultures, you read from left to right. So that's ultimately why left alignment is so popular. However, in some other cultures, you actually read from right to left. So that just depends on who your target audience is. If your target audience could potentially be from that side of the world or from that sort of culture, then you may have to think about the alignment in a slightly different way. However, for most cases, you are going to be left aligning. Now, you can also write a line to kind of give a slightly more modern and kind of quirky and contemporary feel. But again, you have to be careful with this because it can't come across as too cliche. Now, center alignment is also super, super important, and it's also very useful. But that is generally used best for things like logos, but also text, but not too much text. If it's too much text, it just looks a little bit bulky and it's hard to line everything up. If it's like a headline and then like three lines of text, center alignment can work. Now, if you do have those kind of jaggedy edges in regards to text, you can use just tofined alignment. And that simply means that the space between the letters is slightly adjusted so that you can ultimately have the lines at the edge of each side of text perfectly straight. Now, obviously there's a little bit of trade off there with kerning, which we'll come to a little bit later on, but, you know, you have to pick your poison. So how do you actually align effectively? First way is to use the grid system. A grid system helps to arrange some sort of form or structure so that you can ultimately make sure that your text and everything on the page has its place and it's structured in a nice, balanced way. Now, another way that you can make sure everything's aligned is by using consistent margins and padding. This is most predominantly so in website design. However, it is also relevant to logo design as well. For example, in these brand guidelines on this logo, you can see there's a certain amount of padding and margin on either side of the logo. This is to make sure that no elements can creep into that to make sure that the logo has enough space to breathe and look good. Now, in regards to alignment, there are tons of really great examples of alignment out there, but there are also some examples of bad alignment, too. So keep your eye out and make sure that when you see a bad version of alignment, try to figure out why is this so bad? Why does this look terrible, okay? Now, we'll dive into more examples a little bit later on, but I just want to give you a little kind of brief overview of what alignment is so that you can look out for it later on in the course. And I will see you in the next lesson. 61. Repetition: So what is repetition in brand design? And what does it even mean? Well, repetition in design is a little bit like that song that keeps playing on the radio. After a while you hear too many times and you just end up feeling very comfortable and you end up actually liking the song which you originally hated. Now, in design, repetition reinforces key visual elements to ultimately make your design predictable in a good way. And by using and repeating the same characteristics and the same DNA throughout your entire brand identity, you can help the overall brand look and feel so much better, so much more credible, and so much more trustworthy. So what different ways can we do that? Well, the first is consistent typography. By using the same fonts across all branding materials, you can make sure that your branding is always on point. Secondly, is color palette. If you use your colors in the same way across all assets, can also help your brand just seem more consistent across all touchpoints. This is why brand guidelines are super important, but we'll get to those a little bit later. Thirdly, logo placement. If you're using different logos at different sizes and different weights and different formations and structures, it's going to look messy, and people are not going to know what to expect, and they might not even recognize your brand from one touch point to another. And by the way, if for whatever reason, you don't understand what the word touchpoint means, it simply means way to engage with or connect with the brand. So, for example, one touchpoint could be customer service, another touchpoint could be the website, another touchpoint could be a social media platform. It doesn't really matter touch point it is or what environment it is, it just means as a customer, I am getting in touch with or engaging with the brand. It could even be holding the product in my hand, okay? That is another touchpoint. It's basically any experience that I have with the company and their products. Now, another approach to repetition, which no many people use is shape and pattern recognition. So, for example, if we have a particular style of illustration or pattern or kind of, you know, a shape that is used maybe in the background of a website, for example, just to make it look a little bit more three dimensional. This can all add up to using repetition to create a more familiar and trustworthy aura around the brand. So why does repetition even matter? Well, if we feel like a brand is more familiar, we're more likely to spend money with them. And also, we're more likely to trust them. So ultimately, repetition can help you to develop a stronger brand identity. It can help you to get more customers, and it can also make you look and feel far more established. Let's take McDonald's, for example, or Starbucks, whichever. If you go to any global chain like McDonald's or Starbucks, anywhere in the world, the branding is pretty much the same. The products that they sell may differ slightly. But the experience, the touch points, the uniforms, the logo, the colors, the furniture, it's all pretty much exactly the same. No matter where you go, that is branding, repetition and consistency to the highest level. So anyway, that covers repetition. In the next lesson, we're going to cover another fundamental brand design basic which you are going to need to really elevate your brand design skills. So I'll see you then. 62. Using texture: So using texture in design. So texture can be super useful when you're doing brand identity design. Or designing logos for that matter. It can be super useful to create special backgrounds which kind of give your brand in an extra dimension, and it can also add depth to your design. If you can learn how to use texture correctly and actually understand the benefits that it has, it can allow you to get levels above every other designer out there. So what are the different ways that you can use texture to really elevate your designs? Well, the first is tactile textures. This is typically found on things like business cards, leaflets, and packaging. Ultimately, anything that's printed, secondly, you have digital textures. And this could be something as simple as noise to adding greens, to adding gradient, for example, or some other kind of visual stimulus to simply make your design more visually appealing. And what using texture does when you think about it in regards to design, even from a digital aspect, is it adds an extra dimension to the experience of the customer. Even if you have a background with different layers and you maybe have a different effect over the top, a little bit like this one here, which I've put in 63. White space (Ma 間): What is white space, otherwise known as Ma in Japanese design? Well, Ma or white space is not just empty space. Well, it is, but it also isn't. It's purposeful empty space. For example, have you ever been to a luxury brands website or their store, and there's just an abundance of space, like, far more space than you need. That is Ma, okay? That is white space. That is white space from an experience standpoint, but also we can do it from a website based standpoint where the abundance of space and the lack of use of that space creates a more premium feel. It creates a more airy experience where everything that you need to be focusing on is there, and everything else is just blank, okay? And this is strategically used both on your retail standpoint and also from websites to, you know, brand presentations to the back of business cards, everything. Having white space gives your eyes room to breathe almost when you're looking at something. So making sure that you use white space efficiently and effectively is going to allow you to get much, much better design by literally just implementing this one single rule. However, there are different types of white space. So for example, we have micro white space. Micro white space is the tiny little space in between things like text, images, and other elements, say, for example, on a website. Now, the opposite of micro white space is macro white space. And macro white space is essentially what brings that simplicity to your design. It is the thing that is kind of abundant. There's so much of it because we can. That's literally it. So here's this kind of luxurious feel because it has said, Okay, we've got all this space, but we're just going to use this single thing, right? This is the difference between kind of budget brands and luxury brands. If you look at kind of the shelf of a luxury brand, you'll have a shelf which could hold like 30 handbags. But instead, you've only got five handbags spaced out super wide, that is the difference between high end and budget. And if you can do that, and if you can use that same kind of approach, both with your visual design as well as maybe a retail space, if you do end up designing one of those for a brand, I'm not sure. Every single time you use whitespace in this way, it can help to create a more airy, a more luxurious and better experience for the people who are engaging with the brand at that touchpoint. And let's not forget whitespace is also included in logo design as well. For example, negative space. Negative space is a form of white space, right? You are essentially carving out part of that logo to create an additional story as part of that design. Now, WhitSpace overall has tons of benefits. It can improve readability. It helps to position the brand in a far more luxurious light. It can also help to create kind of like a sense of simplicity and minimalism and also elegance in a way, but most importantly, it helps to set your attention where it needs to be. So you're not distracted with tons of stuff that's going on on maybe a webpage or in the store, for example, you can just focus on the thing that you should be focused on and everything else is just blank. Now, a really great website, which obviously uses WtSpace extremely well because they're pretty much great. Everything at this point is Apple, right? If you look at their website, it looks airy. Even though they have tons of information, it still looks nice to look at, right? We are enjoying the experience of scrolling down their webpages and ultimately having kind of a premium experience just from the fact that they information in such a digestible format. Now, if you don't want to have a plain white background, and you just think it's a little bit boring, one thing that I use on my website is I use a background which is white, but it has little circles kind of coming up as part of the actual background. So it doesn't look as plain and simple, but it's a nice simple way to create a little bit of intrigue and a little bit of sort of a second dimension without trying too hard and still keeping that white space. So you kind of get the best of both worlds. But anyway, I hope you found some value from this particular lesson, and I look forward to seeing you in the next one. I'll see you soon. 64. Basics of colour theory: Color theory is essentially how colors work together and how they work from a design standpoint. And this can help you as a brand designer to create brands that can evoke emotion and tell a story and communicate a really important and subconscious message within the customer. So any brand designer who's good at what they do understands how to use color in the best way possible, or the given situation that it's being used within. So let's start off in this lesson by talking about the colors that are out there and how they kind of all work together. So first, obviously, we have primary colors. This includes red, blue, and yellow. And these three colors cannot be made by any other colors out there when mixed together. Now, primary colors can help to evoke a certain emotion. For example, if you use primary colors in Ma grass to branding, it can help the branding come across as a little bit more childish than if you used other colors which are mixed together. A little bit more sophisticated. Now, after primary colors, you have secondary colors. This C includes green, orange, and purple. And secondary colors are essentially created by mixing two primary colors together. For example, green is made by mixing blue and yellow. Orange is made by mixing red and yellow and purple is made by mixing blue and red. And after secondary colors, we have tertiary colors. So tertiary colors are created when you mix a primary color with a secondary color. This gives us different variations of each of the colors so we can create more hues and ultimately have more options to choose from when we're creating our branding. Next, we have complimentary colors. Now, complementary colors are on the opposite end color wheel. And ultimately, they are chosen to create the maximum amount of contrast whilst also complementing each other really well. For example, if we look at the color wheel, red and green and then blue and orange, complement each other really well because they're on opposite ends of the color wheel. And after complimentary colors, we have analogous colors. Analogous colors are next to each other on the color wheel. Now, analogous colors are usually used to create some sort of harmony with color. So, for example, on the color wheel, you could have a blue, kind of a green blue, and then a green, which all work really well together. Now, I know that there are more formations of color that you can use from the color wheel but the reality is that it is very unlikely that knowing those additional formations is going to help you to create better branding. I have a strong passion and feeling that if you overcomplicate things, you never actually make any progress. So I would rather you have a full understanding of the key fundamentals, so we can focus on those. Instead of overcomplicating things and looking at 20 different formations which, in all reality, the other 16 are not going to take you anywhere near as far as the first four. And I've just realized that I actually taught you five things in this lesson, anyway, private colors don't count, okay? Let's just put it that way. Anyway, on that note, I will see you in the next lesson. I'll see you. 65. Understanding the colour wheel: So the color wheel is a visual representation of all the colors out there that you can choose from. And there are so many options. Now, in the previous lesson, we covered the different types of colors and also the different ways that you can kind of use colors together. But there was one that I left out on purpose because I wanted to cover it in this lesson so we can talk about why certain approaches to using color are used in particular circumstances. So if you remember from the previous lesson, we have complimentary colors, analogous colors, and there's one more called triadic. Now, triadic suggests triangle, which is basically three colors that are equally spaced out on the color wheel. So when and why should each of those approaches be used? Well, for me, personally, complementary colors are often used when you want to create some sort of direction. For example, if I have a blue website and I need to color a button, which I want the user to press, I will color it orange because it's going to stand out. It's going to give a lot of contrast between the blue background and the button and the user's eyes. Now, on the other end of the spectrum, if I want to create a poster or maybe a graphic that has a real harmony about it. So all of the colors work together really well. Then in that circumstance, I would choose an analogous approach. And then, lastly, on the other end of the spectrum, if I want to create a lot of visual impact and I want to create a lot of intrigue and kind of have it almost jarring with contrast, then the trilic approach might be best. And the reason the trilic approach might be best is because you've got three colors working together that are all completely different. They're on completely different ends of the spectrum in regards to the color wheel. However, because they have a formation and they have structure, they can work together. So that's the whole secret. You need to make sure that you approach the color selection with one of these three approaches in mind, however, you also need to approach in a way of, okay, what are these colors actually being used for? Are they being used to create direction? Are they being used to create harmony or are they being used to create impact? Those are the three questions that I ask myself. And although it's not the Bible of how to select colors, because obviously, it's an extremely complicated process. If you go into any decision making process when choosing color for a branding project, and you go through those three and ask those questions of why am I actually using these colors and what is the situation in play? You can't really go far wrong. Now, once you actually select the colors, you understand your approach, the next step is to understand, Okay, do I want to go with more warm tones or do I want to go with slightly cooler tones? And that's a topic for a whole other lesson. That's because tones like red and orange, for example, can create a nice warm tone that can feel really comforting, whereas when you go for more bluey tones, which are kind of a little bit cooler, you often give an feeling of being very cool and very calming, which both can work, but it just depends again on the situation. So you need to take time to really take a step back and think, Okay, what kind of perception is this brand trying to create? Think about that. If they're trying to be nice and calming and really cool, like, for example, law firm or a funeral director, for example, without being too negative, you're probably not going to be doing nice, happy warm tones because you need to be taken seriously and you need to be professional. You want to opt for more cool tones because it puts the person at ease and it makes them feel calm around you and your branding. These are tiny little decisions which we don't think about, and if we do think about them, it starts to elevate our brand design work beyond what we could imagine. So it's just these small little decisions, anyway. I'll see you in the next lesson. 66. Understanding the science of choosing colour: Why does color even matter in design? Well, colors are pretty important because they can create emotion, and if you can create emotion, then you can tell a story. If you can tell a story, then you can sell a product. And if you can sell a product, then people are going to hire you. Okay? And that's what it comes down to. As a brand designer, can you sell a client's product? Can you help them sell their services? Can you help to position them in the right way? And Color is one of those things where if you can use it really well, it can be a super great strength, but also if you don't know how to use it well, it can be your worst enemy. Now, one thing that a lot of people understand about color is color is extremely subjective. So if you go to China, obviously, red is associated very heavily with Chinese New Year, which is celebration, which is family with this happiness. But if you go to Western World, red can symbolize things like danger and stop and murder. But it can also symbolize love as well. So there are two things in play. There is the geographical location and the culture which the color has been used within, and there's also the context in which the color is being used. For example, if I put a red overlay over an image of someone who is being stabbed or with a knife beside them and they're lying on the floor with blood all over them, that red is going to be perceived in a slightly different way to another image where two people are kissing, right? So you've got the same color being perceived completely differently due to the context than it is being used within. And understanding those two little things can really help you to have more educated and effective communication with your client. So, for example, if a client comes up to you and says, I want my logo to be blue because it invokes trust, you can say, mm, okay, 100%, you are right. Blue has been found through studies and through research to evoke a sense of trust. What we need to do, though, is to make sure that we choose the right kind of blue. And at this point, the client's like, What? Right kind of blue, but there's only one blue. You get the idea. A client thinks that they understand the entirety of color theory from just reading one single article which said, blue equals trust, and it's just not the case. It depends on context. It depends on where the colors being used. It depends on the tone of blue that's being used. If it's a really light, you know, super intense, saturated light blue like a turquoise, is that going to still evoke trust? It's still blue. If the blue has zero contrast when it goes on top of a white background, does it still evoke trust? No, it doesn't. So when we are talking about color, when we're thinking about color, we need to make sure that when we're discussing it with a client that we actually communicate with them, that choosing the color of blue or red or whatever, that's just one tiny little part of the decision. After that, there's going to be others. Do we want warmer or cooler tones? What type of perception do we want to create within the customer? Where is the customer? Western world, Eastern world? What context is this actual color going to be used within? And we don't need to ask them that. We need to understand the business enough to be able to answer those questions ourselves. Now, another thing just to mention on the subject before we move on to the next lesson, and it kind of leans into client management a little bit is when a client comes to you and says, I really want my brand to be purple, for example. Do you tell them no, the color purple is terrible. I was going to say another word there, but I didn't want to swear. We should use blue. We should use something else. We should explore other options. Now, there's the right way to do this and the wrong way to do this. And the approach that I've used for a decade now is perfect. Let's explore that. By the way, and tell me if you don't want me to do this, but I just want to make sure we get the best result for your business, right? I think there might be other colors out there, potentially, I'm not sure, but there might be other colors out there that might serve you better and your brand better. If you don't mind, can I explore them as, like, an additional effort, like, just to compare with the purple that you're wanting to use? Is that okay? Only an absolute idiot is going to say no. And what that does is it does two things. That's one. Two things. One, it actually puts you in the good grace of the climb because the client's like, Wow. You didn't just give me what I wanted. You give me what I needed. And two, it helps you to actually get a better result for the client for your portfolio, because the last thing you want is a client to dictate the process and tell you exactly what they want. And Dora's like, mm, okay, I just want to try and make the client happy. To make a client happy, you need to give the client what they need, not just what they want, okay? Trust me, it takes a little bit of gravery to kind of go against the client's initial wishes, but trust me, they will respect you more for it, and you will get a better result for them. And that is why we do what we do, okay? Let's go on to the next lesson, and I cannot wait to see there. See you soon. 67. What is colour psychology and does it matter: Now, color properties are super simple, and then we need to learn how to use them. So we have hue, value, and saturation, and understanding these three properties and how to kind of adjust them and refine them as you go is going to help you elevate your brand desig work beyond belief. So first, let's understand what each of them are, and then also how we can use them to impact our brand design work and the perception that our customers have when they are seeing the brands that we create. So first and foremost, let's shake out Hue. Huh is hue. Now question you may be asking is hell is hue? Well, hue is the actual color itself. So pretty much the easiest one to understand, okay? So it's either red, it's blue, it's green, it's yellow, it's purple. It's the color. The color itself. Okay? So super simple to understand, let's move on. Now the second property is value. So what is value? Value is how light or dark the color is. If the color is light, then it's called a tint. And if it's darker, it's called a shade. So remember, light for tint and dark for shade. Now, value is important because the value can dictate how much contrast and how much impact each of the colors have that we are playing around with. So by understanding value, you can really add depth to your brand design, which is obviously super important. The third property is saturation. And saturation, I'm sure you already know, is how bright and vibrant or dull and kind of subdued the color is. Now, how do you actually use these three different properties, and how do you kind of balance everything together? Well, let's keep things simple because I love simple. Hue is the colors, okay? So we've already covered that in the previous lesson by understanding the different formations and why you would choose one over the other, okay? Next, we have the value, okay? So how light or dark do we want things? Again, take a step back and think about the perception that you're trying to create with the brand. For example, do you want to be seen as super bright and colorful and vibrant, like the red and yellow in the McDonald's logo, or do you want to be seen as more balanced and harmonious and chilled and professional, like, you know, a law firm or I don't know, Berkshire Hathaway, for example, which also kind of leads us on to saturation, as well, right? So again, all of these three properties are all kind of working together in their own way. To create that perception. So if you have the colors wrong in the beginning, the other two properties is not going to really help you. Everything needs to be done right. And that's why it's so important to take a step back and think, Okay, is it going to make sense if I want the logo to be super playful and, you know, fun to have a really brightly saturated color palette, but then have it super dark. It wouldn't make any sense, right? On the other hand, would it make sense for me to have a really serious law firm or consultancy company and have that as being, you know, super dark with low saturation, where it just looks like super boring and also extremely gloomy? Not really, right? And you only kind of get this experience from, in my experience, looking at other people's work and how they kind of approach things, but also looking at how customers react to certain brands. So, for example, if you look into the technology industry and you see the amount of blue that's being used, that perception and that idea of blue being used in technology and that being connected to technology can't really be ignored because people have that perception built in through just seeing all these different technology companies. Does this mean we have to choose the exact same blue? No. But we can take that and then use it to our advantage by using something which has kind of a cooler tone or a tint of blue to help us to create that perception kind of indirectly. So I guess the key takeaway is to take hue, value and saturation and refine it slightly until we get to a point where we're happy with it, that we are happy with the perception that it's going to create or at least the perceived perception that it's going to create. And by doing that, we're going to be able to make far better decisions instead of just kind of marching forward and hoping for the best, taking a step back and actually just looking at what else has happened in the market and then looking at the colors that we've chosen and think Okay, maybe this might work a little bit better. I just tweaking it, tweaking, tweaking, tweaking it. By understanding how to refine it and those three properties and understanding what you're changing and why, that is going to help you to get your work to a much higher level. And then we get to a completely separate conversation, which is going to be, hm, okay. When you get to design the website for a client potentially or a business card or something else, and you've already explored a color palette before. But then when you get to actually applying the color palette, you maybe want to change something or tweak something. Don't be scared to do that. You are, as your job, able to guide the client in the best way possible. So for example, if you have a color palette which they're happy with, and then just by adding an additional color or additional shade of blue, for example, is going to help to create more depth. It's going to help to create a better design. You can add that later and then just tell the client, by the way, when I was designing your website or creating this brochure, blah h, blah, I added a few more colors to the color palette that should be used in this particular way. I just thought it would help the results. Obviously, if you want to change it, that's absolutely fine, but I just wanted to make sure it looked the best it possibly could be. Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed this lesson, and I will see you in the next one. 68. Designing for different media (RGB vs: What is RGB and CMYK? Well, they are essentially color models that can help you to create much better brand assets because they have a distinctive and direct output, which is ultimately RGB is supposed to be for digital output, and CMYK is specific for printed elements. So what is the RGB color model? Well, RGB really simply stands for red, green, and blue. And this color model is perfect for things like websites, social media platforms, digital presentations, and anything that you're going to see on a screen. And the way that this works is if you zoom in really close on any screen that you're looking at, then you will see tiny little red, green, and blue pixels that work together purposefully to create different colors on your screen. And if you take all of those colors and you max them up to the very highest setting, then you're ultimately going to get white. Vice versa, if you get them down to their dullest, you're going to get black. Now RGB colors are super bright and vibrant because they are built for the digital experience as they ultimately use light emission to render the color vividly. Now CMYK on the other hand, works a little bit differently because CMYK stands for Ken, magenta, yellow, and K, which basically means black. By using the CMYK model, we can make any color on the color wheel by using a little approach called subtractive mixing, which basically uses ink and pigments to subtract and add different colors at different levels to create a new color. Now with CMYK, the inks are layered on the paper. And with subtractive mixing, the more colors you add, the darker the color becomes. Ultimately, the more colors that you add together, the closer it's going to get to black. And obviously, the CMYK model is used for things like brochures, business cards, or anything else that you're going to print with a printer. Obviously, making sure that your Illustrator file is set to one of these two models is going to be super important depending on the type of work that you're doing within that particular file. So it will actually be really useful to separate your digital and printed elements within your Adobe Illustrator files to make sure that you don't have any crossover and you can keep things super organized. Anyway, on that note, I will see you in the next lesson. See you soon. 69. Creating amazing brand colour palettes : Okay, so how do you actually create a memorable and functional color palette for a brand? Well, it all starts with actually understanding the brand's personality and the perception that you want to create within the mind of the customer. And the first step of doing that is doing a little bit of research. This includes looking at the market. It includes talking to the founder of the company. Even if it's a bigger company, talking to employees within the company, to understand what really makes that business special and what makes it tick? What is the DNA of that business? Because you can understand who the business is from a mission standpoint, from a vision standpoint, from a personality standpoint, you can then create a color palette which can symbolize and ultimately reflect those values and the truth behind that particular company. For example, you're working with a company that sees itself as being quite luxurious and high end or are you working with a company that's a little bit more playful and almost humorous in a way, because this type of thing matters, because if it's a more luxurious kind of company which is looking to have more prestige and, you know, come across as more high end, then you're going to be using more subtle muda tones. Whereas if you have a brand which is super playful and fun, then it's going to be a little bit more bright and lively. So that's the first step, actually understanding what you're trying to communicate first before you even start looking at what colors to choose from. Now, once you understand the message that you want to communicate with the palette, the next step is to actually begin crafting the palette itself. Now, understanding the formation of a color palette is actually really simple. And what I like to use is the 603010 rule. So your 60 set is ultimately usually a more natural base color, mostly white or kind of a really light light gray. Or if you're a little bit of a gloomy character, it's usually something that's a little bit darker, like a black or a charcoal, ultimately. Now, this is the color that's going to be used for 60% of your branding. So think of a website, for example, that you go to and most of it's white, okay? That would be white as the 60% color. Now, next is a 30%, which is ultimately your main color. Now, your main color is ultimately the main color behind your brand, if you didn't assume that already. For example, think of Tiffany and Co and Coca Cola. With Tiffany and Co, you have that nice rich duck egg blue, and with Coca Cola, you have that red. This is the main color for the brand, and it should be used 30% of the time when you're actually designing things for the company. Now, the last 10% is your accent color. So these colors are used to ultimately direct to influence the person who's actually looking at the asset that you're creating. For example, if you're designing a website, for example, you are going to have a homepage with a little button, which is ultimately where you want to take the user, and that accent color should be used there because it's actually going to guide the person's eye to that particular element so you can get them to do what you want them to do. Now, what color should you actually use? Well, we've already covered that in the previous lessons. The thing about color theory, creating color palettes and using color within branding is it isn't just as simple as saying, this, this, this, this and that. We need to understand how each of the fundamentals are playing together to ultimately help us to create and make more educated decisions. So when we're looking to create that kind of three to five color color palette, we don't want to make things overcomplicated, and we want to always refer back to the research of us actually looking into the company, what's this company about and what's the perception that we want to create within the customer. And then ultimately it all comes down to harmony. So by using the different approaches that we covered previously in this particular phase, you remember that there are complimentary colors, analogous colors and tri coolors that we can use to ultimately create harmony between each of the colors that are used in our color palette. Ultimately, from a branding perspective, we need to be able to tell a story with the color palette that we're using. And if we can do that, then it can allow us to create much better brand identities. It can help us to tell much better stories, and also it can help us to get paid a lot more because we know what we're talking about. And we can have more educated and detailed discussions with the client that we're anyway, on that note, we're learning so much. I will see you in the next lesson. 70. Colour gradients & effects: Using gradients with your colors can really help you bring the colors that you use within a brand identity to life. Now, you can also use things like textures. So in this lesson, we're going to explore a couple of different ways that textures and gradients can be used in brand identities to really bring the design to life. Now, one of the things that's really important when you are using gradients and kind of textures and other fun patterns with your brand identity design is that it needs to be done with purpose. You can't just do it sparingly. You can't just do it too much. If you do it too much, it loses its novelty. And the design language for that particular brand becomes a little bit confusing, okay? If you are going to be using a gradient for a brand, you need to use it in a certain way. You need to use it consistently throughout every asset for that brand needs to have the gradient applied in a particular way so that it's distinctive, but it's also coherent. Now, gradients come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, right? And when you are using a gradient, if you don't know what a gradient is, a gradient is essentially how one color kind of slowly fades into another. You need to make sure that the two colors that you're using to make the gradient are able to be used as a gradient. So, for example, if you use two colors that just aren't meant to merge together, you're going to have an issue. And the reason you're going to have an issue is because in the center, it's going to feel a little bit muddy, okay? It's going to feel dirty. It's not going to be a clean transition. And that's why when we're choosing colors to use within a gradient or create an ingredient, we should use the analogous approach because that's going to ultimately allow you to get colors that can harmonize well together. Now, when should you use gradients? Well, there are a couple of different times when a gradient fits the brand design approach. So you should use it potentially when you are trying to communicate something like I don't know, transformation, innovation, something where something is changing or there is some sort of process that needs to happen for the brand. This is the perfect opportunity to use ingredient because the gradient and the colors that you're choosing are not just there to be there just for the sake of it. They're there with purpose. They are there to actually tell the story of the brand. You can also use it for, say, for example, a gradient of blues to create something that is more calming and more, you know, kind of relaxing. All of this works. All I'm saying is when you're actually using gradient, make sure that you create the gradient in a way where you are actually adding value to the story of the brand, and you're not just doing it just for the sake of Okay, I'm just going to do a gradient because whatever, that's just what I'm going to do. Do it with purpose so that when you're speaking to the client, you can say, Okay, I trust these colors, and I form them in this way to tell the story of the brand. Now, limit the amount of colors that you are choosing when you're creating a gradient. I would limit it to maybe four at maximum, but I would honestly keep it to around two, maybe three at a push, but two is a nice number to keep too, because it's going to keep it simple, and it's also going to make sure that it can be applied pretty much anywhere. And remember, obviously, warmer tones are going to evoke, you know, different emotions to cooler tones, as we discussed before earlier on in the course. So make sure that you keep that in mind as you're selecting the tones to use within your gradient. And you can test it and try and kind of marry cooler tones with warmer tones, but just keep in mind that certain tones are supposed to work well with others. Look on website site Pinterest and Google, obviously, and be hands and dribble to get examples of gradients just to get a kind of a taste and a feel of what colors work well together, and then you can take inspiration from those to create your own. And lastly, make sure that when you're creating a gradient, you explore adding some sort of texture to the gradient to make it pop just a little bit more. I'll have lessons in the course to show you how to do that and use gradients in a more actionable way. But until then, I will see you in the next lesson. See that. 71. Establishing brand colour guidelines: Okay, so how do you actually create brand dyed lines for the color patter that you create? Well, this is an example of a color patet that I created for a brand. And in the previous lesson, if you can remember when I was talking about gradients and obviously using patterns, this is a real prime example of a brand that I created called lumen. Where basically the brand is all about creating presentations to help the client's ideas shine, okay? So you come to them with an idea, and D Lumen will help to create a presentation to sell it to investors and to communicate to your workforce, okay? Now, this particular brand wanted the colors to communicate something about bringing the idea to life. So I got a blue and green using the analogous approach that I showed you before. And I created a color palette where the lightest green was shining down and creating this kind of this sort of harboring with the green at the bottom, but then the top kind of looks like a sky, so it kind of looks like the sun. It kind of looks like the idea is actually being brought to life. It's putting light on the idea, okay, which is ultimately where the name lumen came from. So this is what I mean about everything kind of sinking in together. And just to keep things super simple, this is the color palette. Super simple. Doesn't have to be super complicated. You can make it look all fancy and, you know, and crazy, but just keep it simple because you have to remember you can make the most complicated color palette in the world, but if the client can't use it, then it's useless, right? So keep that in mind. Now, another thing to keep in mind is that when you're creating a color palette with your client, you need to make sure that you show them how to use it, but you don't have to, you know, design their entire website and show them how to do that. You can just do something a little bit like this. So, for example, here, I have the 603010 rule, okay, which I mentioned a little bit earlier on. Now, the 60% is the color white, okay? This is what is going to be, you know, on the background of the website. It's going to be ultimately what is going to be on the front of the business card on the marketing materials, all that sort of stuff. So that's the background, okay? Now, this here is their main color gradient. Okay? Usually, it would just be one color. But for the particular circumstance of this brand, it's all three as one, if that makes sense. So the gradient counts as one, okay? Now, the 10% is the activation color, okay? So say, for example, if this was on a website, this would be the color of all the buttons. Okay, to showcase that is where to click. Okay? This is why you need to go. And if you remember, when I was talking about how to select colors and the different approaches, analogous colors are these ones here. So this is the analogous approach where these three colors complement each other. But then you have these colors that are the exact opposite of this color. Okay? So if you look at the color wheel, you'll see that orange or kind of yellowish colors like this, kind of dark gold, you know, whatever you want to call it. This is opposite blue and green on the color wheel. Right? So these complement each other but in kind of a more harmonious way. This complements these colors, and these complement this color because they are different, so different in there contrast, okay? So that's something that you really need to keep in mind. Now, the next slide, which I'll show, so this is just to give the hex codes, okay? The next is just shades and tints, okay? So, for example, if you're using these colors, if you needed something a little bit darker or a little bit lighter, you can just use these, okay? And then the next is just how these colors should be used, which combinations. Okay? So for example, we have this color, this color, this color, which can be used for things like icons and other things. We have the actual gradient, which can be used with the orange and the white, which is typically going to be how it's most commonly going to be used. And then we also have just the gradient with the white. So it doesn't have to be super complicated, okay? You can keep things super simple like this, and this is part of a brand guidelines template, which is actually on the Brand Designer Pro community. You can download it for free, and you can literally do exactly the same as what is here, okay for your clients from right now. Okay? I hope you enjoyed this lesson. I know it was a quick one, but I will see you in the next one. See you there. Bye bye. 72. Analysing brand colour usage examples (case studies): Okay, so in this lesson, I want to talk about some brands and how they use color, brands that you know of and you've seen 1 million times before, so you can understand not just what colors they're using, but how they're using them and in what proportions, okay? So the first brand we're gonna look at is Coca Cola. Then we'll look at Starbucks, and then we'll look at Apple. Okay? Because Apple's a little bit more complicated. Now, with Coca Cola, really simple, right? Their main color is, you guessed it, red, okay? As you can see here, as we go through their brand book, you can see this text. We're going to get on a typography a little bit later on in the course. But this font is Coca Cola's font, okay? It isn't the logo font, but it's the font which is a little bit more readable, which is used for actual content and text. Now, you can see here that they're very consistent with using this red, okay? It's used here as the main color, and then it's used here as kind of like a highlight, but it's still the same red. It's still the same color scheme. These are exactly the same color palette. They're just swapped, okay? It's just a inverted version. Here is basically the exact same red just with black. Okay? So we've got so far, black, red, and this kind of silvery white, okay? Now, as we move on, we start to see that Coca cola starts to include other colors to the palette. Okay? So they can do this for a number of different reasons. The first reason is because they've been around for so long, okay? They've been around for nearly 100 years, right? Maybe even longer. Now, as we move through the brand book, we're going to see other examples of this red used, but also, as you can see here, other alternatives that are complimentary to the red, which can also communicate what is inside the can. Okay? So for example, Lime, okay? You guessed it. They're using the color green, okay? Lemon. What a surprise. Yellow, Vanilla, you know, kind of, I mean, I know vanilla isn't this color, but it's kind of a more complimentary and nice aesthetic color to pair with the concept of vanilla, okay? So at the very center of everything that Coca cola does, red is always at the center, red and white, keeping things super simple. And this is pretty much the most famous company in the entire world, right? They keep things simple. And the reason they keep it simple is because it helps them to be recognized very, very easily. Now obviously, it takes time for companies to build that sort of brand equity in the mind of a customer, but you get the idea, right? There's no need to be fancy with all this stuff. Like, look at this, you know, like you would never see that in Coca Cola's branding or advertising. You see here, we've got the 60% up here. Then we've got white and black, and then we've got some other colors as well, like, for example, the diet coke color and then the diet coke caffe color. So the colors are being used to communicate the actual product portfolio of the brand, okay? You've got other ones here, the greens, all these colors again, they're using color to segment the portfolio and to communicate what's actually in the product, okay? So lemon, orange, cinnamon, ginger lime. This is a bit of a weird one, to be honest, but blueberry, twisted mango. All of those make sense from here, flavor standpoint, so the color is reflecting that. It's communicating that. Let's one to Starbucks. Now, Starbucks, again, uses one color very, very well. Starbucks green, okay? It's one of the most iconic greens in the entire world, especially in branding. Now, they have another green, which is kind of an accent green and then a house green. So they're using the analogous approach to create this palette of greens where they can create different levels of depth, okay? So this is obviously a far darker shade of this green. This one's a little bit lighter, so this is a little bit more of a tint, and then this is a significant tint, so it's an extremely light version of this particular green. So all of these are basically centered around this exact same green, but they are essentially harmonized because they are from the exact same center point, okay? Now, then they've got other colors. So this is one of the most successful companies and brands in the entire planet, and they literally have this green with three other colors which are essentially the same green. They're just a little bit darker, a little bit lighter, and very much lighter. And then they have black, white, and like a neutral tone. These are essentially the exact same. This is just like an off white. It's not complicated, okay? Keep it simple. Keep it simple. Consistency and simplicity is the key. And then look, you can see here that they're using different colors and, you know, much like what Coca Cola did, where they are saying, Okay, in the summer, we're going to use these types of colors. With nitro, we're going to use these types of color. So again, here you can see that they're using a gradient to again, communicate the nitro effect of the actual product. So again, it's got purpose, fall. So again, they're using, like, you know, browns and nice mustard colors and autumn colors. Spring, they're going to be a lot brighter summer fall. So they're segmenting everything out, and they're communicating both the actual season and also the product with the nitro aspect. But this should give you a little bit of an idea of how brands keep things simple, but also take what they are doing and expand it in a way which has purpose. Okay, so in regards to simplicity, we've had Starbucks and Coca Cola, but now there's Apple. So how many colors does Apple use in their branding? Well, pretty much just two, right? Black and white and maybe some grays, right? But they keep things super simple. You can see here, black and white. It's kind of like an off white for the background, black and white, black and white, black and white, black and white. But then they have photography that kind of brings it to life a little bit. You can see throughout the entirety of the website, they let the actual products shine by keeping their color palette super simple, right? They don't need to be super elaborate with their color palette. They keep things really simplistic. There's no other colors around here, apart from, you know, these here, which is essentially a pattern. They keep their palette really simple, I think, so that they can do really little fun things like this to celebrate Valentine's Day, for example. It lets their actual expression shine instead of say, for example, if their main color was, I don't know. Red, for example, have this red, which would then mostly clash with all of this stuff here, which is just, you know, obviously, you know, purple and orange and, you know, greens and oranges and stuff. If you had, like, a big bright red banner here, it would just look so weird. It would just look so off. You can't really do that. It's not in the best interest of the customer and it's not in the best interest from a design standpoint. So they keep it very simple and neutral to allow them to get the message across and also be expressive with their banners, with their other assets to make sure that the product shines. Like say, for example, packaging, the Apple packaging, okay? Look at the eye watch packaging. It's just a white box with the watch. That's it. As simple as that. It doesn't need to be super creative or super, you know, clever. Keep it simple. Keep it super simple. You can see that every single product that they use, there we go. Again, the product is shining. The product is at the forefront of everything. Everything else white, gray, black, done. Finished, right? And they do the simple things really well, like, for example, typography, which we'll be coming to a little bit later and logo design, obviously, which we'll be covering. These are the types of things, and this is the confidence that you need in regards to your application of color. You don't need to always be super creative and out there. If it meets the brief and it communicates what you wanted to communicate, you don't need to go creative with it. Okay? So these were three examples of different brands and how they use color in different ways. So I hope that was helpful. But anyway, I will see you in the next lesson. See you there. 73. Using Adobe Colour Palette: Making a color palette in color.adobe.com, okay? This tool is super useful, and there's a couple of reasons that I like using it. It is very efficient at creating color palettes, right? Now, you don't have to use the exact tones, but it can definitely help to again just explore the analogous option, the tryout option, and also the complementary option. Now, there are tons of other different types of options as well, as you can see here. But those are the main three that I would use just to keep things simple because to be honest with you, your client doesn't really need anything that is going to be super complicated. They may think they need 20 colors for their palette, but they don't we've just explored in the previous example where Coca cola, Apple, and Starbucks literally had one or two colors as their main colors, and then everything else was just extra, okay? So how do we find those main colors? Let's say, for example, we are going to be branding a technology company, okay? Let's use blue, alright? Now, the first color that we're gonna be looking for is that blue, okay? So let's say, for example, okay, let's. Actually, let's do, like, a bluey purple. That'll be cool. Let's do a gradient. Okay, let's do a gradient. Okay. So we've got the analogous approach. And as we go through it, we can see these colors come to life. So you can see here, we've got this one here, which is kind of like the main color. Then we've got this, and then we've got this. So these three together kind of work quite well. We could even do four potentially. We'd even do four. Look at this. So say, for example, if we had this here and we did something a little bit like I've lost that now, but never mind. It's okay. We do something like this. Let's see this. Let's see if we took this and just screenshot it and then just took the gradient here and put it in here. We can literally get the gradient done for us here, really, really easily, okay? This is, you can even do four, do it up to four, really easily. Then you ultimately have a nice gradient which you can use. And you can obviously switch those out if you really want to just to make things even easier. But then you go. You can literally make a gradient as your main color palette or you can use these colors differently or separately, whatever it doesn't really matter. This is how great this tool is. You can make gradient super easily. You can make color palette super easily. And then ultimately, all you would do is you would just have a white or you would just create, you know, a main color and then obviously your activation color. Let's find the activation color now. We go to complimentary, okay? And we get the same blue or roughly the same blue, give or take. So, for example, this one here, okay? Perfect. So we have this here, which is going to serve us really well. This yellow is going to work really well. But then if we wanted to, we could do this. So copy this, go back to So, again, we're using this blue here, this bluey purple with the gradient that we've created before this one here. So if we go back to this option, we can actually find some alternatives for that yellow, which we talked about before. If we go back and we get the actual yellow. So say, for example, if we want to do this one, then we can go to Analogous and we can pop this in here. So we have the yellow now here. And that's going to give us other options for the yellow. So we've literally just created a color palette in what, 2 minutes. While we looked at the blue, we got variations of the blue. Then we got a gradient for the blue in literally about 30 seconds flat really easily with a nice purple, so that worked really well. And then we found a complimentary color which allowed us to ultimately, you know, get an incredible array of colors. So our main colors or gradients, and then a complimentary color and then obviously put it with white or something like light gray, for example. A color gradient using color.ondobe.com in literally about what, three or 4 minutes, ultimately, all together. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this lesson, and I will see you in the next one. See you. 74. How typography & fonts can shape the perception of a brand: Power of typography in branding. Now, we all know what typography is, but do we know how to use it properly to create an emotional response, whether it be the elegance of a seraphont or the modern simplicity of a San serapont or the boldness of a display type face. The reality is that the typography that you use can directly influence how a customer perceives a brand. So let's first just talk about how different types of fonts can achieve a different perception within the mind of the customer. Let's start with seroponts. Now, seroponts are typically associated with trustworthiness, tradition, and heritage. For example, the New York Times uses seropont to give the perception of reliability and trustworthiness. And Seropons include typefaces like Times New Roman and Georgia. Now, on the other hand, San seroponts are a little bit different. And they include fonts like Hal Vega and Ariel. Now, San Sara fonts are a little bit more modern. And the reason they come across being more modern is simply because they don't have the little tail at the end of each of the letters. You see Sansa fonts used really well with brands like Apple because they want to come across as being extremely modern and innovative. Now we're going to break down the technical side of fonts in a little bit. But at the moment, we're just understanding the different types of fonts out there so we can understand the overall aspect of typography before we dive into the details. Next, we have script fonts. This would be a typeface like lobster, for example. And these types of typeface are used to create a sense of elegance and creativity and just to be super bold and to stand. Makes them extremely suitable for brands in the fashion industry, for example, but they can be used for any industry and any brand out there. Now, each of these types of fonts can be used in different ways to create a different emotional reaction, although Context is key, you can use these three different types of fonts in different ways to create a different perception in the mind of the customer. Ultimately, that's what brand is all about, creating the perception around the brand. For example, if we take a super bold version of this type face, we can symbolize something that is related to power and strength and reliability. However, if we take this exact same font, but we make it a lot lighter in weight, and then we add it to a slightly different background, it can have a completely different meaning, and it goes from being strong and powerful to being quite calming and tranquil. Now, one of the most important things about fonts that a lot of people don't think about when they're choosing fonts for either brand design or even just their own brand is readability, because the fact of the matter is that if you can't read the font, it's pretty much pointless to being there. Now we're going to get to, you know, making sure that the actual fonts that you choose are readable and which fonts out there you should potentially be thinking about using for your branding, simply because they're just so good and they're just so versatile. But it is super important that before you even think about using a font, you check to make sure it is readable and legible in all environments. And by environments, I simply mean both online and also in print. Okay, so what's the key takeaway here before we start diving into the details? Well, typography can influence how your brand is perceived. And if you want to actually create a solid brand identity, you need to learn how to use typography in a way to ultimately do what it's there to do. It's there to inform, it's there to create a perception, and it's also there to educate the person who's reading the text. But anyway, I'm excited to dive into the details. I will see you in the next lesson. See you. 75. Choosing the perfect font pairings for brand impact: Okay, so choosing the right font pairings for maximum brand impact. Now, there are millions of fonts out there. So how do we choose the right fonts for a brand to start with? And how do we pair them together so that they look harmonious and also create the perception that we want them to? We've all seen typefaces being used in a beautiful way where they just catch our eye and we're like, Okay, those typefaces just belong together. They look great. And one of the things which is at play when that happens is contrast. Now, what I mean by contrast is usually coming down to the weight of the actual typeface that's being used. For example, if we look at something like this, we can instantly see where our eyes need to read first. This is because the headline is thicker. It's a little bit more I don't know, elaborate, and it shows off a little bit more, but it's also sized correctly. So we've got three things in play. We have the weight of the font. We have the character of the font, and we also have the size of the font. Now, another thing which is super important is the readability and the legibility of the general content font. As you can see, the head of font has a little bit more character, okay? So it has a little bit more flare. However, the font below doesn't there's a reason for that. The reality is if we use a font, which is, you know, full of character and pizzas for the general content, it's going to be extremely difficult to read. And this has a knock on effect on the actual impact of the branding, both from a functional standpoint and also from a sales standpoint. So from a functional standpoint, it's just harder for the actual person to read the text. And if it's harder for someone to read the text, they're likely going to become extremely fatigued mentally, which then leads on to impacting sales. Because if you can't effectively communicate the sales benefits of the product or what you're trying to sell, then no one's ever going to understand it enough to buy it. So by using a typeface, which is just difficult to read for the general content, it's going to make it a lot harder for someone to become interested in what you have to sell. And this goes for both what you're selling and also what your clients are selling. Now, one of the tricks to getting two fonts to really work well together is to create a harmonious pairing. Now, first and foremost, does this mean that you can take the same typeface and just use a much thicker version for the header and a much thinner version for the general content? Okay, so that is literally the easiest way to find a typeface for a brand. Know for a fact they're going to go well together. You know for a fact that they're going to work overall over every single environment. And also, it just saves you a ton of time trying to marry different fonts up with each other. However, when you do that, it does come across as maybe a little bit lazy and uncreative. However, what I like to do personally, is I like to keep it quite simple with the general content fun, and I'll go with something like Helbeka or Futura or Abner for the general content. When it comes to the header and the subheader font, that's where I'll really try to find a typeface which marries well with the personality of the brand. And by the way, there are no fonts out there that you should use all the time. However, what you should definitely do is you should avoid complication. And what this basically means is you shouldn't use too many fonts for the brand. Personally, I like to stick to just two maximum. However, there are also brands like Apple who just use one, San Francisco, that's their brand, and that's their font, and they do not use anything else across the entirety of their branding. Now, obviously, what you've probably found is different fonts can kind of give different personalities, which obviously is going to relate to the actual brand itself and the message that they want to convey. So, for example, if we look at something like Coca Cola's wordmark, you'll see that it's super playful, fun, and kind of flowy, and that relates to the perception that Coca Cola wants to create as a brand within the customer's mind. However, on the other hand, you have fonts like Futura, for example, which is a lot more clean and geometrically perfect, and it just lends itself more to kind of innovative companies like, for example, Tesla. Now, we are going to be releasing some assets which essentially give you font pairings that just pair really well together just to save you a ton of time. I also want to reinforce the importance of you being able to hunt for fonts yourself on websites like myfon.com, for example. If I show you how to fish for incredible fonts, instead of just giving you the fonts to your hands, it's going to allow you to find new fonts of your own, which maybe I've never heard of and pair them together with other fonts and create far more interesting typefaces and brands as a result. So anyway, I hope you enjoyed this lesson, and I look forward to seeing you in the next one. See you soon. 76. Kerning your typefaces and wordmarks: Okay, so how important is kerning in logo design and just overall in typography? Now, I absolutely love Warren Buffett, but what I don't love is the Berkshire Hathaway logo. It's horrendous. It's horrendous, because the kerning is so off, but it makes it even worse that the company's worth $1 trillion or something, like something crazy. So, what I want to do is I just want to fix this logo whilst kind of just taking you through the process of how to care a wordmark, okay? At least my way of curing a wordmark. And then we can compare the two, and you can see, Okay, whether this guy knows what he's talking about or not, okay? So this is the original, right? Now, let's go to here and just make this artboard a little bit bigger, and let's make this a little bit bigger as well, so you can see it properly. Perfect. And let's make my head slightly bigger so you can see how distraught I am every time I look at that logo. Okay, so let's just copy and paste this and then let's fix this. You can actually download the SVG file and kind of test this out yourself. But let's just go through what I would do if I was in this position of fixing the Berkshire Hathaway logo. Then we can compare the two, and then we can go from there. So first thing I would like to do is I will create some white windows. What do you mean by white windows, Scott? I have no idea. That's just what I call them. And basically, what their job is is to block out the other letters because I don't want to worry about every single letter in this wordmark. I just want to worry about three at a time, okay? So what do I mean by that? I'm going to take this window, and I'm going to stretch it so that all I can see is three ladders, like this. It's all I want to see. Okay, so this is probably the easiest way for me to explain what kerning is and how to do it properly. And it's not difficult, but it just takes a little bit of practice, okay? So take your time and don't get too overwhelmed with, you know, is this right? Is this wrong because it does take a little bit of practice to get right. Now, kerning is ultimately the space between two ladders. So this here and this here is the kerning between the two letters. It's a space, right? It's the gap. However, it gets a little bit more complicated when you can't just do it mathematically. You have to do it optically for the I and optimize it optically. So how can we do that? Well, to just understand it, if we take the space between the E and the R and we compare it with the space between the B and the E, we can start to get an idea of how much space is actually there. So for example, let's just do that. And again, this is just really rough just to kind of show the differences. We've got this, then let's just do 20, and let's do this. There we go. So now you can see the amount of space that is between each letter. And if we pull that forward, we can see that the amount of space between the B and the E and between the E and the R are very different, okay, they're not the same. They don't feel like they are the same, okay? It's just one of those things where you need to make sure that it looks and feels as together, but also as balanced as possible. Coding is all about balance. So what we're going to is you can see here how it just looks like there's a lot more space between the B and the E as opposed to the E and the R, and that's because of the space that's here. It's because of this particular element here. It's because of just the massive gap between the E and R here. Look at this. Look at all the space here. This can be fixed with one simple move. Just move that a little bit closer, you can now start to feel that it kind of feels more together. It feels more balanced, okay? And that's super, super, super important because it's going to make the wordmark just look 1 million times better overall, okay? So I'm kind of happy with that. I'm just going to kind of go through each of these, just so you can kind of understand exactly where my mind's at with each of these decisions. So we're happy with the B, and R. I'm pretty happy with that. That looks pretty good. Okay, I'll work through this one. Uh, I mean, that looks fine, to be honest. Doesn't look too bad, to be honest. That looks fine. Again, it wasn't the Berkshire that was that bad. That looks okay. So again, I'm just checking the spacing here, checking the spacing here just to make sure it is equal. And if it's equal throughout the entirety of the wordmark, then we should be okay. Okay. This is a little bit This is a little bit bigger, but I'm not too concerned about that, to be completely brutally honest. Okay, perfect. Okay. Now let's go to Hathaway. Which was the main issue, to be honest. Look at that. That is crazy. Look at the space between this and that. It is absolutely ridiculous. Okay. We're gonna have to fix that big time. Okay, let's do this. Let's first and foremost, move this a lot closer to that. And I mean a lot closer because the shape of the ear kind of creates a lot of space up here anyway. So we just need to be almost as close as possible with that. And then we'll test it afterwards. We'll see how things look afterwards. Again, with this, we need to even that out. I mean, even just now, that looks so much better. It's just even out a little bit, tiny bit. There we go. Now let's look at bringing those other letters in. Look at how much we've changed it. Look at how much we've actually changed the wordmark already. It's absolutely crazy how, like, whoever signed off on the brand name was like, Yeah, that looks good. How How did that even happen? Okay, so this is where things get a little bit tricky. Okay, I'm going to go with that. And then I'm going to adjust it later when I turn the logo upside down, and I'll show you what I mean when I say that. But okay. I'm just going to leave that hanging over the edge for a little bit. Okay, let's check this out. Okay, I'm going to go with that. So again, right now, I'm just kind of doing almost like a rough by the eye version of this kerning, just to kind of see how things look and if we can make them look a little bit better. Okay? Perfect. And again, all I'm doing is just trying to make sure that the space between each. This is pretty easy because it's just the exact same amount of space. We're just trying to make sure that the actual space between each letter. Is balanced. Okay, perfect. And we don't need to do the ink part, to be honest, because I don't think even ink is needed to be quite frank. But yeah, that is basically fixing that side of things. So let's just check to see how much better it looks. And it's not going to be perfect. Let's just focus on the Berkshire Hathaway. So you can see here how even just looking at these two examples, this being the original here and this being the new one, you can see here the cone is just so much more consistent. The Berkshire kernim isn't too bad, but the Hathaway kernim was absolutely horrendous. Look, it's just like all stretched out. It just doesn't look very good. So what we're going to do now is we're going to turn the logo upside down, and we're going to treat the letters like shapes, okay? Now, what I mean by that is simply, let's do this up here, again, and get rid of this. Let's get this and just turn this upside down, okay? Now, all I'm doing is I'm just treating the actual letters like the icons almost. I know that sounds a little bit weird. But the reason that I do that is I don't want to be I'm manipulated by the fact that they're letters. And when I turn it upside down, I'm not looking at them as letters anymore. I'm looking at them as just shapes. And when you look at them upside down, you don't kind of read them, you just see them, which is kind of the difference. So if I look at the difference, so you can see here, I still think this is a little bit out. So I'm just, again, just checking the space here and the space here. I know there's space inside the E, but I can't do anything about that. All I can do is manage this space and kind of take this into consideration. That looks good, though. I'm excited about that. That looks okay. Okay. Perfect. Okay. Yeah, I wasn't too concerned about Berkshire, to be honest. It's more Hathaway that's gonna show or give us the most lessons. Okay, here, I kind of feel like there's so much space here, but this just is a little bit too tight. So I'm gonna move out a little bit, that. Just two little nudges. Okay? And then I'm obviously going to have to adjust some other elements, probably this one. Okay? So again, the space here, just nudges out a little bit. And this is what makes the end result so worth it. I'm just nudging them just by one little tiny pixel. You can see here the spacing here is crazy about now. Okay, that looks good. Okay, perfect. I'm happy with that. Ideal. Now let's move on to Hathaway. Okay. So now I'm looking at this, and it does look very, very different. We also need to take into consideration the Berkshire curtain as well, because it needs to be consistent overall. Boom, bum, bum. Okay. I'm a little bit happier with that. I would I would actually probably take all of the letters and make them all the same size, instead of having, like, a big H and a small A, and then the rest of the hathaway being small, I would just have Berkshire and Hathaway just all caps in one big size. But obviously, you know, if I'm trying to show you a direct comparison, I need to make sure that it is consistent. I'm just trying to see if we can so the E and the T look okay. I'm just going to check this. That looks okay now. It looks not too bad. Don't actually pull that a little bit, just slightly. And this looks like it's really kind of, you know, nit picky, but it just makes a ton of difference when you actually see the end result, and it just looks so much better, which you'll see in a little bit, hopefully. Imagine if I just pull it together and it just looks absolutely ****. Oh, dear me me. Um, pardon my French. Okay. Okay, so this is interesting. I'm looking at them as shapes now. And this just looks like it's, it looks like it's so much bigger. Okay. And, this one should be pretty easy because they're both the same shape. Again, we're thinking about letters as shapes here when we're doing coding. We're not looking at them as letters, okay? And then here this looks like it's a lot bigger than it is. Let's pull it in a little bit. Ah, no, no, no, no. I pulled it in, and I pulled it back out. That's that's horrendous. When I bring it in, it just feels like it doesn't have enough space. But then when I move it out, it feels like it does have enough space, but a little bit too much. So maybe we can we do, there we go and do, little middle middle ground? Okay, perfect. Awesome, right, let's see this, then let's see how much better this looks or if it looks worse. I do not actually know. There we go. So that is the new version, and this is the existing version. So you can be the judge. Berkshire Hathaway can 100% afford to hire someone to do this. But for some reason, they haven't because I don't think they give a ****, to be honest. But there you go. So this is I'm looking at this now, and I like how Berkshire looks. It looks better. And I didn't really change much. All I did is just bring the B in a little bit. With Hathaway, it's a little bit harder. Do this because of the H and the A, just kind of like having a lot of space there. But you could easily avoid that by, for example, just, like, making that a little bit bigger and reducing that space, which would help out a lot. But, you know, I wanted a direct comparison between the two, but you can see here how these two have been fixed in comparison to that, you know, let's look at the difference between the two, which is just not even comparable, right? It's just completely different. So that's it. So that's ultimately kerning. That's what kerning is. And if you have any questions about kerning, then please let me know. Just pop me over a quick email. But this is one of the most important things when it comes to developing wordmark specifically. You don't have to do it for every single, you know, headline or definitely enough for all the texts on your website and stuff, for example, but with a wordmark, it can help to take something which looks like $1 billion company. Apparently, and just make it look 1 million times better just with the balance just by taking each of the letters and looking at them as shapes as opposed to as letters because this is just not really good enough, ultimately, from a design standpoint. But I don't really think they care, to be fair. So yeah, I hope you enjoyed this lesson, and I will see you the next one. See you soon. 77. Formatting & spacing your typefaces and text: So formatting and spacing, your typefaces and text. Now, this is a little bit different to kerning, okay? We're going to cover a couple of other things. But basically, from this lesson, what I want to help you understand is how to make your text both look and feel better. Overall, now, whether you're using text in your logo or as kind of general content or as a headline, making sure that the spacing and the formatting of the text in that particular situation is correct is going to be super important because it isn't the same for everything. You wouldn't space the text on a headline the same as you would on general content. And likewise, you wouldn't space the font or text on general content as you would with a logo. So understanding the situation that you're actually spacing and formatting the font super important to getting the right result. Ultimately, what we want to do is to create a cohesive experience for the viewer, make sure it's harmonious, make sure it's well balanced, and ultimately, make sure it's readable and legible. Now, the first formatting slash spacing topic that I want to talk about is line spacing. Now, this is otherwise known as leading. And what this spacing means is space between each line of text in either general content or in headers is really important to help it be super legible and readable. For example, if you have general content and it's all kind of scrunched together and there's no space between the lines of text, it's going to be very difficult to read. It's going to be super hard to figure out where one sentence starts and one sentence ends. But if you open that up and you create space between the general lines of text, going to be able to make it far easier to read, far easier to understand, and it's also going to put less strain on the eyes and on the mind when you're actually reading the text itself, which again, ultimately leads to the text being easier to read, which then leads on to the text being easier to digest, which then is going to lead to more sales. Now the next topic is letter spacing, and this is ultimately known as tracking. This is related to kerning, but it's also related to not just logos, but also just general content as well. Now, this is ultimately the overall spacing between a block and it relates to each and every character in that block of text to make it as readable as possible. Now, this does not mean that you need to create unique kerning for every single letter in that block of text. What it does mean is if you have the block of text to kind of together and kind of suffocated, it's going to really be difficult for the person who's reading the text to really read that easily. Now, once we cover spacing, we then move on to alignment, which is all part of structure. Now, the most common option that you're going to be choosing is going to be left alignment. That's because it's easier to read. It's a lot tilier. And ultimately, the majority of the world read from left to right. Now, some cultures don't. So cultures read from right to left, and that all comes down to your target audience. If you know your target audience, and you know that that particular religion or culture reads from right to left, you need to take that into consideration with your design. However, the only other reason that you would read from right to left or you would align from right to left is for stylistic purposes, okay? So, for example, you have a website that has a block of text side as a header and a block of text here is the general content, which are kind of working together, you would ultimately have the right side of text aligned to the right, so that the text just kind of trims in the same way on both sides and ultimately just making it a lot more aesthetically pleasing for the reader to see. Now, obviously, the other way to align is center alignment. Now, this is often used in luxury environments. It is used to give some sort of kind of sophistication to the actual text or just make it look a little bit more interesting. On another note, when you are formatting text or creating space by not putting text somewhere, that is a purposeful decision to ultimately creating an environment where the text can be digested effectively. For example, on Apple's website, you can see that there is a lot of space, and the text is very minimal. This is on purpose. It is to allow the product to shine, and the actual text is just there to add a little bit of context for the actual image. And I actually have a file with Apple's copywriting examples in my J Drive, simply because it's so great. They end up seeing so much with so little, and it just results in the actual end result just looking and feeling so, much more professional desirable, ultimately. So what are the key takeaways here? Well, formatting, structuring and also kind of creating space with text is all about readability and creating visual appeal. Just in the line spacing and the spacing between each character and also the alignment of any type of text on any website or on any environment is going to give a completely different feel if you adjust it and if you use it in a different way. Like this text, for example, if you stretch it out, it looks a lot more futuristic, and if you condense it, it looks completely different. So this is the importance of spacing, and spacing your text in a way that is readable and also visually appealing is going to help to elevate your brand identity design to another level. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed that lesson, and I will see you in the next one. See you soon. 78. Putting Fonts in brand guidelines: Okay, so how should you showcase the typefaces and the fonts that you are ultimately choosing for the brands that you're creating within brand guidelines? Within the brand guidelines, within Brand Designer Pro, this structure is already given to you. You can actually use it. This is a brand called lumen, which I created for a client very recently. And I just wanted to show you how we actually showcase the typography within the brand guidelines, okay? Now, the first slide related to typography, is all about choosing the fonts, okay, making sure that the fonts are super easy to understand so that you can download the correct files and make sure that they are used in the correct way, which comes a little bit later, okay? So at the moment, we have this typeface here, sticks to tech Semibol, which is essentially almost like a serapont with a little bit of a modern twist, if that makes sense. So it's not kind of as traditional and as kind of, you know, stuck up, if that makes sense. It's a little bit more kind of down to earth and a little bit more, I don't know, charming, if that makes sense. And we ultimately pad that with SFUI display light, which works super, super well together, okay? I think that this font has a lot more character, and it kind of has a lot more I don't know, charm. But then we have this type face, which is just very, very readable and kind of boring and conventional. But that's what we want. We want it to be boring and conventional. We do not want it to be this big, full of life character. This is what the headline fonts job is. We need that to do all of the speaking and all of the shouting. Well, not shouting, but you get the idea. And then SF UI display or light can just be the general text, which is going to be super easy to read. Now, you can see here, I actually added this just as a little example. Now, the headline font here is just really easy to read and also as well, the content underneath the headline is also the exact same font just in a slightly different weight. However, what could we do to this to make it a little bit more easier to read? I'll give you 3 seconds. The two, one. Okay, so if you guess this right, then give yourself a pat on the back, make yourself a coffee or buy yourself a doughnut. Now, this text here feels a little bit suffocated, if that makes sense. So what I would do is I would take this and I would add more space between each line, okay? I would air it out a little bit, because then it's going to be a lot more readable, okay? That is just one little thing that I would do if I, you know, had to be super pedantic. Obviously, you can read it, but it's just create a little bit more space. That's just a little tip just as we're moving through things. Now here, we're just going to showcase the actual sizing. So in regards to the heather, Heading two, Heading three, and body one and body two, how big should the typefaces actually be? And you've got some little kind of pointers here in regards to, you know, in what environments should the sizes be, for example, if you meet the text too small on a computer, it's going to be far too small for people to actually see on a mobile, for example, okay? That's something that you need to keep in mind because obviously, pixels can only be so big. And obviously, a screen is made up of millions of little tiny pixels. So with that said, it doesn't have to be more complicated than that. When you're creating a set of brand guidelines for a client, you're showing them how to, you know, use the typefaces, how to use the colors, how to, you know, overlay the pattern with the logo, you know, the different types of patterns that you can use. You're also showing them how not to use the logo. Don't squeeze it, don't stretch it, don't rotate it. And then you also show them, you know, this is the amount of space that should be there. You're going through all of the different ways that you could potentially kind of break the brand ultimately. Now, with that particular instance, you don't want to be doing too much, whereas it kind of confuses the client. And although it looks like a more meaty document it's just more confusing to look at and it's harder to actually use, if that makes sense. And also, you've got to take into consideration that no matter how great you are at creating brand guidelines, if you create guidelines that literally cover every single pixel of everything that could happen with the brand, the person who is actually at the other end of maybe a designer that they know that isn't as experienced as you, they're going to probably break it anyway because they don't understand the reason behind each of these things. So they're going to probably break it and screw it up. So anyway, I hope you enjoyed this lesson, and I will see you in the next one. See you soon. 79. What is a solo brand design agency: Okay, so what actually is a solo brand design agency? Well, it is the greatest invention on planet Earth, at least for me. I once had a conversation with a guy, a very successful business guy in the pharmaceutical industry whose girlfriend had a fashion brand, and I said, Oh, how are you going to scale it? And he said, Listen, some businesses are not meant to be scaled. It makes 15 ki a month, and that's all I need. I don't need it to be this big conglomerate, you know, massive brand. And that really got me thinking. That was actually a really impactful conversation. And I think it was in, like, the smoking area of some bar. I don't even smoke, but I was just kind of discussing it with some friends. And it really got me thinking about the type of businesses that I want to build. I love being able to get up in the morning. Have a coffee and spend time with my wife, spend time with my son, and I'll have to go to a massive office and deal with millions of different people and have 1 million calls with people who I don't even like, and I just want to be very selective and specific with how I spend my time. I do not want to have all this power and all this stuff to worry about all these, you know, HR and all that sort of stuff. I don't want that. I don't even want staff members. I have people who I work with, but they're either a partner or they're a freelancer. So a partner is someone who actually builds a business with you. A freelancer is someone who just comes in, does a job, then goes home. You don't need employees to build a business in today's day and age. But you can scale in different ways in smarter ways, like efficiency, like freelancing, for example, and getting freelancers to come in on specific projects. There is so much power in running your own show and not having to worry about all the other fluff stuff that you don't really want to worry about. I personally just want to wake up in the morning, do the thing that I love, and then go to bed and spend some time with family, obviously, and try to get to the gym every now and again. Now, the reality is that because of the Internet and people are becoming more and more comfortable spending a lot of money on services, for example, people are outsourcing now to solar design agencies because they don't want to pay this massive agency. So some agencies are worth their money for the right client, but for most clients, they just need something which is most cost effective, and that's going to get them the best return on their investment. And if you as a solar design agency owner can deliver a lot of value to someone and also create a solution for them that they are willing to pay for again and again and again, you've got a business. You've got a profitable business that you can grow and scale through things like automation, for example. I have marketing efforts set up where I literally just leave my diary open and people just book sales calls in for me. No people. It's all automated. It's all systems built up by software. And it's not difficult. I'm going to show you how to do all of that in this course. But it's just building a business that is easy to manage, easy to manage, easy to run, easy to make money with. That's what I want. I don't want to build this massive agency to go against the likes of Pentagram. I want to create work that's just as good as pentagram, but I don't want to have a multi national office. I can still work with clients all around the world, and I do. I've got the receipts to prove it, but I just want to work with them from these four walls in my office so that I can go downstairs, chill out with my son, chill out with my wife, if I want to. I don't want to go to an office. I don't want staff. I don't want a big business. I want a small, intimate business where I can do great work for a select number of clients. And that, my friends, is what a solo brand design agency is. So on that note, if this is something that you are interested in building or doing or having, then I will see you in the next lesson. And if not, then yeah, I'm not really sure what to say because I love this stuff. 80. Identifying your niche and ideal client: Okay, so finding your target customer, your niche customer, okay? Let me ask you a question. If you really badly injured your knee and your knee is completely broken, right? It's beyond repair almost. And you have to choose between two doctors. One doctor is just a general doctor. He does a bit of everything. He knows what a knee is, and he's fixed a few in his time. And he costs $1,000, right? Let's just say that for example. Then you've got another doctor who's a knee specialist, and it's almost guaranteed because he has a track record of millions of knees that he's fixed over the past, you know, 20 years of experience, maybe 30 years of experience, but he costs five times more. Who are you going to hire? If you've got the money, you're going to hire the other guy, 100%. And that's because he's a specialist, right? Now, do you need to be a specialist in just one type of logo design so that you can't do any other types of logo design? No, I'm not saying that. But how you present your work, that's going to come a little bit later in the course. That is going to showcase your area of expertise with finding your thing. It's an accumulation of two things. I've linked to Ikigai, which is a Japanese kind of philosophy, ultimately, or term, which is based around finding something that you're really good at and finding something that someone is going to be happy paying you for. If you can get those two things, that is the secret to success for me personally in my business, in my businesses. Find the thing that you're good at that you're even just the most curious about. You don't even need to be good at it. Find the thing that you're most curious about, that you are curious enough about, that you would do it for free anyway, so that you are obsessed with it enough to get really, really good at it. Then take that thing and package it in a way that someone else with a need or a pain point is going to be able to buy it. It is the essence of business. You have a skill or talent or something that you can offer, or product. They have a need. The client has a need. That's how business happens, an exchange of value. Alliance money for your skills and expertise, business, right? Profit, revenue. So with that said, how do you find your specific thing, right? The reality is that there is a formula for it, but it's not kind of a digestible formula. It's more just a feeling, okay? And I know that sounds a little bit hokey pokey, but listen, when you are feeling yourself drawn towards a certain type of logo, because obviously, we're all brand designers here, or at least we're interested in brand design when we are feeling ourselves drawn towards a certain type of logo, for me, personally, it's abstract logo. So logos that are really simple and minimal, but they have kind of a little hidden story behind them. That's what I love. I love the little hidden story, right? The little meaning from the negative space, the selection of the typography to convey meaning, right? All that stuff. This is the thing that gets me excited every single day, doing those types of logos. And if you focus on just developing your style, right? And when I say develop your style, I don't mean spend 20 years, you know, thinking about it. Do stuff. Get in there, do stuff. Copy from the people that inspire you, right? If someone inspires you, look at how they did a logo. Like, say, for example, the FedEx logo, right? I love the FedEx logo more than anything. I think it's the most beautiful little piece of logo design I've ever seen. But I also wanted to do my own version. So I looked at what they did, and I thought, Okay, how can I use negative space in a very simple way in a similar way? And I used it with another brand design project, which ended up having a completely different meaning, and you wouldn't connect the two, but I use it a inspiration. I use it as guidance, my beacon, my guide and light. I'm just human, right? Like, I'm not some exceptionally talented logo designer. I am just a guy who is obsessed with logo design, and I've managed to get pretty decent at it through doing that process of learning from people, learning how to build websites, from looking at websites that I love, and then saying, Oh, why is this space that big? Why is that text that size? Why is this text orange and the rest of it black? Why is this great? Why is the imagery the same color as the actual brand mark? All that stuff. It all makes so much sense, and it all comes together to create your thing, the thing that makes you special, Ts that you probably can't comprehend yet. There are probably things that you're going to learn and that you're going to become curious about that you maybe never even thought that you would be curious about. Like, I had a friend, for example, who I still do have a friend. He's not dead or anything, but he really loves typography. He loves actually creating scripts, and he's awesome in it. I'm not that great at that. I can do it, but I'm not anywhere near as talented or as obsessed about it as him. So that's the thing. You need to find the type of logo that you're obsessed about, and you only learn that and find that when you spend time doing it, right? Design those types of logos, explore it. And you can still do those types of projects, as well. Like, if a client comes up to me and says, Oh, Scott can you do a script logo for me? I'll pay you X amount? I can do it, but I'm just not going to show it on my portfolio because it's not my thing. It's not the thing that people know me for, right? So that's kind of the difference. And that's how you're going to find a very niche audience of people who see your work, and they're like, mm, I love this guy's style. I want that style for my own business, because it's simple, it's minimal, and it tells a story. That's my thing. I harmonize everything together. So what's your thing? That's the question, all right? With that said, I'll see you in the next lesson, but have a little think. And if you need any help in kind of guidance or anything, or if you want my honest opinion, feel free to pop me an email at Admin at Lancaster academy of design and brand.com. Alright? I'll see you very soon. Take care. Bye bye. 81. Building your website on Webflow: Okay, so you need to build a website for your agency. Now, there are tons of different ways to do this. There's the fast way. Then there's the slightly longer way, which is going to probably get you the best result. And then there's the option where you just basically just ft around for weeks and weeks and never get anything done. You can get a decent website done in one day, right? One day, and the way to do that is one of two ways. So the first thing that you can do is go to my YouTube channel, and obviously this content is available for everyone, but this is going to help to really speed run through the website development process. So go to this video, copy my 1.3 million agency website in 19 minutes or less. That's not the actual title, but you get the idea. This is going to show you how to find preexisting templates in Webflow, where you can create awesome websites in literally no time at all. And once you go through that particular video, the next step is to learn about how to build a website, okay? And what I mean by how to build a website is there's two different ways to building websites. There's the actual building of it, and then there's the strategy behind the website, okay? So there's two different things. The strategy of the actual website and the objective is trying to achieve. And the second thing is how it looks, how it feels, and how it's built, okay? Two completely different things. So there's two different sides to building a website. This is a strategy and the objectives that the website is trying to achieve. And then there's the actual aesthetics of the website and how it looks and feels, okay, and how it's built, right? Now, on Brand Designer Pro, we have a course, you have a course called Webflow website Building Course. This course is 76 lessons long. It's pretty meaty. But you don't need all these lessons. So what I would suggest is you go into these lessons, and you basically find the ones that you think are the most valuable for you. So make a little list and then go in and take these specific lessons. Now, what I'm going to do is in this short lesson, I'm going to show you which lessons you should choose because I'm not going to re record all of these lessons that I've already did because they're never going to be as good, alright? This is already edited, already ready to go, so you can basically just jump in and get the exact information that you need by me telling you exactly what you need at this point, okay? So as we're scrolling through, introduction to strategic website design, you can take this if you want to. I think this lesson is probably going to be the most beneficial for you the five second rule, all right? Because you're going to understand how to grab someone's attention in the first 5 seconds of them landing on your website, which is super important because we get about seven to 8 seconds anyway, sometimes less actually because of TikTok and stuff. Now, regards to actually building the website, all of this stuff, you don't need it if you take this particular course because, well, it isn't a course. It's a video. But with the templates that are inside that particular lesson that I'll show you how to get, you can actually get everything aligned and formatted and colored before you even can say Francesco, because by using the template in that particular video, you can have a website built formatted and aligned without having to know any of this stuff. So you don't actually need to learn it because you're not building websites for people. Now if you're actually wanting to learn how to build websites, this course will show you how to do that perfectly. But if you don't want to do that, you don't have to speed run it and get the website built as soon as possible. Results driven strategic website design. These four are very important. Okay? You need to learn why certain pages exist, how to structure those pages. What should come first, second, third and fourth, all the way down the home page, how to showcase your portfolio, all of that stuff. And that all comes from understanding the strategy behind it. Then you can just make it look nice. So strategy first, get the objective, and then make it look nice, okay? And that is the secret. That's a difference between a website that just looks good and a website that actually gets results and looks good, right? There's a massive difference between the two. Now, what I would also suggest is, so I would definitely suggest these four. I would suggest this one here, and then I would also suggest examples of world class service related websites, and then more examples of incredible websites as well. And then even more here is inspiration. This is going to just help you to really understand why certain service based websites win and why some just don't. So take some time to actually build your website using those lessons, okay? And this video as well. Make sure you use this videos. It's going to save you a ton of time and energy, okay? And then once you've finished, and this is why Brand Designer Pro so awesome, send me the link of your website once you've built it on Webflow. And again, if you're struggling to build something on Webflow, this course has everything that you need to answer any question, basically, or you've always got me to ask, as well. You can email me, or you can also ask YouTube or Google if you really want to. This is going to allow to build any website for any business going forward. So you can even offer it as a service as well. Additionally, if you want an actual, step by step guide to building a service focused brand website, you can literally go here and we have P one and P two to building a service based website, building the structure, and then putting the finishing touches and all the settings and stuff. Everything is there inside to build a website just as good as mine, which has generated over $1 million worth of revenue easily, and you can do it in just a day if you really kind of set your mind to it and sit down and focus, okay? So, take some time to get that done. Once you finish your website, feel free if you want to to send it to me so I can review it and give you a little bit of feedback, and I cannot wait to see your website, okay? And I'll give you some pointers and some advice on how to get it better once you send it over to me, but until then, I will see you in the next video. 82. What makes a client winning portfolio: Okay, so what actually makes a fantastic portfolio to help you attract clients? Because that is why we have a portfolio in the first place, right? To showcase our work to attract the types of clients that we want. Now, in this lesson, I'm going to actually show you how I personally think about my portfolio, which has again, helped me generate over $1 million in revenue through this website alone, okay? And I'm going to go through a couple of the most important things that at least I feel have been super important to helping me get the types of clients that I want to pay me the types of fees that I ask for, okay? And the first thing that is super important is relevance. Now, this all comes back to finding your nation the thing that you actually want to be doing. So, for example, if you want to be doing abstract logos, don't post work that is, you know, script logos or something that is completely separate and completely different. You need to make sure that the types of logos that you post are the types of logos that you want to attract as projects, which leads me on to the next thing, which is super important, which is quality or quantity. So, for example, I've worked with probably around 2000 clients over the past ten years, but I literally have around 20 projects, not even that on my portfolio. And this is all focused around showcasing my best work, which is also the work which is the type of work that I want to attract in future. Okay? So, you'll see all these logos are, you know, abstract, kind of, you know, not very kind of, you know, excessive. They're quite minimal. They're quite simple. You know, negative space, for example, shapes, geometry, all that sort of stuff. The reason that I want to attract these types of logos is because I enjoy doing them more, okay? So there's two things. The overall amount of projects that you do reduce it down to the types of logos that you actually want to do more of the type of work that you want to do more of and then reduce that down again to the best 20 projects and then just see a recent work, okay? Because you could do other work, but this is the most recent work, and the reason I call it recent work is for two reasons. One, it lets me get away with only putting 20 projects up when I could put a lot more, but they're just not to the same quality because obviously it's from a long time ago. And secondly, clients want to see your most recent work. They don't want to see the work from, you know, five, six years ago, or maybe they do, but they want to see the work that they're going to get. And if you can showcase to them the type of work that you've done recently, it's going to give them reassurance that this is the quality that they are going to get if they actually hire you, which is obviously super important. Now, another thing which is really important as you're kind of moving through the process of developing your portfolio is to make it easy for people to see the types of things that they need to see, okay? So for my website, I offer four different types of services. Well, I actually only offered three on my website, but now I'm offering four, which is website development. So this is actually a really great example. Now, with my portfolio, I currently have the picture, which is a mock up of the actual logo in real life, okay, just to actually showcase that it's not just the logo itself, it's actually applied to real life situations. So we have the logo, which is brand identity design. We also have name creation, okay, which is ultimately showcase okay, I actually came up with the brand name for this actual company. And then we also have strategy, okay? So for some of these projects, I actually did brand strategy, okay? Now, another thing which is really important is to make it super easy for clients to find what they need to in order to hire you, okay? So I don't mean a CTA or a call to action. What I mean is, I want to trust you so I can hire you. How do I do that? So you need to make it easy for them to find projects and evidence that reinforces the fact that you can give them what they need, okay? So, for example, here, I've got the actual image showcasing the branding, so I know what I'm doing in regards to branding look. There's lots of evidence of that. We also have the name here, and then we have a little tag here saying name creation and brand identity design. So I did the name creation and the brand identity design for this project, which is what most people are going to get in touch with me about, right? So then I click inside the actual project itself, and then it comes to here, where basically, I can start to learn a little bit more about what the actual project was about, what their main issues were. This was the actual issue and the problem. It also has the services up here that I actually provided. I actually provided a lot more, but this is just keeping things nice and concise and aligned. Name creation, brand identity design, website development. And as you can see down here, we've got more examples, the actual solution that I provided. So I'm actually, you know, communicating what we went through as a project, and then the actual testimonial here. So I've literally went through the entire process of who the brand is, the services that we offered, the problem, the solution, the testimonial from Bobby. And then if you click here, you actually get a review from Bobby where he's actually seeing the exact same thing as I've just mentioned in the testimonial. So they're like, Okay, he took this brand. He created everything. He did it all, and there's an actual video, like a literal video, which I'll show you how to get those videos as well as testimonials really easily from any client, and it's super simple and super powerful. If I know how to do that, and I follow the same process and I showcase my work like this, I can have clients come to me, as well. It's not rocket science, right? It's literally just understanding how to structure things in a really effective way to allow you to build a portfolio which can get you the results that you actually need. Anyway, I really hope you've enjoyed this lesson, and I will see you in the next one. See you. 83. The 3 strategic portfolio rules showcasing expertise, building trust, and communicating your : So how can you showcase expertise, create trust and credibility with your portfolio and throughout your website? Well, there's a few ways that you can do this, and it's actually not too difficult, and it's really simple, but you just need to take the following approach. Put yourself in the shoes of your client. They're going to come to your website here, and they're going to read this. The first thing they're going to think about and remember, if you took my previous lesson in the Webflow website building course to actually show you how to build your website for your agency, you'll know that the first three questions that we ask ourselves when we come to a website are Am I in the right place? Can I trust these guys? Tell me more. Those are the three questions that we ask ourselves when we come to a new website when we're thinking about, you know, buying a service or whatever. Am I in the right place? Yes. Within about, you know, six to seven words, I've told them they're in the right place. Can I trust these guys? There's plenty of names and logos that I've developed all super easy to see. Okay, tell me more what you can do. There's literally two buttons here where if you click them, they literally help you to take you to the page, which can then tell you about how much it is, what's included, all that stuff. Okay, so how do we demonstrate our skills, set? That comes down to basically showcasing our work. Now there are ways to demonstrate our work and ways how not to demonstrate our work. For example, always have your best projects at the top, or the projects that you want people to see first. I know it sounds very silly as advice and really basic, but have your best stuff at the top. And also at the very end because what most clients will do is they'll see the top work Okay? And then they'll scroll to the end because they think that's where all your bad stuff is. We operate and judge experiences on the first interaction and the last interaction. Everything in between is kind of a little bit gray. It's kind of gray area. So what we should do is we should focus on having our best two projects or our kind of third and fourth best projects there, and then our first two projects here, which are the best ones, which are the ones that know, it's subjective, right, but those are the ones that we're the most proud of. And obviously, if you've got the rest of the projects, and they're just super, super bad, you know, it's going to obviously hinder things. But as long as these projects are pretty strong and the first two are pretty strong, you're going to be in a good position, okay? That's a small little detail. The next thing is, make sure that you have evidence of types of businesses that you're looking to attract. So, for example, if you have absolutely zero credibility and zero trust and zero clients, and you've never worked with a client before, the reality is that you need to maybe either work for someone for free or create a brand. You know, it depends on what you want to do. Or create a brand identity for a brand that doesn't exist yet that you just want to create. So say, for example, if you want to work with coffee companies, right, create a coffee brand for fun. Take a day, create a coffee brand for fun, get a brand name, make it either high end or, you know, super fun, whatever you want. Create a coffee brand for fun that you just love. Showcase it. Create the mockups, create interesting, engaging mockups that look incredible that, you know, symbolize exactly what you want to do as a business. Someone came to my website and they had a consultancy company like Nucle for example, they know for a fact that I can create a brand identity for a technology consultancy company like nucleo, right? If someone comes to my website and they see, you know, and they have an aviation company and they want to create something that is, you know, really, you know, well done and well polished, Skymont is there as an example to showcase that I have credibility and experience in that particular industry, right? I've done it before, right? Now, this all comes down to attracting the right clients, okay? There are some clients who you really want to work with and some clients who you just don't, and that's okay. Some clients are going to be much easier to work with, and some clients are going to pay you more, and they're going to be far better as clients for you to work with over the long term. That's okay. You don't have to work with every single client. It's right to be rejected by a certain client. It's okay to reject clients. I reject clients all the time. And it's not because I'm, you know, not grateful for them getting in touch with me, but we're just not the right fit for each other. They just don't want what I have to offer or how I want to do things, and that's okay. You need to understand that when you are creating your portfolio, it's like a magnet for the right types of people and the right types of projects. I would rather have one project which is perfect for me than ten projects, which appear to me ten times as much, but they are not exactly what I want to be doing with my time. That's a difference. Once you get to a level where you don't really need the money to come in, that puts you in a really strong position to be able to reject more projects and work on the stuff that you really want to. If you don't get any projects that month, it's fine. You can just relax or work on your portfolio or update things. That's okay. But you need to get to that point first. And by doing that and really focusing on the types of projects that you want to, you can elevate yourself to a position where people feel more comfortable hiring you for that particular thing. It's all about focus. If you try to be the master of everything, you end up being the master of nothing. So take some time, and that's why I'm here to actually support you in this as well, because I know how difficult it is. When you are thinking about what your thing is, you know, what makes me special? What is the special value that I can provide to the world? Take some time to think about it. Pop us an email, and then we can actually discuss the different ideas that you have, and then I can maybe say, You know what it is? There's three different types of logos that you're kind of interested in, but I've seen your work, and you are flipping awesome about this one. I would personally if I was you, I would go 100% in this particular direction. And then it's done, and then you can just focus on going in that direction and pushing forward as much as possible. But that is ultimately why I'm here. As part of Brand Designer Pro, I'm here to help you get as far ahead as possible as soon as possible. It took me nine or ten years to get to the point where I don't need to take on every single project that gets thrown at me, and I can be super selective with the clients that I work with. You should be able to get to that point in a tenth of the time if you follow the exact things that I've got for you in this course and in this program. So anyway, I hope you enjoy this lesson. I will see you in the next one until then. See you soon. Bye bye. 84. How often should you refresh your portfolio to stay relevant: Okay, so how often should you refresh your portfolio on your website? Okay. So there's the easy answer, and then there's the slightly less easy answer. The slightly more complicated one because I always say, Okay, I'm going to update my website every month or every three months, right? But the reality is, it's very difficult to find time to update your portfolio when you're busy with other stuff. So, for example, if you have 4 hours to update your portfolio and refine things and get things tidied up, but you also have a client who is willing to buy those 4 hours worth of time for, like, I don't know, $2,000 or whatever. Ah. And you're interested in the project, you kind of take the $2,000, right, and you work with a client. So I like to think about it like this. I will update my portfolio when I need to. So at the moment, my portfolio gets me the right amount of clients that I want to work with. It gets me, you know, more than enough projects coming in, more than enough money coming in for me to be happy. I don't really need a lot of money to be happy, to be honest, I probably need, like, 1.5 k to be happy, and I make, you know, ten times that if I need to. And I can make more than that if I really want to work hard, but I work enough within Clementine House, so I can do stuff like this. My education company and also build other stuff, you know, design watches, for example, I like watches, so I like design and watches. I'm not saying that you should design watches. What I'm saying is you need to free up time to do other stuff, just do enough with the brand design stuff if you really want to, or if you want to go, you know, balls to the wall and make as much money as possible, you do you do as much as you fancy. I will update my portfolio when I feel like my work is either significantly changed in terms of quality. So, for example, some of the work here, actually, which I'm looking through, some of is a little bit dated in terms of my approach. And you can definitely see a difference in regards to the quality of work from what it was like before to what it is now. So I might refresh it in a little bit, maybe a month or two if I've got time. So that's the first time that I would refresh my portfolio. The second time that I would refresh my portfolio is if I have time. So, for example, if and this happened during COVID, I think when there was like maybe like two weeks where nobody wanted brand design because they were busy with just other stuff, or maybe if just the economy is really bad, that's a time to update your portfolio, okay? I don't honestly believe in unless you do, like, a really great project, which you really want to get up there, that's another time, maybe. So three times, basically. One, when you actually have time. If you've got, like, a week when no one gets in touch with you and you're like, twiddling your thumbs and you just don't want to relax, update your portfolio. When you feel like your work is significantly changed in quality, it's time to update your portfolio. And lastly, when you have a project that you just really like and you really want to get it up there because you think it's going to attract a similar type of clientele, get it up there. Another kind of caveat to that is if you have worked in an industry, like, say, for example, at the moment, I don't have any coffee brands that I kind of think reflect my latest work on my portfolio. If a coffee brand comes up to me and says, Do you want to work together? I would work with them, and I will put it on my portfolio as soon as possible because I want to attract more coffee brands because let's face it, who doesn't like coffee? Now, another example could be potentially you have found or invested in some new mockups, so you would potentially look at your old mockups and think, Okay, the mockups that I can get now because I've invested in that additional mock set, for example, I can update my website with new mockups, and it's going to help to elevate my current project to a new level. That's another example of when I would potentially refresh my portfolio if I really had time to. Another example is to keep up with industry trends. So, for example, EI is a huge thing right now. There are tons of different companies now who are either using EI or they're getting into that space. It would be really great to create an EI focused project to showcase that, okay, I know how to brand an EI company. This is evidence of that. So if you are an EI company, which is a common trend right now, you can get in touch with me. So I think the main takeaway is not to have kind of, like, regiment time when you're going to update your portfolio, you can do that if you really want to, but all I'm just speaking from is experience of I've done that before, and it didn't really work out well for me. I would rather just get that feeling of, Okay, it's time to update the portfolio because of one of those five reasons that I just mentioned. So hopefully that was helpful. If you have any questions, please let me know. I'm more than happy to look over your portfolio and give you a few little pointers and stuff, which is going to be a little bit more personal, as you know, Brand Designer Pro is all about that, creating personable support to help you get further a lot faster. But hopefully that was helpful, and I will see you in the next one. See you. 85. Structuring case studies Problem Solution Outcome framework: How can you sell more services and attract new clients by selling solutions instead of services? Right? It sounds a little bit counterproductive. Let me explain. Now, when you are looking at showcasing your work, arranging your pricing, you need to remember why the person is buying because when you're selling brand design services, you're never just selling brand design. You're selling a solution to a problem. Let's rent things back for a little bit. Any transaction that has ever happened from now since the style of time has been an exchange of value, what does that mean? It means that one person has a problem and they need a solution to the problem. The other person, that's you and me, has a solution, and they want to sell that solution to the person with the problem. This is the same with any product ever sold. For example, I need a logo, I design a logo. Why do you actually need that logo, though? You don't just need a logo. You need an identity for your business so that someone can recognize you and see it was trustworthy and reliable and established. That's a solution that we need to sell, okay? I need transport. I need a horse. Okay, I can give you transport. This is Henry Ford, by the way, way back when. I can give you transport, but instead of a horse, I'm going to give you an automobile, a Ford automobile that is far more effective, efficient, and you don't have to feed it. Well, you kind of do. You kind of feed a fuel but you get the idea. This person thinks they need X when what they actually need is Y. They do not need the thing that they say that they need. They actually need what is far deeper. What is far deeper is their actual pain point. So they don't need a logo. They need an established brand identity so that they can look credible and so they can show off their branding to their friends. They don't need a horse. They need some sort of transport, which is more effective and efficient. This goes down to I need a bottle of water. No, you're thirsty. You need some sort of hydration. This is the way that we have to think, because if we are looking at selling a solution instead of just selling a service, we go from selling commodities to actually selling solutions to pain points. And here's an example where a commodity like water, can be sold for far more than it's actually worth. Have you ever been thirsty in an airport or at some sort of music festival or at another place where you can't get water anywhere else? You have to get it from one single place. Because the demand is so high and you have no other alternatives, you have to buy it from there. You're thirsty, you have a pain point, and because you can only get it from that one single place, that is where you have to get it from. And that is why this model of solution and problem are so effective, right? In every single case, you need to outline how you took a problem and then provided a solution to that problem, okay? In every single case study that you create, and then add a testimonial on there to literally let people know how people feel about the problem that you solved and the solution that you provided. So how can you create this solution focused alternative, right? So instead of just saying, Okay, we provide two logo options for you to choose from. And then you get your logo, and that's it. Think about what they actually need. So do you just need a logo? Yeah, you need a logo. What else do you need? You need a strategic brainstorming session, right? To discuss the actual logo, to understand your brand more deeply, okay? You need copyright checks. How many logo designers out there actually do copyright checks? Extensive brand guidelines. So once you have your logo, you need to make sure your branding is consistent across all assets, of course, which includes your brown color palette and your typography. Obviously, you're going to be needing to be using typography, and obviously, you need to be using color, right? Obviously. And then do you want to see your logo as just a flat image, or do you want to see it in real life mockups where you can actually see it living and breathing? Or if you just want to see it as an image, maybe I'm not the right person for you. Do you need signatures? Are you going to be sending emails for this business? I'd be surprised if you weren't cards and letterhead, you know, some people use those, some people don't you got to be on social media? You know, you're going to be struggling if you're not gonna be on social media. Customized brand presentation. Do you need that? Maybe, maybe not. Custom logo, maybe, maybe not. Facon' gonna be having a website? You're gonna be having a website for sure. And then, do you actually need a website? You almost certainly do need a website. So this is how everything needs to be communicated with your packages, okay? Think about not just I need a logo, give me a logo, 'cause most of the time clients don't actually understand what they need. They understand what they want, but they don't understand what they need. Think about what else goes well with the thing that you're trying to sell. And then offer it to them. Because nine times out of ten, clients are going to want to buy more from you because they see those things, and they're like, okay, yeah, I probably will need I probably will need social media branding. Then, yeah, I probably will need brand guidelines, and I probably will need, you know, brand colors and typography and stuff. Yeah, actually, yeah, that sounds like a good idea, actually. How much is that package again? That is how we need to be thinking because you've just went from selling a logo, which you can get a logo on FV for, like, what $100 or something, and you've just sold it for 12 times that or 13 times that even. That is a difference. If you can learn how to communicate effectively to the problem that your client is currently facing, instead of just trying to give them what they want, give them what they need, solve their pain point, help them to alleviate their pain point, okay? We're going to dive into the intricacies of this later on in the course, but I just want to kind of give you an overview of how to think because this is all coming down to me kind of teaching you how to fish instead of just giving you a fish, if that makes sense, because if you understand why, then you can take the frameworks and actually put them into action far more effectively. So I hope that was helpful, and I will see you in the next lesson. See you soon. 86. Examples of world class brand design portfolios: So what actually makes a great portfolio, and how does that kind of link into building an incredible website for your agency? So the actual system of creating a great portfolio is going to come a little bit later on in the course. It's going to be a couple of lessons away. But in this lesson, I just want to show you or at least tell you where you can find some incredible examples of service based businesses that have great portfolios, so you can get some inspiration first. I think it's really important to get yourself surrounded by great, you know, agencies and inspiring people that can help to guide how your portfolio could look or your website, okay? So if you dive into the Webflow website building course within Brand Designer Pro, you can see that there's tons of lessons here, but the lessons that I want you to take a little bit of time just to look at are these ones here. So examples of world class service related branded websites, okay? And that's going to touch on portfolios, but it'll touch on some other things as well. Also, be sure to check out service focused Best website inspiration and service focused brand website page structure inspiration. This is going to just give you a really great insight in regards to how to create a great service based website and how that links to your portfolio afterwards, because you can have the best portfolio in the world. But if your website doesn't create a really great perception within the customer, then it's going to be really difficult for them to see you as credible and trustworthy. Also, go to this lesson as well, a little bit later on if you really want to and actually look at the service focused website and also Part one, two, and three of actually building up your portfolio and also your website overall. This is like around an hour's long worth of content, and it's, it's not essential to watch all of that. But just in case you actually want to see how I would personally build a portfolio from start to finish, that is ultimately going to give you so much information in regards to what to look for when you're building your portfolio going forward. Now, in the coming lessons, I'm going to actually show you how I personally structure my own portfolio so you can understand exactly what I'm thinking about when I'm developing my own portfolio to showcase to clients because although you're going to see kind of the structure and how things look and feel, you're not going to see the hidden things which you wouldn't know unless I'm telling you, okay? So, give me a little bit of time. I'm going to share that with you in a second, but I hope you enjoy this lesson, and I'll see you in the next one. See you soon. 87. Choosing the types of clients & brands you want to work with: Okay, so not all clients are created equal. As a brand designer, you need to understand what types of clients you want to work with and which you don't. Okay? Now, figuring out the types of clients that you do want to work with takes a little bit of time. What do I mean by that? I mean that. The type of work that you want to do as a brand designer takes a little bit of time to figure out. But also, depending on what level you're at right now, if you're just starting, then this definitely applies to you. If you are currently being paid under what you think you're worth, this definitely applies to you. If you're currently getting paid a decent amount, but you want to work with more clients in a particular industry or to a particular level, and you're not quite there yet, this also applies to you. But ultimately, no matter where you are in that journey, you are going to have to figure out the types of clients that you want to work with. Now I want to share with you a little bit about my experience of how I figured out the types of clients that I want to work with and how I got there, and then ultimately why it's so important. Now, if we go back to the very start of my journey when, you know, like ten years ago, when I first started doing logos and working with clients, I started working with pretty much anyone, right, because I needed experience. That's kind of the first ph is, right? You're just trying to work with anyone, you're trying to get as much experience as possible. And that is ultimately the only thing that you can do because you need experience and credibility in examples of your work, and you don't have any yet. Now fast forward a little bit, and I'd got some examples of my work. And I eventually got to a point where I became not great, but I was competent, right, in the world of brand design. I knew how to design a logo. I knew how to kind of, you know, format my text correctly, and I knew how to tell a story with a logo. Now, I wasn't quite as refined and good as I am now, but I was okay, okay? I was getting by. I could charge a little bit more for my logo designs, and the clients that I worked with were less overall. So I would maybe go from working with 20 clients a month to maybe, I don't know, ten clients a month, right? That got to a point where I started to diversify my services. For example, I started to educate myself in regards to website design. I started to educate myself in regards to brand naming. I started also to educate myself in regards to brand strategy, because I knew that if you wanted a logo, that is connected to everything else within the brand. Everything else within the brands Jigsaw and tapestry, I wanted to learn how to do that. And I did that by reading a lot, by looking at case studies from other branding agencies from learning from courses like this one that you've invested in, and, you know, they've got different courses inside this course which literally go through the five steps of brand building, brand strategy, included in this course, brand identity development, included in this course, brand naming also included in this course, website development included in this course, brand marketing also included in this course, and then brand growth also included in this course. That's actually six, right? Naming wasn't even part of those five. So you could essentially add to your brand design skill set and learn all of that and then be able to offer everything to one single client. So why is this one important? Well, because when I learned these two simple lessons which I'm about to share with you, it completely changed everything about how I ran my business and the type of client that I wanted to attract. Okay? And this is all going to come together, trust me, and it's going to be super helpful, I hope. And my mentor said, Take every single client you've ever worked with, take the most profitable ones. So the ones that were the least hassle and the ones I paid you the most and dissect their customer journey. What do I mean by that? Where did they find you? How did the process go from them first getting in touch with you to actually paying you for the service and starting the service? And what I learned was that all of my clients were coming from one particular place. They all watched a very particular video on a very particular sales page, and they all got in touch with me to book a 15 minute discovery call. So I refined my entire process to, I have to do a 15 minute discovery call with you before we even consider working together. I limited myself to four clients per month, and every single client now went to the page that has that sales video on it. So I hit those three things. What did that? Amount of clients that I worked with on a yearly basis went down significantly. I only work with around four to five clients maximum per month now, but the amount that those clients spent went up. The average price that a client was paying before I actually implemented those changes and really changed things within the business was around $700. They would always take the lowest package. I heightened my package to double what the average cost was. And I created the brand accelerator program, which was essentially everything that you need for a brand in one place, but you get it at a much lower price than if you work on separate elements. So basically, I went from earning around $700 per client to earning around 3.5 thousand per client. And I wish I had done this years ago when I first started. If I did this when I first started, I would have been a decade ahead within the first six months. Honestly. That was a life changer for. And the reason that it works is because I have freed up so much time by working with the clients that actually want to get everything done under one roof. I can then work on one, creating better work for the actual clients that I'm working with. Two, building my education business, which is obviously this one, which is why you're watching this video. Without doing this strategy, I would never have been able to make this video or even have the time because I was so busy before. And three, you earn more money. You earn more money with less stress and to do better work. If that doesn't make sense to anyone, I don't know if I can help you. To be honest, like, if that doesn't make sense, I do not know what I can do to help somebody. It makes so much sense from a life work balance standpoint. It makes so much sense from a financial standpoint because before, I would have to work with four clients to get the same as I was with just one. So that's four times the stress. That's four times the deliverables, right? You need to make sure that you deliver every single time. It's four times the emails, and that's just for one client. I'm working with four a month, so that's four, eight, 12, 16 clients per month instead of four. Trust me, you do not want to work with 16 clients a month. You want to work with four that pay you four times the amount. Believe me, if you take anything from this course, that is the thing that you should take, and that is the thing that you need to figure out. If you can figure out the niche that you want to work within, so the type of business that you want to work with, whether that be coffee companies or tech companies or maybe you want to work with companies that do good in the world, you know, the options are endless. But by understanding the niche that you're working within, you can then begin to craft your offering around attracting the types of clients that you want to work with. And it's all about getting the maximum amount of LTV lifetime value from the customer so that you can have a nice life. You can do great work, you can get paid well for doing it. And this lesson is going to lead into a lot of other lessons later on in the course, which are going to really start to make sense by the end of this phase. So on that note, I will see you in the next lesson. See you soon. 88. Where are your ideal client spending time in 'buying mode': Where are your potential clients when they're in buying mode? I just had my complete world shattered when it comes to client acquisition like three months ago. And the reason for that is before my strategy was really simple, I would basically get clients in touch with me through FIBA, and they would ultimately end up working with me, either through FV or maybe they would find my website and then get in touch with me through that. But that would ultimately result in me being limited to FIS traffic, if that makes sense. So I wouldn't have to pay anything in regards to marketing, and they would find me organic but the traffic that five would get would fluctuate and it would go higher or lower. So some weeks I could get ten inquiries, and then other weeks, it could be like one or two. That is a bottleneck. It's a limitation. It's okay if you're only working with four or five clients, but what if you want to work with more? When I started posting on social media and on other platforms and writing blog posts and doing all this stuff, which I want to teach you in this lesson, I had my eyes opened up. The reason I had my eyes opened up is when I started posting, on social media platforms, on Redt on YouTube, on Instagram, on Facebook on LinkedIn. I made so much more money. Within like a week, I had like $7,000 worth of projects in my inbox. Paid, ready to go. And that's just the star. That's just the first package. There's other packages that they're going to buy afterwards. This literally completely shattered my entire world view of where clients are when they're ready to buy. Because we don't actually know. Yes, if they're on five, they're going to be ready to buy. Yes, if you're on Google Ads and you literally come up with the search term brand designer Dubai or brand designer Thailand, et cetera, et cetera, it will probably be a case that the person is looking to hire someone will they end up hiring you? We don't know. I think that a lot of clients actually like buying from people when they don't feel like they're getting sold to. So social media and creating social media form content and organic content is actually, I think, one of the best ways to market yourself. But how do you do it? Well, I'm going to teach you how I did it so that you can copy me. Okay, so social media how can you create organic content that's going to get reach and that's going to get you noticed? I did the following. I made a list of every single logo designer out there that gets organic reach and has a great following. I studied their content, and then I basically copied it for the first five to ten pieces of content. And this works because you are basically putting your own unique spin on their style, which you know is proven to work. You could try and figure out the process on your own and try to kind of, you know, come up with your own wacky way of capturing people's attention and keeping it and create a format which works, but it doesn't always work straight away. I want to get traction right now. So what I would rather do is copy what people are doing right now and then slowly but surely find my way whilst I'm working with leads, whilst I'm working on projects to build my following more and to create a more unique and distinctive style to my content. For example, I found a guy called Alan Peters, who is extremely talented. He's probably one of my favorite designers at this point, I think. His book is amazing, by the way. And I took his format of using paper and kind of showcasing the process of developing a logo with the paper. And it worked really well. I started getting inquiries. I started getting followers. I started getting an organic reach, and it worked, so I continued to do it. And that just escalated and escalated and escalated until I think one of the reels that I posted got like 100,000 views or something on it, which is absolutely crazy. I never thought my account could ever even do anything like that because I thought the account was dead. It wasn't. It was just because my content was crap. Right before I actually started learning how to do it. So social media does work. If you have never got a massive amount of reach on social media, it's got nothing to do with you. It's got nothing to do with your account. It's all to do with the content, the fact that it does not keep people hooked and it does not keep people engaged until the end of the video. I can dive in, like, super deep in regards to social media content and how to make it and kind of go through the process with you if you really want me to. So yeah, if that'll be helpful, let me know. Pop me an email and I'll make that video, and I'll add it to the course. Now, another way you can be found by clients is through SEO, okay? Now, this is usually done best when you take a question that your client is going to be asking like, for example, what are brand codes, for example, which is one of the search terms that we're top for at Clementine House. They then find you. They then say, Oh, okay, the services there. Okay, they do brand strategy. They do brand naming. I kind of need a brand name. This is the whole process. You need to put out organic hooks with good bit so that you get the clients onto your website so that you can then have a conversation with them and then sell to them. Build Trust, then book a discovery recall, and then you don't even sell to them. All you do is you just let them know what you can offer them, how it's relevant to what they need, and then tell them to go away and do their own research and find their own information, and you're here if they have any questions. And nine times out of ten, if your offer is good and it's good value and they like your work, they're going to end up hiring you 100%. Now, if we look at the last example of where to get new clients and how to get new clients, I personally think that this is probably one of the most effective, at least it's been for me. And it is ultimately to create educational, YouTube videos and content that answers your client's questions in video format. I have never really been that great a video and talking to the camera. I'm getting a little bit more comfortable with it, but it does take a little bit of time. But by you showcasing your expertise and showcasing maybe a walk through of how a client came to you with a very mediocre logo, and then you spruced up and made it look better and made it look good, and then that impacted their business in a positive way. By you making a video on that and showcasing the process, it's putting your client's mind at ease. Because if you think about the sales funnel, right, what is the sales funnel? Awareness, education, consideration, sale, after sales. Awareness. The client actually finds you, okay? How are they going to find you either social media, SEO or on YouTube. Now, the second step is education. You are educating them in regards to not just the fact that you know what you're talking about, but how you did it, okay? I am expert at brand design, and this is how I solve this problem for this other client who's similar to you. Now, at this point, the client's either going to do some research on you and figure out that you maybe not for them, or they're going to book a call with you a discovery call, a 15 minute chat where you just basically see if you're a good fit for each other. And this is ultimately the client considering you as a solution to their problem. And if they think that you're a good solution to their problem, will eventually put their money in their pocket and pull out cold hard cash and pay you for your services. So in summary, what do we need to do to attract new clients? First thing we can do is we can go on FIR and we can build a presence on there, okay? It takes a little bit of time, but we can do it. And it's all about getting that five star review. It is getting a little bit harder to do that now, but it is still very, very possible if you deliver a great amount of value. Secondly, social media. Create content that is similar to organic stuff, which is already getting traction in regards to the best logo designers out there, and then recreate it with your own projects and then maybe do some re brands of really famous companies out there so you can get a little bit of traction. So you're actually sure casing your expertise with brands that people already know, okay? The third thing is SEO. Write blog posts, write articles if you are good at that, okay? You can even get ChachiBT to create some articles for you. It's not that hard. Okay, give them a structure, give them a topic. They'll be able to write it out, tell them to make it unique and distinctive, or maybe give it a little bit of spin yourself and rewrite things a little bit. And then you have a brand new blog post which can rank on Google and get people to your website. And lastly, YouTube content. Take people through your process because people are looking for solutions to their problem, and if you can give them a solution to the problem, they are going to hire you to take that pain point away. So I hope you enjoyed this lesson and look forward to seeing you in the next one. I'll see you soon. 89. Chasing butterflies vs creating a beautiful garden: A quote that I absolutely love, and it's do not waste your time chasing butterflies. Instead, mend your garden and the butterflies will come. Now, this particular quote has been true in my life, at least in pretty much every single aspect, when it comes to dating, when it comes to building a group of friends, but especially in business. So what do I mean by that? It doesn't matter how hard you chase. You may eventually catch one butterfly, but the amount of energy that you expand to try and catch that butterfly is not going to be worth the catch anyway. And also, when you chase butterflies, you are constantly working hard for every single catch that you need to make. And I just never resonated with that. Even when I first started my business, I knew that the last thing I wanted to do was to, you know, call people up, call calling them, asking them if they needed brand identity design or logo development. It just didn't make any sense to me. So what I eventually realized that I've been doing all along was creating a beautiful garden because if you can create a beautiful garden, and what I mean by that is having great packages that people are attracted to, okay, kind of, like, you know, the flowers that butterflies want to come to having a great website, having a fantastic portfolio, being able to get the word out there so that people actually know about your garden or butterflies know about your garden, if we're still going on with this analogy, when you are thinking about building your business or just even a life in general, you are going to only attract the quality of client or people into your life that fits your current lifestyle, right? If you are, you know, unhealthy, if you don't respect yourself, if you are unhappy and a negative person over all, I've definitely met people like that in my life, you know, not many, thankfully. You know, a couple, you're going to attract a very similar type of person and type of clientele. But if you are optimistic, if you are looking to provide value in every way that you can, if you are always trying to be better than what you were yesterday. And if you can offer a reasonable solution to a pinpoint at a reasonable price and deliver value for that, then you will get clients, but you need to work on things like your portfolio, getting your website nice and clean by using the courses in this program, reaching out to me, to the team to get support to tidy up things and get things perfect because that is how you're going to be able to attract this higher level of clientele. That is how you're going to be able to attract the people and the clients that you actually want to work with over the long term, not just people who come to you once and then just never speak to you again. I honestly believe that spending the time in investing in yourself, in your own assets, like your website, like your social media, like content, like your portfolio, and making that the best that it can be instead of wasting time reaching out to clients, it just makes a ton of difference, both in the short term and especially in the long term. Now, in regards to catching up with clients, that is the one thing that I do. So how I kind of structure things is if I have a sales call with Peter last week, I will follow up on Monday of the next week and just pop in really quick email a little bit like this. So I will simply say, Hey, Peter, we had a call last week, and I just wanted to let you know that I've actually had a spot open up within my schedule for next week. I was wondering if you're still interested in working with us because I feel like we had a really great conversation, and if you'd like to work together, I'm sure we could work something out to get something in place. And what that does is, it basically confirms two things. One, it makes Peter feel special because I've thought about him when I obviously had the new opening open. Secondly, it gives him a timeline and a deadline to get back to me. If he doesn't have a timeline or a deadline to get back to me, he's just going to prolong it, and maybe he's going to end up choosing someone else by saying, Listen, I've got this opening next week. Otherwise, after that, it's probably not going to be a good case of us working together because I'm going to be extremely busy. If you can get back to me, pretty Pronto, I can fill that space up. If not, that's totally fine. Just let me know, and I'll pass that opportunity on to somebody else. That usually gets them to at least email you to either secure the place, which is usually around 90% of the time. Or 10% of the time, they'll just say, No, it's okay. I found someone else or I'm not interested anymore. And that's fine. At least you know that then. So yeah, I hope you enjoyed this little philosophy slash sales lesson, and I look forward to seeing you in the next one. I can't wait. See you soon. 90. Collecting high quality video social proof: So how do you get high quality video, social proof for your branding agency. This is, I think, genius. And the reason I think it's genius is because it works so well. When we go to websites, what do we always find ourselves looking at? The reviews. Now, the thing about written reviews is they're generally fake, right? You can get some reviews which are obviously genuine, but the majority of them are boked out or they're reworded or whatever, right? They're very hard to trust because they're so easy to manipulate. One thing, however, that is very difficult to manipulate is video. And the reason that I think I saw such a spike in my income was because I implemented video testimonials on my website. So how do I get them? Well, it's actually really simple. Let's say, for example, we've worked together on a project and we have, you know, had a really great experience. We're happy with each other. Everything's good. And then we have our post meeting call. Now there are so many different ways to arrange a post project call. Now, one thing that you shouldn't do is say that it's for sales, right, or to get a testimonial because that's going to make it inorganic. It's not going to be authentic, okay? So the best way to do it is to look at maybe saying, Okay, I just want to make sure your brand guidelines and everything are up to date. I want to make sure that you understand everything. I want to make sure you understand how to use everything. Or, for example, if the client is really adamant about doing a website design after they've actually worked with you, you could say, I actually have some websites which I'd love to just go through with you if that's okay, just to kind of give you some pointers on what to look out for and how to arrange it. Whether we end up working together in regards to website development, it's absolutely fine. I just want to make sure that whatever you do with whoever you do it with, I want to make sure that you are fully informed and prepared. Is that okay? Book a 15 minute call in, and we'll have a quick chat. The trick is getting them on the call. So just make sure that you get someone on the call at some point after you finish the project so that they are happy, and you can chat with them about it. So you've got them on the call. What's the next step? How do you get them to leave an organic testimonial? Super simple. So we're having a sales call and we're talking about something. You add a little bit of value. You're really applied to them. You tell them how awesome it was to work with them. Before you say, By the way, Peter, just out of curiosity, I'm always wanting to improve, I was wondering, first and foremost, how did you find our process and working with me? And also, what was the highlight of working with me? Then put your mic on mute. Obviously, make sure you're recording this, okay? And what you'll find is you will find that the clients, after you've just told them how awesome they were to work we'll repair the fever, right? This is like basic neurology, right? We want to give back to what we receive, okay? So if someone's nice to us, we'll be nice back to them. And they will talk for about three or 4 minutes about how absolutely awesome you want to work with, how happy they were about everything. And then they'll say, and the highlight for me was X Y Z. You were always on time. You always added more than what we expected. You gave your own feedback for us to think about when we were developing the logo, the brand, et cetera. This is gold. Absolute gold. As a brand designer, you cannot have anything better than a testimonial in video format of a happy clown telling people how great you are in an authentic and organic way. It's not like that reading from a script, because it's organic and because they are talking to you like a person, it sounds more authentic and it's more persuasive into letting other people know this person knows what they're talking about. Look at these Look at all these happy clients. And if you do that over time, if you get like 30 of those, like from 30 clients, you've got 30 people with 30 projects and case studies on your portfolio, you will never have to worry about money ever again. Trust me, you will never have to worry about money ever again. There are pretty much no other branding agencies on the planet doing this. I don't know of any. I've looked at millions of websites, and I've never seen one. This is the one thing that I think helps me charge a lot more than a lot of other brand designers out there, and it's all because I do this one simple thing. I get video testimonials from every single client. And in my terms and conditions, when they work with me, they agree that any content that I create throughout the project can be posted on the website and used for marketing material. So, say, for example, if they get back to me and they say, Scott, I just saw my video on the website. Can you take it down, please? No problem. Took them. No issues. But if they don't say anything or if they don't know, then it's up there, and it's all covered in the terms and conditions. So if you can do this one simple thing, do it because it's going to help you build credibility and trust within your business instantly with new potential clients. So I hope you enjoy that little tip, and I'll see you in the next lesson. 91. How to get referrals from clients: Two ways to get referrals from clients. Well, two things that you have to do if you want to get referrals from clients. And to be honest, you don't even need to do two of them. You just need to do one of them. But if you do both of them, it's probably going to be a lot better. So first thing that you need to do is you need to give a ****, right? This goes without saying, If you provide a grit service and you can actually care about the client and go above and beyond and exceed expectation, the client is going to want to share you with their friends and people that they know. How do I know this? Well, let me tell you why. Because when a client is sharing you with one of their friends or someone that they care about or someone that it matters if they actually refer you to them because if you don't provide a great service to them, their reputation is going to be damaged. So let's say, for example, you refer a friend to a restaurant and they have a terrible time. That friends going to hate you. Well, they may not hate you, but they're not going to take any of your advice anymore, and they're probably not going to invite you to their barbecue next week. So you need to make sure that you provide a great service. First and foremost, that's the foundation. That's the entry ticket, right? Next is you need to set up a system. System to follow up. So, for example, at the end of every client project, when all said and done and we've had a good time together, I then set up a six month referral follow up. And this could be to sell to that existing client and also to refer to a friend. So this is how the process usually goes. We finish the project, and I'll say, Thank you so much for being such a pleasure to work with. By the way, if there's any friends or family or other people who you know who might benefit from what we do, feel free to put them in touch with us, and I'll take care of you the next time we work together. So that's the first kind of follow up that I do after the project is finished. Then what I'll do is six months after that, I'll follow up again, and I'll say, Hey, David, it was absolutely great working with you six months ago. Just wanted to check in to see how things were. By the way, I'm also currently offering organic social media content creation. If you are interested in that sort of thing, and if you want to really get the most out of your social media, I'm happy to do a little trial run with you just to see if we're a good fit for each other. By the way, if that's not the case and you don't want any help with that, if you have anybody else who is maybe looking at this particular area and they have that particular problem, I'm more than happy to help them, as well. Whatever helps. I just want to be as supportive as possible. And the reason that this works, and not a lot of people do it is they do not set up a system to follow up. They just forget about it, and they're just like, Okay, I need to work on the current clients that I've currently got because those are the priority. They are the priority, but you also need to build up business from other past clients as well, because they already trust you already done business with you. They know that you are good at what you do. Therefore, you can sell more stuff to them to help them get a better result. And this is the whole game. It's not about getting as many clients as possible. It's about building a business around an existing customer base that trusts you already and that already know that you're good at what you do. And this also leads into the next lesson of the code, which is all about the halo effect. So I'll talk about that in a little bit, and I'll see you very soon. 92. Pricing your services strategically: Okay, so how do you price your services and your solutions strategically? I have a single approach, which has worked for me for the past decade, which I want to share with you so that you can figure out how you want to do things, but this is how I do things, and it's been working for me absolutely fine. So if we go to my Clementine house website, you see here, I have three separate packages. The reason I have three is if you have any more for a particular service or product, it starts to get a little bit overwhelming. Three is the maximum. Try not to do any more than that. Now, with the three packages, I have one package, which is the entry package, one package, which is the package I pretty much always want people to get because it looks like the best value and then I have the pro package. The pro package is an anchor package. So what do I mean by that? An anchor package is essentially a package that makes the other packages look like far better value. For example, if I had this package as 2,500, it would make this package and this package look relatively the same in regards to comparison, right? However, because this one is more than double this package here, it's kind of around 2.3 times roughly give or take. It makes this package look like far better value because you are getting four extra elements, which this is still great value, as well, by the way, but it just makes this one look far easier on the wallet, okay? And this is basically called anchor pricing. You can do more research on it if you want to kind of know the intricacies, but this is basically what some retail spaces do when they are selling really expensive products. For example, they might put a really expensive handbag, which is like $30,000 next to another handbag, which is $7,000, making the $7,000 handbag look far more reasonable when actually it's just next to something which is far more superior and far more expensive. It helps to make the product that you really want to sell people look far more affordable and relative to the cost. Now, another thing which I've added to my pricing strategy, which I would advise you to do as well, because it increases LTV is to add an additional option. So my additional option is the brand accelerator. So I have four different types of services, brand naming, brand identity, strategy, and website development. The brand accelerator program brings everything to one, okay? So, for example, if we go down, the start of Essentials package is 3,750, which is kind of the minimum fee that I will take for the Brand accelerator program, anything less than that, and it's not really going to work. And to be honest, I don't really work with clients on single projects anymore. It's very, very rare to be honest. Unless I really want to use it for my portfolio. I would rather just save the time maybe spend more time with family or just wait for someone to come and inquire about the startup accelerator program, to be honest, because it's just a lot more money and a lot less time and a lot less effort. Now, in regards to the startup essentials package, it includes brand strategy, brand naming, and visual identity. But the trick is, the cost of these services separately for the pro packages would cost far more. So the cost of each of these services, which are included in this package, the $3,750 package, bought separately, would cost around 5,300. So you're saving 2000 just under $2,000 just on securing the startup Essentials package. And then I make it even more desirable by breaking down this service into three separate payments. So, for example, if you wanted to take this package, you appear 1,250 for this package, and then you pay 1,250 for this package and then 1,250 for this package. And for example, the pro package on the naming package is actually 2,295. So you're saving like a grand more than $1,000 before you even start the logo development stage. Even more because the brand strategy is actually $1,700, I think, and you're only paying $1,250. So hopefully now you can see that by using price anchoring and creating a perceived value for your service, you can create more value for the clients while selling the same service, okay? I am now selling, instead of just selling brand naming to somebody for 2,295, for an extra $300, you can get brand strategy and brand naming. It takes me the same amount of time, basically, but I can offer more value to the client to help to spend more time with them, to then build more rapport, to then sell them more services later on, and to ultimately get them a better result because you're not going to get as good a result if you don't do the strategy, because then you don't have the positioning, therefore, you're not going to have the clarity to be able to create a really great brand story. It's all about providing the most value to the client, but you have to sometimes, again, give them what they need instead of just what they want because what they want isn't necessarily always the best thing. So I hope you found this lesson helpful in regards to strategic pricing, but you have any questions in regards to your own pricing, your own packages, your own solutions, let me know. Pop me an email. I'm here to support. Always. Anyway, I'll see you in the next lesson. 93. How to get paid upfront 100% every time: To get paid upfront every time from a client. So, this is a situation which I need to reflect on a little bit, because when I was first in business, I didn't always get paid upfront. The only time you can get paid upfront is when you have enough credibility, and you have those video reviews that I was talking about before earlier in the course. Now, one of the things that I use to get paid upfront is to, in my terms and conditions, have a clause which basically says that any packages under $3,000 or $5,000, whatever number is relevant to your particular pricing, that is paid upfront before the project starts. And yes, I have probably lost a good amount of money from charging 100% upfront for my services. But the reality is that I would rather lose that money than gain the stress of not getting paid because there's nothing worse than and I've had this done to me in the past. There's nothing worse than a client saying, No, I'm not paying you the other 50% or I'm not paying you the extra 30% or whatever. Once you've did all the work and went above and beyond for them, it really, really annoys me when a client does that. There's one client in particular that did that with quite a large sum, and that is when I stopped doing it, and I literally vowed to never, ever charge less than 100% upfront ever again. And the reason I do this is it adds so much clarity and it helps you to just enjoy the project, and it also helps you to actually service the client better because you are not worrying about getting paid at the end. If you get paid 100% upfront, you could literally just deliver something and just walk away. It requires an incredible amount of integrity to continue to go above and beyond for a client with the first project that you work with together because that is going to help you to build a trust that you didn't even need to do that. You didn't need to do that extra logo design. You didn't need to have that extra meeting with me. You had my money. You didn't have to treat me like royalty, but you did. You did because you are a good person because you were a good business person, because you want to provide value. That is going to build a trust and build a reliability with that client that they know that you are always going to take care of. If they pay 100% upfront, you're still going to be there to help them. And by the way, this is probably one of the most valuable lessons that I can teach anyone is that when you come across a client who is kind of a little bit apprehensive and they're not quite sure if they want to work with you, and they want to pay like 50% upfront, then maybe an extra 25%, blah, blahdy blah, more time and effort getting payments. So you have to email them to actually get the payments, then you have to worry if they're actually going to, you know, turn up and deliver and pay the actual thing. Secondly, they are going to work you to the bone and take up ten times more time than the average client who just pays upfront because they want to squeeze you for as much time as possible. It's the clients who pay upfront, they understand and trust you and they are not trying to just squeeze you for every single minute that you have in the day. They're not trying to get extra things from you. But let's face it, let's say a client has 25% left to pay, and they say, Oh Scott, by the way, I really need business cards for my branding. Can you arrange them for me? And just before I pay that 25%, you're going to give them the business cards, right? You're going to do that for them. The reality is, if you put a hard stop and say, Listen, this is my terms. If you don't want to do that and you don't want to work with I completely understand. I can refer you to five other designers that I'm sure will be happy to help you pay in ten installments, right? $100 each. Ridiculous, right? It is your decision, whether you want to be paid upfront or whether you want to be paid in installments. If you paid in installments, you'll probably get an extra one or two clients a month, maybe, right? But I can tell you, those two clients are going to be as big of a headache as all of your other clients combined. I can guarantee you that. If you don't believe me, test it for yourself and see how that goes. But anyway, I hope you enjoy this quick lesson, and I look forward to seeing you in the next phase of the course. I'll see you soon. 94. Watch this if you aren't confident selling your brand design service: So you aren't confident selling your brand design services. Let me give you a few words of advice. Is that okay? So I originally wasn't very good at sales. I wasn't would probably say, I'm better at sales now than I am at designing. And that just means that I am more comfortable selling than I actually am designing in some cases. And that's because I've sold a lot of product, a lot of product, whether it be brand design services, but also products before hand when I was actually learning about sales by working in different sales companies. Now, the reality is that even the most mediocre designer like me, I don't think I'm the best designer out there. I believe I'm just slightly maybe average or slightly above average, simply because I've had a lot of experience over the past decade. But I'm not the best designer in the world. By a long shot, there are much better designers out there, but do they know how to sell? That's a difference. I have probably beaten a lot of designers, two projects and one the projects, not by being the best designer, but by being the best at providing a solution and communicating effectively. And you can do the same. It is not difficult. But what you do need to do is you need to understand that sales and becoming confident in your sales process is going to take a little bit of time, okay? Do not expect to be slick and perfect from day one, okay? It took me time to understand how to build the perfect pitch sales flow that I've just shown you in the previous lesson. It takes time to structure your sales call and to understand what works for you and what doesn't work for you. And this is one of the things which has opened my eyes massively. It's not always about the product. It's sometimes just about how you communicate it, okay? So, three little tips for you. Number one, try to understand that your client is also probably a little bit anxious on the call most of the time. So you're both in the same boat. So you're both feeling a little bit unnervy because you've never spoke to this person. Be personable. Say, Hey, how are you? How's your day going? Blah blah, blah, blah. Okay. By the way, how do I pronounce your name again? Is it like this? Yeah. Okay, perfect. Okay, let's go. Let's go on. Be a little bit down to earth and don't try to be all kind of, like, you know, proud and pretentious and all that sort of stuff. It never works. Do not do that. It's just off putting and kind of icky, alright? Secondly, you don't even have to sell. I've never sold a service in the past ten years, basically. I always just say to clients. Okay, you know, you've got all the information. Have you got all your questions answered? Perfect. Let me know if you want to go ahead. When you want to go ahead, let me know and I'll check my schedule. Let me ask you a question. When have you ever went into a luxury store or a high end store that sells luxury products, and the salesperson's been really trying to sell you like, Oh, you should really buy this. Like, Yeah, yeah, we've got a discount, blah blah. Never works. Never works. And the reason it doesn't work, especially with high end product, is because if it was so high end and it was so desirable, people would want it and it wouldn't be there. So what you have to do is you need to play around with supply and demand. I'll come to that a little bit later, but it's really important. You need to give them the information and then leave them on the cliffhanger of let me know when you're ready to go ahead and I'll check my schedule. And then when they eventually get to hire you, they feel like the lucky one. And then, thirdly, the reason that you don't feel confident is because you don't understand sales, okay? Now, I am going to if you guys want it, I can share real sales calls on this course. So you can actually have real full length sales calls with zero edits, or if you want edits, let me know, actually, so I can kind of arrange them to save you guys some time because some of them are like 45 minutes, which obviously a lot of time. I want to make sure that you have all the support that you need. But ultimately, you are not confident until you see or until you actually practice your sales call, okay? I used to practice in the car on the way to work sometimes. I used to practice my pitch, my intro, my objections, right? I used to literally have objections written down and I'd say, Okay, this is what I say. This is what I save to do this. This is what I save to do that. And I have this practiced, rehearsed script, which can work for literally any type of business, but it works because I've practiced it, and I'm confident in my delivery when I'm actually speaking to the client. And also, as well, being confident comes with practice. If you practice enough, you will become fluent in the language of sales. And it's completely different than just taking a sales call and hoping for the best. Managing the sale and guiding the client and having them feel like they're being managed and guided through the process, it's going to help you to get that client's trust and look reliable from the get go. So anyway, I hope you find this helpful, and I look forward to seeing you in the next one. See you. 95. Leveraging supply & demand: Supply and demand, one of my favorite topics. I think I actually like the concept of running a brand design agency potentially more than actual design itself. And I love design, but I love business. I love the inner workings of how a business works, how you persuade someone to work with you when there's tons of other options out there and just being clever with how you do things. So this is a supply and demand graph or a visual expression of what supply and demand is, okay? Let me explain what it is first, and then we'll dive into how you can use it for your business. So really simply, this blue line here, dictates the amount of supply that you can offer to the market, okay? So this is the amount of clients that you can work with. So maybe this is like 40 clients, and this is maybe one client, right? You get the idea. This is the amount of demand that there is out there for your services. Now, this demand is going to be dictated by a couple of things, but most importantly, it's going to be how you sell your service and the level of your service, okay? So, for example, if you have an incredible portfolio, a lot of people are going to want to work with. If you have an amazing portfolio, but no one knows about you, obviously, demand is going to be down here because nobody knows about you, so there's no demand. If you have a reasonable amount of demand and your portfolio is decent, you're going to be around here. Or if your portfolio is really good, it's going to be up here, okay? Now, here's where things get interesting. This graph here or this axis is essentially the amount of money that you can charge, okay? So, for example, if you have a reasonable amount of demand, a high amount of demand, you can charge more. However, this here it's the quantity, so the quantity of clients that you are going to close and work with, okay? So say, for example, this is around 40, and this is around one, okay? So again, just to help you understand the overall graph, when you are building your brand design agency, at the very beginning, you are going to be low on demand and you're going to have to be fairly reasonable immigrants to supply or supply quite a lot because then that's going to allow you, okay? To work with a lot of clients and ultimately make a good amount of money, but you're going to have to do a lot of projects, okay? Because you can't charge as much because your actual, service is not great yet, okay? So you're going to be roughly around here. So you're going to have to supply quite a lot, and you're going to ultimately have to charge. Unless your portfolio is incredible, by the way. If it is great, then, you know, you can have a completely different story, and you can start up here somewhere. But for most people, you're going to have to start by refining your portfolio and getting things in place first, okay? Now, the trick is to get from here to around about here. And what happens here is your life gets a lot better. That's what happens, okay? So here, you're busy, you're working with a lot of projects, you're managing lots of things, but you're getting a lot of experience, and your portfolio is slowly but surely getting better and bigger. When you start to work with less clients, you limit the supply, but because you're limiting the supply, the demand for your services naturally increases, allowing you to work with less clients, okay? So you're working with less clients. Instead of working with, you know, 15 clients a month, like you were before here, now you're working with maybe ten clients a month, and your services are better. Your actual portfolio is better, so you can charge more, okay? So maybe you're making the same amount in regards to pricing. But you are working with far less clients. And that, my friends, is where things start to get very interesting. Okay? Because then what you can do is you can artificially increase demand by limiting the supply. And all you do is you simply just reduce the amount of clients that you work with, so the quantity and the supply, which pushes up demand, which allows you to charge more. It's really as simple as that. So now you're up to this stage. So you were actually making more from working with less clients, which is what I basically do. I charge a fair amount you've seen my pricing. You can go to clementinhouse.com and check out my pricing. When you charge a large amount for just four clients per month, it helps you to ultimately justify your pricing is. And I only work with four clients per month. That's it. After that, that's it. I don't work with anymore. I don't work with any less. I have a waiting list and I actually show people this. I'll be on a sales call, then I'll actually go to this particular page, and I'll say, Yeah, so these are all the clients that we've got in play right now, and we also have a waiting list of all of these people who are waiting to work with us. I'm not being nasty by non accepting these projects. All I'm saying is, you know, I'm not really that interested in the project to be completely brutally honest. That is something that I use pretty much on a daily basis with sales calls. I go through this exact process of telling people that I only work with four clients per month. And I literally use this exact strategy every single week, every single day on my business, limiting quantity so that I can raise my prices, okay? Now, you can kind of work your way anywhere on this graph as you want, but that is ultimately the journey that I think a lot of brand designers need to take because at the very beginning, you don't have any evidence, and it's really hard to get evidence and, you know, examples of your work. So you either have to make up the brand yourself and do kind of a mock up of a brand that you've just made up, or you can actually create a project for a client for either free or for a super cheap price, but you have to earn a living by working with a lot of clients, but then slowly, but surely, you start to creep up the demand cycle because your work begins to get good, and then you can start to increase demand artificially by limiting supply and only working with a small number of clients and making sure your clients know about that because that's going to make them desire you more, okay? Hopefully, you found this lesson helpful. I certainly find this model extremely helpful to help me build my business and get new clients. So hopefully it helps you, as well, and I'll see you in the next one. See you. 96. Getting clients to book discovery calls so you can sell to them: A discovery call is the first step you need every single client to take so you can sell your services and ultimately get them to hire you, okay? And in this video, I'm going to show you how I get my clients to book discovery calls in an automated fashion so that I don't even have to lift a finger, and I just automatically get them put into my diary pretty much on a daily basis. So to understand this, we first need to go to my website. Now, with my website, as I've mentioned previously, in my videos on the website development course, which I pointed you to earlier on in this program, the website should have a single objective, okay? Other supporting objectives, like, for example, educating the clients and showcasing your packages and stuff. But the main objective is to book a discovery call. Okay? So for example, when we come to our homepage, you'll see here, there's lots of different buttons saying unlock your brand's potential. That's super important because as a CTA, I'm not saying Book or Discovery call, I'm linking this button to the aspiration of the person who's wanting to book the call, okay? So instead of just saying Book or Discovery call, what's a discovery call, unlock your brand's potential. Your brand has potential, let's unlock it. The use of the language and the CTA is super, super important, so feel free to steal that. Now, when they click this button, it takes them to calendly. Now, and is ultimately a platform where you can get people to book an automated call with you. I think it's free for one event, so you can actually just set the sup completely free of charge. As far as I know, at least the last time I checked, I actually pay for a most basic package because I have multiple events and I kind of have it across different websites and different businesses. But ultimately, this here is a case of setting up a 15 minute call with the client. Now, there's some very important things here which I need to note. When getting people to book calls. And these calls are linked everywhere. They're on my Fiber profile. Okay? So for example, when you are getting people to contact you on Fiber and someone contacts me on FIR, they get an automated message saying, I'm really busy with other projects, but if you want to book a discovery call, that's the first step to work with me, and I'll see if we're a good fit, and then we'll decide from there. I do not even answer a message on fiber unless they bub a discovery call. If they want to work with me and they're serious, they'll book a discovery want to go back and forward with, like, 2040 messages on fiber, you're not for me, right? I haven't got time to go back and forward with tons of messages on fiber. But go discover you call we can have a 50 minute conversation, get things done, see if we're a good fit. If we're not, then how, if we are, then we'll discuss it more, okay? You don't want to waste your time with tons of clients who are trying to, like, blood suck you and, you know, kick tires. It does not make any sense. Be ruthless with your time. And protect your time at all costs. Now, obviously, make sure there's a nice picture, obviously, make sure that your name and stuff is professional. Brand discovery call 15 minutes. Simple. Here's where things get interesting. Something that I learned when I was kind of structuring my time, and I've tried tons of different ways to do this. No, I always like to set my appointments later on in the day for that single reason. I do not want to be in and out of meetings all day. I want to make sure that I'm effective with my time and efficient with my matings. So I'll get all my work done in the morning, and then in the evening, I'll have a couple of sales calls from anywhere between 5:00 P.M. To maybe nine or maybe even 10:00 P.M. In some cases, like, I have a meeting tomorrow with a past client who I've worked with a couple of times before. Now, something really important to point out is once you kind of arrange your times and stuff, and if you want a lesson on how to actually set up calently from start to finish, let me know, and I can add this to the course. But ultimately, one thing that is really important to do is just to give an inside immigrants to what the meetings about, what we can cover, okay? Then something that's super important because I used to have a lot of clients who would, like, book a call and then just completely ignore me when I try to get in touch with them in regards to actually turning up for the call itself. I used to really get annoyed with that. So I put this in the terms and conditions, which basically says, very important note. This is a complimentary service which we provide in order to help businesses to give brands the best t possible. If you do not show up for the book meeting, without notifying at least 1 hour beforehand, all communications via video call will be charged at $400 per hour at that point. So if they don't turn up for the first call, and they do not take it seriously, then it's $400 an hour. Any communication after that via a sales call is $400 an hour. And I couldn't give a toss if they don't turn up for that meeting, and then they try to expect and come up with some useless excuse. It's all nonsense, okay? You would at least let me know, or you would at least, you know, cancel the meeting via your diary. The fact of the matter is, if they are willing to disrespect you and treat you badly, yes, sometimes things come up and you can give them a little bit of, you know, leeway if you really want to, but if they treat you badly at this stage of the process, when you're first getting to know each other and you're trying to be respectful to each other, what are they going to treat you like afterwards when they actually work with you and they're trying to free things out of you and all that sort of stuff. Those types of people I know got to work with, trust me. If you do not 100%, intend to show up for the meeting, please wait until you are ready to leave the spot open for someone else. So, again, I haven't got 1 million, you know, slots available. If someone ends up booking a meeting, we end up usually talking for around 30 minutes to 45 minutes if it's a good meeting. So at the end of the day, it's just really important that they respect your time and they know that you're not here to screw around. You are there to help them, but you're not going to be disrespected. You wouldn't walk into a doctor's office and disrespect them and waste their 45 minutes, right? So don't disrespect my time because it's not going to happen. Okay, so anyone abuses the appointment system, will not be allowed to book appointments in future and will not be able to work with us due to internal values and policies. I know this may seem harsh, but we put this time aside to support businesses with our expertise to progress. So we have to make sure we are as impactful as possible with our time. It's not being unfair. It's just being polite and upfront, okay? This is how we work. If you don't want to work like that, there's plenty of other businesses out there that will love your business, or maybe not. But that is ultimately where I send all of my leads everywhere, from my email address. There's the one in my signature, from my fiber account. There's one there. From all of my social media channels, there's a link to book a call there. From every single touch point out there with my business, with me personally as a personal brand, it is out there already. And you can literally go out and you can get it and you can book a call. And I have people who book calls even just to get advice, right? From a business standpoint. And yeah, they're not going to be clients, but I I'll take 15 minutes out of my day, you know, to have a quick chat and to try and give some, you know, advice. I have also had people who have booked it, and then, like, they've tried to ask me, like, a ton of questions. Like, they've actually tried to keep me on the call for longer than the 15 minutes and just basically pick my brain for, like, longer than necessary. That isn't going to fly. I just like if they really become kind of, you know, a little bit rude, I just end up saying, Listen, I've got to go, I've got stuff to do, because the thing that's important is when you are having these calls, if it's going to benefit you and it's going to actually help you drive the business forward and you feel like it's a good fit, stay on a call for an hour if you really want to, right? But if you don't think it's going to serve you and it's just not the right fit, be upfront and polite and just say, Listen, I don't think this is for me, but what I can do is I can refer you to someone else who I think is going to be a better fit for you. Is that okay? I just want to make sure you're taken care of. That's it. That's what you need. So ultimately, I think this is going to be a really good thing for you to set up as soon as possible and then connect that to your website to connect that to your email signature, get people having conversations with you. Super important to do that because it allows you to practice your sales skills. It also allows you to get better at communicating with people and communicating your services. Okay, so hopefully this was helpful. If you have any questions or you want anything else, more grass to guidance with calenty, please let me know I'm here to help, ok? I'll see you in the next lesson. 97. What is the halo effect: So what is the ho effect? Well, the ho effect is this little clever thing that I have benefited from for the past ten years. And it's essentially when a client works with you in regards to one aspect of branding or design, and then they assume that you're gritted everything, the ho effect. Hopefully, that makes sense. I've had so many clients who have worked with me in regards to brand naming in regards to logo design as a specific single project. And then they thought, Wow, this guy really knows his ****. He really knows what he's talking about. What else do you do? I do websites. I do brand strategy, I do marketing. I do lots of different things. I can do packaging design. That just helps me to create extra additional streams of revenue and increase the CTV of every single clime that I work with. The lifetime value that I can provide to the clien and the lifetime income that I can bring in from that client is increased astronomically by me simply using the halo effect to my advantage. So always try to over deliver in every aspect at every single level of the brand development process and also let clients know that you do do other stuff as well, whether that be on your website, whether that be in an email, just say, by the way. If you are needing any of these services, even if we don't work together, I'm more than happy to give you some insight and give you some advice on how to approach them because I do this with my clients every single day. Here's some examples of my work. The last thing a client wants is for you to kind of actually sell them on the thing. But what you can do is you can see, I'm an expert in this particular thing. I'm more than happy to support and help you in this particular area. But even if you don't want to work with I'm more than happy to have a 15 minute call with you to go through how I've helped others. This is basically just selling, but indirectly. You're basically just answering their question of, does he actually know what he's talking about in an indirect way? And this is literally one of the smartest ways to actually sell your product or service without actually selling it directly and being kind of a slimy salesman, ultimately. So hopefully, you found this lesson helpful, and I will see you in the next month. See you soon. 98. Onboarding client checklist: So how do you on board a new client? Well, there are a few things that you should have in place, which are actually included in the Brand Designer Pro to help you to have a nice smooth experience with the client. Now, the first thing you should do before you even start the project is to outline exactly how the process is going to go. This means talking to the client in a meeting and basically saying, Okay, this is the timeline. This can be done by simply sending a welcome email, outlining the project. Estimated deadlines and also costs. By outlining everything upfront in one single email, you are able to then refer back to it, I say, for example, the client takes five days to get back to you and expects the deadline to still stay the same for the next stage of the project. This email should also clearly outline the exact dates and the exact times when payments are due. These payment terms and these deadlines should be really easy to understand and add clarity to the situation. Now, once you've sent this email and once everything's approved, then arrange the agreement or contract. Now within Brand Designer Pro, we have an agreement in place where you can ultimately download it and edit it to your own needs and requirements. And the only advice I can give you when crafting an agreement and that welcome email is to make everything super easier to understand so everyone's on the same page so that when you actually start the project, you can just focus on doing great work. Having a really strong onboarding process can just help to make your life a ton easier when you actually start the process of developing the brand and obviously working with the client. So just make sure you take this into consideration before you actually start working with the client. It's going to save you a ton of fasle anyway. I will see you in the next video. 99. Automating client meeting bookings: Okay, so how do you automate clients booking calls with you? Now, this can be done in a really simple way, and it's used using this tool called Calendly. Now, I think Calendly is actually free up to a certain point, so you can do two of these events without actually paying anything, which I think is really great if you're just starting out. Now, personally, for me, at this point, I have tons of different types of meetings and different businesses that I need to create those meetings for. So I need a lot more than just two events at this point. Now, for you, just to start off, the one thing that you need is a brand discovery call. And all I do is just create one event with brand discovery call as the name and then ask a couple of questions based on what they actually want to talk to me about. It's essentially here to make sure that the client knows that my time is not to be wasted, and if you do not show up for the meeting, then essentially every communication after that will be $400 per hour. Now, the questions that I actually ask every client when they is really simple. And at this point, I don't really need to know a ton about the project or budgets or anything like that. All I do is just get the name, the email, and then also just a brief insight emigrat to what they would like to discuss with me. At this point, I'm not really interested in the intricate details of the project. All I care about is the main sticking points and the main challenges that the client is currently facing. And to create a new event is not actually that difficult. You simply just go to create, then event type, and then you would put one on one meeting, and then you would just simply put host, which is me. And then, as you can see here, you can choose a different color. You just add event name, the duration, where it's going to be held, and then press Continue. Then it's going to ask you a couple of questions such as, what is the actual event about? So describe the actual event. When can people actually book the events? So, for example, here, I have a 60 day window where people can book meetings anytime from now until 60 days' time. You should also then set your accommodating hours. Now, you can set that within the actual event. But I think what's actually a little bit easier is if you just set an overall availability because what happens then is, if you set your availability here for every day of the week, you can do it by literally changing every single Tuesday, every single Wednesday, hurday Friday, et cetera, et cetera, or if you have something special on a particular day that you do not want to miss, then you can just delete the entirety of your availability for that day. And by setting you availability in this way, it means that any events going forward will also adhere to this particular availability. Now, as I said before, the links to my different events in currently can be found in multiple different places, mostly in my website, in my fiber account, and also in my email signature. And I basically use these links to help me to connect with different clients at different times. So, for example, here, if someone wanted to book a call with me, they would simply just have to use this link, which is, again, scattered around on my different assets online. They can literally book a discovery call with me within a click of a button. This just helps clients to connect with you super fast and with great ease. There's nothing better than having a one on one conversation with a client. Now, you could say that some clients may take advantage of this and just book calls. I've actually just had a client this morning try to book a call and kind of take advantage of the system. In that case, it's really simple. All you say is you just cancel the meeting on your diary and say, Listen, I'm really sorry, but I'm a little bit stacked this week. Feel free to pop me an email, and I'll get those changes done for you or get back to you as soon as possible. One thing to keep in mind is when you're actually creating a system with booking your meetings automatically and obviously connecting with clients. Do not feel bad about moving dates around and obviously accommodating your own life. At the end of the day, the clients just booking what's best for them. If you need to move things around slightly, try not to do it, but if you do need to do it or you just feel like they're taking advantage of the calling process, then feel free to delete that. You cannot let people take your time and abuse it. Anyway, I hope this was helpful. I will see you in the next video. 100. What questions should you ask in your first strategic creative session: Okay, so what question should you ask in your first meeting with the client? Now, I actually covered this in the pitch perfect sales floor lesson a little bit earlier on in this course. But what I want to cover in this particular lesson are the things and the details and the information that I need as ear brand designer to create a really great experience for my client. And this particular call is a strategic call. So this is pretty much the call like they have with you. When they secured the package. Okay? So this is going to be a much lengthier call, maybe around 45 minutes to an hour in my experience, and it just helps to cover some of the core things so that you can understand the business in a really clear way. And the first thing that I personally always ask is, just tell me about the business, tell me about what you're wanting to achieve, and tell me what you have in place so far and the challenges that you're facing. This is going to give you a brief understanding of the market that they're in, what their main challenges are from a personal standpoint as a founder. Also why you could potentially help them. The next thing I'm going to ask is about their target audience. So I want to understand the types of people and the types of audiences that the client is looking to attract and connect with. And by the way, if you actually want an outline of the exact questions that I ask clients during every single strategic meeting, pop me over a quick email and I'll make sure that I get it sent to you as soon as possible. With target audiences, most clients don't have a really clear idea with the types of people that they're trying to connect with. So this is actually something that you can add from a value standpoint. You can add that clarity. You can make sure that they are focusing on the clients and the potential customers that are going to have more disposable income, that are going to connect better with what they actually have to offer, which leads me on to the next topic of conversation, which is competition. So who are the competitors out there who are trying to sell the same thing as you? What are they doing differently? How are they positioned in the market? We need to discuss this or at least get some information so we can go away and do some research afterwards so we can understand exactly how to create a brand identity which is going to stand out in that particular market. Now, once you've got those core things in place, the next step is to kind of have a little bit of fun, to be honest. I really like these two questions because the first one is, Listen, you're building this brand. It obviously means a lot to you. What is the story behind this brand? Like, what is the thing that you want to achieve with this brand? Is it just revenue and financial incentives or is there a story behind the brand that we can really tie into the brand identity to really communicate what makes you guys so special? And when you do this, always happens to light up the client. Like, the client's eyes just light up they're like, Right, okay, so I'm actually really interested in sustainability and helping make the world a better place, et cetera, et cetera. And this can just help to warm the client up to you a little bit, which leads me up to the last question, which I always like to leave until the end because it's pretty much the one that leaves the client feeling quite good about themselves is, okay, from a strategic standpoint, we can make suggestions and obviously design things which are going to help you to stand out in your market and connect with your target audience, which is great. What about your personal preferences? What types of colors do you like? What types of fonts do you like? So, for example, we might not use the exact blue or the exact font that you like. What we can potentially do is say, I really like how you chose blue I actually think it could work. What do you think about using this option, which is a little bit more sophisticated. It isn't as playful, and it just gives you a little bit more elegance, because that fits with the target audience that you're trying to attract. Does that sound good? And if you can do that, and if you can kind of make these little adjustments, you're merging and harmonizing the two areas of what makes a brand identity so special to a founder, what they are like personally, and what can work strategically? Because if it was just about giving them what they wanted, then they would just do it themselves, right? If they knew how to use Illustrator or they could just hire someone on five for like $10, but the reality is that you have to bring your strategic expertise and your research to the plate to help them make better decisions, whether it be color, typography, the actual design of the overall logo, adding graphics, all that good stuff. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this lesson, and I look forward to seeing you in the next one. See you soon. 101. Creating brand design packages that are hard to resist: So how do you create packages that are really hard to refuse as a client? This is one of my favorite parts of actually owning a brand design agency or just any type of business. Pricing effectively to maximize profit and minimize on the amount of investment that I have to put in from a time standpoint, okay? I'm going to go through each of these packages with you and also an email from a client which is kind of going to tie everything up really nicely and just confirm the strategies I'm about to tell you, okay? So I always like to give clients three options, okay? Three options, no more, no less, okay? Say, for example, we are talking about brand naming at the moment, at the date of recording this, which is 11 February 2025 at 9:24 in the morning, we are price currently like this. Could change. If I start to lean more outside of Clementine House and I want to free up more time and I want to reduce the demand, then I'll just put my prices up. No problem at all. I can do that. And the reason I would do that is if I want to spend more time either with family or if I want to spend more time on other businesses or I want to do something different or I just want to take a break. I'll put my prices up so that I attract a higher level of clientele, and I also end basically working with less clients. I don't want to work with tons of clients all the time. Sometimes, if I really want to, you know, get some money in the bank and I want to spend, you know, an incredible amount of time working, maybe my wife is on holiday or something. I don't know. Why wouldn't she be on holiday without me, obviously. But if I have lots of spare time within, like, a week or something, I'll put my prices down very slightly, and it'll increase demand, and then obviously, we'll just book that week out. Usually, I'm pretty much booked up anyway for at least a month or two in advance. Just gives you an idea in regards to how you can kind of adjust pricing, and I wouldn't kind of fiddle around with it too much, but I would just play around with it until you get a nice sweet spot where you have a nice steady flow of clients that you like working with, and then you can just focus on doing grill work. Now, in regards to each type of service, again, I have three different offers. The bottom offer is kind of the entry level offer. So this is for a client that is really struggling to get a budget together. I still might want to work with them because it might be an interesting project, but I just have this there just to kind of set the tone. This is the minimum amount that you can pay to work with me in regards to this particular type of project. And this is the same for each type of service. This is just for an hour's consultation and basically a really basic strategic brand positioning document. And then websites obviously here a little bit more expensive, obviously, the more time that you're spending, the more it's going to cost, ultimately, because that's what you're doing. You're buying the person's time. This package is a little bit more elaborate. It has a little bit more than this package, but it's also kind of giving more value, ultimately, overall, but it's priced slightly higher. Now, this package is the package that you usually want to sell to people. However, what usually happens is they usually end up going for this package, but in a way that is a little bit clever, and I'll explain that in a little bit. So when you're a brand designer, this is the package that you want people to get, okay? So this is the package that you need to develop and create a solution for, which is not too time consuming, but you're still offering a lot of value for the money that you're charging, okay? So, for example, in this one, don't put everything in there, leave something to add to the pro package or the last package so that you can actually, let me just show you the brand identity design. This is far better. So, for example, here with the plus package, on top of the core package, you get email signatures, business cards, social media branding. But then on top of that, for the Pro package, you get all of this. There needs to be a clear difference between each of the packages. If it's not clear straightaway, and I have to actually read stuff, as in just the words. It's not visual, you can see here it's visual. So one, two, three things I get extra. Got it. I don't even need to read what it is. I just get three things extra.olFour things extra. Cool. This makes it super easy for people just to scan it and say, Okay, this one looks like the best thing for me. Okay, what do I get? Most people don't want to skim out and get the cheapest package. Some people do, but, you know, it's one of those things. Now, this is the clever part, because when you're pricing your services when you're pricing stuff, people want to get the best value for money. Okay? Let me show you an email from a client who literally just this week signed up to the Brand Accelerator program. This is the email that I sent her, okay? Thank you again for outlining the essentials that you need for each package. So she actually sent me a list of the essential things that she needs from each of these packages, which was great. We had a really great call together. And then I showed her the Brand Accelerator program. And I said that this is probably going to be the best package for her. Now, what I always say is each of these packages could work for you, but I would actually suggest to take the first one. The reason for that is I look like a good guy, right? There's three other packages altogether, and I am asking you to take the cheapest one because I care about you, right? I care about your wallet. I care about getting you the most value for your money. And I do. I genuinely do. But also, as well, I want to make the client feel comfortable because I'm confident in my ability to deliver value. I know for a fact that at each stage of the process, strategy, naming, logo design, they're going to be super happy with it. I know that because of the processes that are in place within the business. This is simply to get them through the door. Once they start working with someone who they really like and they really just see as being really credible and, you know, competent in that particular area, they'll work with you again and again. It's as simple as that. But another reason why I always suggest this package is usually clients are going to just choose the cheapest or the second cheapest option anyway. They're not really going to choose the pro option. So what I always do, again, with the core package for the actual brand identity and also for the naming package, as well, which is like $700. So, let's say, for example, they choose the cheapest amounts from each of the packages, okay? So, for example, the naming package is $700. The core package for that is like 1,000 Let's say two grand roughly. And then for this, let's say they choose the plus package. So $2,795 roughly give or take. I have just taken a client who was probably going to spend about 2,795 roughly, and now they're going to spend 3,750 over the time that I'm working with them. That's an extra $1,000 per client, right? $1,000 per client is crazy. That's another 25% up sell through every single client that comes through the door. That's massive. Huge. Do you know how many businesses will kill for that just by doing this simple little strategy. And what I did with this lovely client who I'm actually currently working with right now, to be honest, I said to her, I said, Listen, this is everything that you actually need from a branding standpoint based on my experience, and I can do it for this. So this client ended up basically going from having a budget, I think, of, like, two grand, like $2,000. And I basically ended up giving her the full package of everything that she needed for $3,900. Now, that can seem like a far cheaper amount if I sold the product separately. Now, at this point in my career, I don't want to work with a ton of different clients. I want to work with one single client and go deep and create really great work because that does one of two things. One, it helps to keep my stress levels low because that's super important. And two, it helps me to stay more organized. And also, what do those two things do? It helps me to focus on doing better work because I can go deeper with the client and offer more value. Therefore, my portfolio is going to look better. So by charging a reasonable amount, but also more than usual, you can actually attract a higher level of clientele. But by offering a lot of value, ultimately adding as much value as possible for the price that you can get them for as an overall fee instead of just, you know, letting them pick the smallest option every single time, you're going to end up saving yourself so much time, so much energy, and ultimately building your business in a far less stressful way. So I hope that was helpful for you. If you have any questions, please let me know. Obviously, I'm here to support and help in any way that I can, and I'll see you in the next one. See you soon. 102. Breaking larger projects into smaller milestones: So what actually goes into an agreement between myself and a client, okay? Now, this is the actual template which I use for the Brand Accelerator program, and it covers some pretty simple things, the stuff that I've already covered earlier on in this course in a previous lesson. It includes the scope of work, which is then linked to the website. It then includes final delivery date, which is ultimately giving you an insight emigrants to the different delivery dates for the different types of services that I may offer. For example, if I'm doing naming, logo design, and also brand strategy, there will be dates set for each of those phases, so we know, roughly when we'll be expecting delivery. We also have the payment terms which are clearly outlined and by the way, this template is available in Brand Designer Pro. If you can't find it, let us know, and we can help you to find it. We also have the late delivery clause, which you can take this out if you really want to, but I just added in there just as a nice little bonus. And obviously, this is dependent on if the client is, you know, not being able to give the approvals and feedback. So if a client takes like ten days to give approvals and feedback, obviously, we cannot be held accountable for the fact that the project is later, so that just covers that. Project milestones, just outlining stuff really, really simply, termination clauses. We don't want to work with clients who don't want to work with us and they don't want to work with us if we don't want to work with them, so we can just, you know, cancel it at any time, which is fine. Intellectual property rights, giving all intellectual property to everyone else. Confidentiality, obviously, saying we're not going to share your information with anyone. Warranties, again, just making sure that we are making sure that all the work is performed on the agreement will be original and not infringe on any third party rights, et cetera. Um, non assignment. So that basically means, you know, we will not assign or subcontract any portion of the work under this agreement to other people without prior consent, and then just basically, you know, all this other extra stuff, which is always in any agreement, to be honest. So that should give you a little bit of an insight in regards to how to look at this particular document, how to use it. It's pretty straightforward, to be honest. You can create your own version from this particular document, which is going to be super simple. So let me know if you have any further questions, but apart from that, use the document, make sure you stay aligned with your clients at all times, and I'll see you in the next video. See you soon. 103. Why you should always present logo ideas in black & white first: I always develop and deliver my logo designs in black and white first. And this is for a number of different reasons. But the most predominant reason is if a logo design can work in black and white, it can work in any color, Okay, which is really important for a logo design, especially when you're developing something for a brand, which has to be applied in many different environments. Many different scales, many different forms. So this is the actual presentation which I use, which is super simple, and I explain it to the client by saying, Listen, the sole purpose of this is assessing the brand mark ideas in black and white, so we can confirm the essence of the brand itself and the messaging. If we start adding color, if we start adding different fonts and typography, it's going to ruin things. It's going to just make it more complicated for the client. So at the moment, we're just focusing on the idea, the concept behind the actual design. And this was a great client called Ezra, who was lovely to work with. We basically end up working with him in regards to refining his current logo, which obviously needed a little bit of work and create a couple of different versions for him. He didn't end up going for this one. He ended up going for a different one, which I'll show you a little bit later on. But these are the different versions. So again, all in black and white. This one was another idea, date to launch, again, just kind of showcasing the launch element. We've got this one here, which is just like a little icon, sort of emblem, essentially, just to go well with it. We also have this idea, as well, which is a little bit more kind of out there, but again, it's in black and white, so it works. We've also got this one here. And we have this here, which is basically a refined typeface. So this is the original typeface that he had. I just refined it and made it a little bit more easier on the eye, ultimately, okay? So at the moment, we had really kind of curved edges here, and the rest of it was super sharp. The kerning was super, super bad here, so I just basically fixed that a little bit. But, yeah, that's ultimately what I sent to a client as the initial phase one idea pack, ultimately. This is what I want to use to create a conversation with the client. And by using this initial phase, just to kind of test out which icons work best, you then don't waste a lot of time on things like mockups, for example, because with every single kind of branding project that I do, I always do some kinds of mock ups just to kind of show how the actual logo will look, just to see if they like it with some colors, with some different typefaces, et cetera, et cetera, and that ultimately leads us to getting the final mark, which is this one. This was the final logo that he liked. I actually had him sign off on this one, so he signed off on this logo, but then I updated it by just changing the size of this gap so that it was. So, for example, here, you can see how this gap, because of the edges, it looks a lot bigger than this one. Mathematically, they're actually exactly the same size. This gap and this gap, mathematically is exactly the same size. The reason they look different is because here, there's more of the triangle takeaway from the D, whereas here, the D actually starts to come off and taper off, so therefore, there's less white taken away. That's why it looks different. So what I did is I just took this and took it a little bit to the right to cut off more of the D to ultimately help to make sure that it looked more optically optimized instead of just being mathematically optimized. And then in the forms of brand identity for this particular project, this is the overall approach. And again, these guidelines are all part of the Brand Designer Pro program. You can download them. They are there to be used. If you can't find them, let me know, and I can help you. But it's pretty simple and pretty straightforward. By showcasing your logos in black and white first, it saves you a ton of time because I hate doing mock ups after mockup, after mock up. It takes at least, you know, 1.5 hours out of my day, and I would rather spend that 1.5 hours doing something else. I'd rather do it chilling out with my family. I'd rather do it by going out for a lunch with my brother. I'd rather do it by chilling out and having a coffee by, you know, the pool or. I don't want to be, you know, spending time doing things over and over and over again. I am not in it for, you know, redoing work, which could have been done right the first time by just following a really simple process. So if that helps you hope that gives you a little bit of insight. But anyway, I'll see you in the next lesson. Bye bye. 104. How to present your brand design ideas and work: Okay, so once you actually have the chosen icons ready from the first phase of presenting them in black and white, how do you actually showcase your work and tell a story? Well, this is a brand from Dubai who essentially is selling things like sushi and, you know, Japanese cuisine, ultimately. But they're wanting to bring Japanese cuisine and Middle Eastern cuisine together, okay? So this was kind of the concept of what they wanted to communicate. Now, what I did is, obviously, they are focusing on sushi, so I wanted to focus the actual icon and the logo. Around fish in a kind of an abstract way. What I also wanted to do is I wanted to create a slightly unique typeface that was kind of a little bit Japanese, but also not. I needed to be strong. I needed to be legible in pretty much every single given environment. And I also wanted to add a little kind of touch of the UAE in Japan, so you can see how this kind of comes together. It's very simple, very nice. F a nice little texture, on the actual icon, as well, which looks great and it just gives it a nice little authentic rustic feel. Now, with the mockups, the mock ups come into play to help to tell the story of the actual band to sell the idea, right? So with this particular brand, one of the things that the guy who I was working with the client who I've got another story about, which I'll tell you about a little bit later on, he wanted kind of, like, this very clean, this very minimal, this very, you know, kind of popping of red approach to the branding. And we looked at a couple of different, you know, versions of logos and brands out there, and this was the approach that he liked. This was the the clean aesthetic that he liked. When I was selecting different, you know, mock ups, for example, I was choosing nice, white, clean mock ups, which can showcase a nice clean aesthetic. You know, you can see here, we've got a nice book, and we are showcasing the actual outside of a potential store or restaurant. We also have an app. We have the packaging, which is super clean and nice. We also did a nice little cool thing as well, where we had Japanese writing here and also Middle Eastern writing here, which you can't actually see, to be honest. But it looked pretty cool. It kind of had the Japanese side of things and the Middle Eastern side of things there. And it just helped to use the language as a pattern instead of being super direct. We also have the UAE here and Japan here. So we kind of have the two coming down here as separate strips, which can be used as brand codes throughout the entirety of the branding, whether that be on trucks or menus or whatever. And this helps to just showcase the story of what the brand's about. You know, I this how he's going to actually have the app? For the restaurant? I don't know, but I'm just giving you options and ideas in regards to how to use this particular brand and this particular design language within every single element. So, for example, if you design a book like this, if you design signage, it's going to be like this, packaging, like this. And this leads me on to the story that I actually had about this client. After we finished the project, I always send clients the same links for the same packages. So he secured the plus package, I believe, for the brand identity, which includes things like business cards, email signatures, blah, h blah. And for some reason, when we got to a stage of tying the project up, he started to discuss packaging, and he said, When am I getting the packaging? And I said, Can you tell me? So what I always do in this situation is, I always say to them, Okay, I know you're just trying to get free stuff out of me. I understand that we're never going to speak to each other again, probably after this project from the sound of how you're trying to treat me. So tell me when did we discuss packaging and when did you assume that you were going to get packaging within this package? Because the links that I've sent you all say, What's included? The package is on the website, nothing says that packaging is included on the website, and we don't have any email correspondence saying that there was packaging included. So where during this journey did you decide that packaging was included in this package? Because it wasn't at any point for me personally? You care to just let me know. And then he basically said, Oh, you mentioned it in a call, and I said, Okay, I appreciate that. Well, I've got all the calls recorded, so I can go back to that and I can check that out if you really want to. Which call was it? And then he couldn't tell me, obviously, because I never said that. So one lesson, always record your calls. And I know this is a very off topic subject, obviously, given the fact that we're talking about telling a brand story with the actual presentation, but it's really important to record all calls so that you can refer back to them because if they say that you said something and you don't have evidence to say, Well, actually, I did that is going to be a problem. It's going to just give them a lot of leverage, right? Or you can just kind of reject to do it, and, you know, it is what it is, and maybe you lose a little bit of the fee that you were promised for the actual project, but always cover your back. Always make sure you record stuff, always make sure you have things documented, always make sure you have agreements in place with everything clearly outlined. Because that's going to cover your back over the long run. And this happens sometimes, but not very often. I'd say probably one in every 15 or 20 clients, try their luck to just get a little bit extra out of you as an individual, because maybe they just want to try and, you know, try their luck or maybe they are just used to getting free stuff. I had a client a little while ago who basically, and this was probably the most outrageous of them all. I need another sip of coffee for this one. So we did the brand strategy in the brand accelerator program. We also did the brand naming. And then because she ended up creating her own brand name from the ideas which I gave her, she basically said, Oh, because I didn't go with any of the brand names. I know you did all the work. I really appreciate it. But can you start the logo design, and I can just, you know, maybe pay you later? And that really just kind of knocked me off balance a little bit. I was like, So, because you didn't choose any of the names, and you ended up creating your own name from the ideas that I gave you, you now think it's okay for me to just work for free? That's not going to happen. And what I always use is and I'm always really nice about it. I understand, if maybe money's tight or something, and I get that, I can pot you in the direction of someone else who's not as expensive or, you know, who's cheaper, I guess. The reality is that the best way to respond to those types of people who were just trying their luck, use again, all I asked was, when did I say that I was going to work for free for the brand identity? I'm not Like I thought we had an agreement of This is the payment for each stage. I understand that you chose a different name that you came up with based on what we discussed and you know, went through together. But with every single payment, you knew what was included, and logo design was not included in that package. And then she started trying to say, Oh, I thought I had this package. I thought we discussed it here. Because I had everything documented recorded in emails, everything arranged, agreements, everything, it's all clearly documented, so you don't have to worry about anything like that going wrong. Therefore, when you present them with this, you don't have to worry about them saying, Oh, but when am I getting this? When am I getting this? Why am I getting this? Keep everything documented. I know I keep saying this, but it's really, really important. It's going to cover your back, and you can always refer back to it. If you make a mistake, that's fine. You know, maybe you have to do an additional thing or two by making that mistake. But as long as you've got it documented, you're never going to be taking advantage of too much. So keep that in mind, and I hope you enjoy the next lesson. See you soon. 105. Getting 10 nouns to get clarity on what you should design: Okay, so why should you get ten nouns for your brand design process, right? So this is something that I picked up from Alan Peters, who's an incredibly talented designer. Check him out on Instagram and all that good stuff. His book is actually behind me called Logos That Last. It's an amazing book, and this is actually one of the things that he says in the book to get ten nouns oh, well, obviously, Crystal sent me a few more than ten, but that's fine to ultimately help to create different icons. So, for example, for this brand, which was called Cilicia and Ginger, we were still kind of playing around with a couple of different options. We had different ideas for the icons. So, for example, we were looking at bridge and medical. We were looking at science and beakers. We were looking at harmony. We were looking at remedy. We were looking at, you know, medicine. We were looking at bridges. We were looking at, you know, health. All of these icons then came together to create a solution, which was then demonstrated within the initial guidelines. So we were looking at different ideas. We were like, Okay, we kind of have this bridge, kind of holistic feel. We also have this medical slash herb feel. We also have these two leaves that are kind of pointing East and West, which was all based around Eastern and Western medicine. And it also creates a pill. So we have the Eastern medicine, which is the leaves, and we also have the Western medicine, which is the pill. We also have beakers and people inside the beakers and leaves inside the beakers. And then we ultimately showcase the different versions based on, you know, what we thought was best out of all of the options that we offered them. Now, with the next step and the reason why going through the ten nouns is so important is because when we can solidify everything about a brand into ten words, we can then start to choose how to visualize those words. If we don't have those words and we don't have that essence, it's hard to confirm with the client and move on to the next phase, which is ultimately, okay, how do we take this essence of the brand and communicate it visually? This is going to save you a ton of time and energy because then once we actually had those words confirmed, we then could create those icons, and then after the icons, got to this stage where we were like, Okay, let's check how this looks in different applications like banners, like stickers, for example. And then ultimately what ended up happening is, and I know this is super messy, but this is kind of after I actually provided the guidelines and stuff. Once we got to the stage of arranging the actual brand identity, we did some refinements, and this was the finished article. And what this is is it is a representation of the brand's ability to communicate east and west. So the leaf here is pointing east and the other one is pointing west. And then we also have the pill, and we also have the leaf inside. So we actually have three or four of the words that were confirmed by the client included in the single icon. So if a client says, Oh, this isn't anywhere near what I was expecting or maybe it doesn't even communicate what the brand is about, out of all the words in the world, you literally chose ten, and this communicates four of them. You can't say this doesn't communicate the essence of the brand. It's just incorrect. It's just not a correct statement. That was why I always do ten nouns for every single brand identity, at least now after reading Alan Peter's book. There's also the little caveat, the little kind of additional lesson, which I'll pop into this lesson of when you are creating wordmark, this was just a normal tie face, just an average typeface, and then I manipulated it and changed it to make it look a little bit more approachable by taking this little curve here and then adding it to each edge, not this edge, but this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, you get the idea. To basically give a more approachable feel overall and also to help the geometry of this icon be replicated in the wordmark itself. It helps to tie the wordmark and the icon together. Try it on your next project or just kind of little as an experiment, try it on a little logo that you're working on right now, and I promise you, it will make all the difference. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this lesson, and I'll see you in the next one. 106. What to do when you get too busy with clients: What do you do when you get too busy with clients? This is a good position to be in. It is the best position to be in, at least for right now, because right now, all you need to do is start to look at increasing your pricing. If you remember early on in the course when we were talking about supply and demand, you are ultimately serving the amount of clients that are interested in your services at a certain price point. If you increase your price point, you're going to earn more by working with less clients because less clients can afford you, less clients are either willing to pay for you. And the reason that I'm so happy that you either are or will have too many clients trying to work with you is it showcases that your work that you're showing on your portfolio is at least up to par with the pricing that you're currently offering. I have a lesson that I learned from Christo, who's again, an incredible, you know, creative and designer and content creator. And he said that if you sell something at the same price three times, I think, increase your pricing. And I think he says to increase it by around 30%, I think, roughly, but you can do it however much you want. You can increase it by 50% if you really want to. At the end of the day, it just matters that your pricing reflects the quality of your work. So, for example, if you're on the other end of the spectrum and you're not getting any clients buying from you or hiring you and you're having tons of sales calls, then it's a simple case that your pricing is currently outweighing the amount of value that you can provide from a design standpoint. Answer is, create more kind of experiment brands and get better examples on your portfolio, look at all the other branding agencies out there and look at how they're doing things to see how you can improve and get better. And then if that doesn't work, then the next step is to look at, Okay, am I even getting enough sales calls? If you're not having sales calls with people and you're not having conversations with people, then how are you meant to sell to them, okay? So that's kind of the framework that I'll be looking at. But ultimately, if you've got too many clients getting in touch with you and you're too busy, basically limit yourself to a certain amount of clients per month and heighten your prices so you can start to work at a higher level so you can dedicate more time to each client, so you create better work overall, and so you can get paid more. So hopefully you found that helpful, and I'll see you in the next lesson. 107. How to manage difficult clients who want lots of revisions: Okay, so how do you manage clients who want tons of revisions? Now, I've literally just had a client who is trying to take advantage of the unlimited revisions that I offer on my brand naming services and also all my services, as well, to be honest. But it's very unlikely that people take advantage, but sometimes it happens, right? Now, this particular client is trying to get free ideas, basically. I've already given him the ideas that he said he liked, but then he's saying, Oh, can we just explore one more? Can we just do one more? Can we just do one more? The thing is with him, he's just asking me to do another idea or another revision. What he doesn't understand is that's an extra three or 4 hours of work. You know, for free. It's not going to happen, okay? And here's why it's not going to happen. Number one, set clear expectations in the beginning. This is the amount of revisions that are included. And if you are going to do any additional work, this is going to be the additional fee for that work, okay? Now, on my packages, I just say that, you know, you can have unlimited revisions. But in my terms and conditions, I also state that we're not just going to do work again and again and again. That's why we confirm what is going to be explored within the design stages so that when we get to that stage and we design what we said we were going to design and what we agreed on, you can say, Oh, actually I changed my mind now. We're going to do something completely different. I don't like those ideas anymore. Complete nonsense. It's just people taking advantage of you. So that's the first thing. Set really clear expectations, if you really want to make sure you have revision phases inside the contract and the agreement, okay? The next thing is to charge for additional revisions, if you want the extra time. I had a client who said, Oh, the brand guidelines that you currently have aren't covering everything that we need. I said, Okay, what do you need? And she listed this full thing of, like, we need to see how it looks on our website. We need to look all these things. I was like, Okay, these are not brand guidelines. You basically just want me to design the website for you, and it's just not going to happen. So if you want me to design the website, these are the website packages. If you want me to add a mockup of a website onto the brand guidelines, that's in 2 hours of work I need to design the website homepage. I need to design the actual mockup. So that's going to be $800 for those 2 hours because it's not connected to any other projects. That is ultimately how you have to arrange things, and you'll see how clients seem to make their mind up very, very quickly when it's starting to cost them more, okay? They're very indecisive when it's not costing them anything but just an email. But when it starts costing them more in terms of monetary value, they start getting pretty decisive pretty quick. But it's also really important to stay professional. You can't just, you know, lose your **** every time a client asks for a revision. In fact, most of the times within the revisions that are actually included in the package, like the first two, overall, maybe three, actually say, for example, I was working with a lovely client a little while ago, and the thing that she said that she loved the most was she would give me feedback, and then I would say, Okay, I love this feedback. Let's maybe explore this as well, because I think this is going to help us to broaden our horizons and get a better result overall. She loved the fact that I was bringing my own visions to the table to try and get the best results. However, when I try to do that with some other clients, like maybe one in 20 or one in 30, sometimes they take advantage and they try to push things even further. And, you know, if you give someone an inch, sometimes they try to take a mile. You just have to be professional. You need to be very concise and you need to be extremely educated in regards to how you communicate with them, because if you kind of stop getting emotional and start saying, Oh, you're wasting my time, blah blah blah. That's not going to go down well. But what you can do is you can just say, Okay, we confirmed these ideas at this stage of the process. We then developed these ideas. And now let's take some time to really get concise about the revisions that we need to do so we can keep things super efficient and super effective. Otherwise, this is another little thing that you can do if, you know, you really want to be nice about it. As you can say, obviously, I have a scheduled amount of time to work on this project, and I don't mind overrunning on that, to be honest, like, I want to just make sure we have the best result. But after a certain date, there's going to be new projects coming in, which I have scheduled in. So I want to make sure that I get all the revisions done for you before that date so we don't have any unexpected delays. If you say that, you're going to be taking care of them, but you're also saying, Listen, we need to get things done by this date. Otherwise we're going to end up getting some delays or you have to prioritize other projects. So in conclusion, try to be professional, and, you know, some clients, they do try to take advantage, but do not get emotional about it. Just keep your cool and just remember this is business, okay? Business is not personal, and clients are just trying to get the most out of you for the least amount of money. But it's okay. It's all fun and games, and I will see you in the next lesson. See you. 108. What to do when a client ghosts your proposal: Okay, so you've just had a meeting with the clients and they haven't got back to you. They've completely ghosted you and you don't know what to do. Just send this email. It works pretty much every single time unless they are just unclosable and they were just wasting your time anyway. So, this was a client who we had a call. It wasn't specifically a great call, to be honest, but it was okay. I sent the exact same email to maybe 100 clients, and I close maybe 90% of them, 95% probably, and it goes a little bit like this. Hello, clients name. Something just came up. This is all copywriting, by the way. If you don't know anything about copywriting, you need to hook somebody in the first sentence. I want to pop you over a quick question. I know we met last week and I think we both left feeling that we could do something really special together if we had the chance, which made me wonder, leaving a little hook, keeping them reading. This is all copywriting, by the way. So if you feel like you want to learn more about copywriting, let me know and I can I don't know maybe develop a course or something in the near future when I've got some time. Around 30 minutes ago, we had a client reschedule the early November, an accelerator program to December instead, okay? There's an opening. As you like, you already know, it's not my style to sell anything because to be honest, I just like focused on doing great work. So I wanted to simply ask if there was anything I could do to put you in a position where you could make a complete no brain decision and find the spot and work with us. We had a great conversation. I just want to make sure that this opportunity is given to you first so that you can work with us a I really want to work with you. This is the position that I' taking. I've always recommended potential clients to shop around. So I'm literally saying, Listen, do your shopping, do all of your stuff, and then come back to me if you want to work with me. You know what my pricing is? We're super transparent. All of our clients pay the same. And I always suggest that you speak with as many agencies as possible, just to find the person you trust most who can be passionate about your business to get a result that you can be proud of. I just wanted to reach out to ask if there's anything we can do to make your decision easier. Anything we can if they say, Can we have a discount? I'd consider it, but maybe, maybe not. Maybe I'd add some additional stuff on. So, for example, if they took a $2,000 package, I'd say, If you take this package, I'll add some additional things on, which just cost me a little bit of time, but it gets the same amount of money in. If there's anything I can do, let me know, I will do everything in my power to make it happen, which I would. Other than that, I won't bother you with any more follow up emails because I know how busy you are. This last sentence is probably the most important because I'm saying if you don't reply to this email, I'm never going to get back to you ever again. Like, this is it. This is the last email I'm going to send you unless you reply to me because you didn't reply to my last one. This here is gold. And I'll show you why. He replied to me. I think it was maybe the next year or something. I can't remember. Thanks for reaching out. I really appreciate the opportunity and the transparent approach you've taken. It's refreshing exactly why I think we could be a great fit. The timing actually works out, well, let's proceed with the care package, and let's get started from there. Please let me know if there's any next steps and I'll get ready to go. Let's create something special together. That's it. $295 in the bank from a single email, which was, you know, the same email which I've sent to hundreds of clients before. So yeah, take some time to create your own version of this. And yeah, it works. It works pretty much all the time, and it can make you a lot of money. So yeah, enjoy. 109. What to do when a client tries to get free work out of you: So what do I do when a client tries to get free work out of you? Well, for the respect that I have for this client, I'm not going to show her obviously her email address and her actual emails, but what I will do is I'll read the emails that she sent me so you can get an idea of the story and how she tried to go about getting free work from me and also how I responded, okay? Hi, Scott did a bunch of thinking. I decided on blah blah blah, as a brand name. It ticks all the boxes. Can we move on to logo development? Thank you, clients name. Hey, client's name. Fully support your decision, and I feel like XYZ is the right name for you. The next step is to secure your brand identity package here, and then please book your strategic call here so we can discuss how to bring your brand to life visually. If you have any questions, please let me know. Hi, Scott, would it be possible to start the logo development? I think I'm tapped on the branding process, and I need to move forward with whatever else is included with what I've already spent. I believe logo development was part of that. Client's name. Hey, client's name, thanks for getting back to me so quick. So we've done the strategy and the naming process just recently. And the first three stages of the Brand accelerator program are 3,750 in total. So three times 1250. I've maybe made a mistake somewhere on our website on our pricing table that maybe wasn't clear. Can you let me know the situation so I can try and help as best I can, please? So what I'm basically doing this, I'm saying, Whoa, whoa, whoa, maybe I've made a mistake. Can you let me know where I've made a mistake so I can ultimately try and fix it for you? And then what she said is, my understanding is that the process was individual components that could be added to each other. And the first component that I paid for includes the logo. I believe the second part that I paid for also included a logo. Let me know what I'm missing. Thank you. So basically, she thought that the first part included a logo, and then the second part. So we know something's up here. We know she's not being 100% honest. I said, Hey, clients name, thanks for clarifying. I'll add the link to the packages below so you can tiny loose ends and obviously, you know, check to see what you've actually bought, even though she knows what she bought. The essentials package includes strategy name and logo development. You've paid 2,500 up to now. So the final payment of 1,250 is due just to keep everything on track. Let me know if that makes sense, so if you have any further questions, there's something I'm missing or there's something you'd like me to share more of, please let me know. I'm more than happy we have all the recordings of all of the meetings that we've had just to add any more further clarity. And then she basically said, Didn't I purchase the core package and then added the naming package to it? The core package includes logo marks. I didn't purchase the brand accelerator package. I purchased the core and then added something else on top. Now, this is where things get extremely clear because I know for a factors just trying to get free work out of me. Why would we do the brand strategy, phase, which is an entire week's process without confirming that first? It doesn't make any sense. And I know that she's trying to take advantage of me because I then sent her a screenshot of the payment that she sent, which literally has a title saying payment received for Brand Accelerator program, Brand Strategy Phase one. So she paid that. She saw that title before she actually paid that $1,250. Why would she pay that if it wasn't what she actually asked for? It doesn't say anything about logo development as well, by the way. I'm not a heartless *******, right? I want to try and help this client. I want to try to help everyone. I want to try and help everyone. But I'm also not going to be taking advantage of. It doesn't make sense. K is a brand designer, and it's very easy for that to happen. So what I said is, I said, Listen, I understand that you're super busy and obviously misunderstandings can happen. Although providing a complete phase of the process for free, I'm not giving up a week of my time for free. It's just not going to happen. I may be able to add two logo ideas to website development packages, so you can add your website and logo development together for $2,690 instead of paying $3,250. So I'm just saying the $1,250 that you would pay for logo development, you can have that included in the website phase for basically $690 because it would cost you two grand anyway for the website. This just shows how to deal with clients that are trying to get stuff off you for free. Make sure you document everything, make sure you record all calls and log them, make sure you have an agreement in place, make sure that your website and everything is super clear and there's no room for gray area or misunderstanding. And you should be okay. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this little story time, and I will see you in the next lesson. See you. 110. The basics of time management & scheduling your day: Okay, so I'm about to drop the most unconventional lesson on time management and scheduling your day that you've probably ever seen or heard. The reason for that is I'm not going to try and tell you that my way of scheduling my day is the best way to do it because it's just not simply true. It's a very easy way to give advice, but the reality is it's not going to get you the results that you need specifically for your personal circumstances. What I mean by that is every single person is different. For example, I have a little boy. You may not have kids. Therefore, your idea is going to look completely different to mine. You may have other responsibilities which you need to take care of, which need to be done in the morning. So by me saying, do all your stuff in the morning Lard Dar, it doesn't work that way, okay? But what I can give you is I can give you an overarching framework that I personally use, which can work for anyone if it's applied to your personal circumstances. So without further delay, let's stad it. The reason why a lot of people don't get anything done is because they get distracted and they can't prioritize. So do two simple things. At the end of every day, prioritize your tasks for the next day, okay? And at the end of every week, prioritize your tasks for next week. Okay. So, for example, what I'll do on a daily basis before I go to bed the next day is I'll say, Okay, out of all of my tasks for next week, the biggest thing that I can get done or the thing that's due the soonest is this thing. That's the thing that I attack next. And then when it gets to the end of the week, I will ultimately create a list of things. I'll say, Okay. Next week, I need to get this done. These are the things I need to get done, and that's it. And by doing in that way, you constantly refresh your priorities and you allow yourself to focus on the biggest thing, the most important thing. So I actually have a calendar which showcases everything that I have going on for the full month, okay? And if you look at the other pages, say, for example, April. I have things already in April, which I need to do. For example, I have a family trip. I have my little son's birthday. I have a visa ending. I have Hans, my business partner in Germany. He's leaving to go back to Germany, so I can stay organized, and I can prioritize certain things. For example, my wife likes to worry about the future a lot, but she'll say something like, what school is our little boy going to go to? And I'll say, the guy can't even walk yet. He can't even talk yet. So why are we worrying about what School he's going to go to when he's not even at that stage? I understand that thinking ahead is really important, but there's 1 million other things to worry about before we get to that problem. It's points worrying about problem Z when we haven't even solved problem E or B yet. This is how we need to be thinking. And if you can think this way, no matter what other things you have going in your life, prioritization is the number one skill to effective time management. Prioritizing the number one thing that is the most important to you right now and staying focused on getting that thing done until it's perfect. Okay. Now, a way to get things done in a far more effective way is a method called time blocking. It doesn't need a lot of explanation. It's actually really simple. You simply lay out a section of time which you think it's going to take to get that particular task done, and then you work your hardest and you stay as focused as possible to get that done. Now, listen, sometimes you're going to hit it, and 20% of the time, you're not going to hit it. That's fine. **** happens, okay? Sometimes things take a little bit longer, especially when it comes to creative processes and design. Sometimes you need a little bit more time. So leave a little bit of wiggle room between your tasks. Half an hour, an hour, and don't stack yourself too full with projects and tasks. I have this thing which I used to have anyway, where I used to pack too much into a day. I used to say, Okay. Today, I'm going to build Rome, right? I'm gonna take over the world in one day. And it's just like, instead of packing your entire day full of stuff and then only achieving like 30% of it because you're just not being realistic, trim it down by half, and put a good amount of stuff in your day, but just enough so that if you have a good day, you get about 80% done. So it's kind of over 50%. That leaves you at the end of the day feeling like you've achieved something. If you have finished all of your tasks by 3:00 P.M. You're like, that was a bit of a day wasted, right? Like, unless you were just extremely lucky and just the ideas just popped off from the get go, try and challenge yourself with how much you fit into a day, but also leave a little bit of room for maneuver and just **** hitting the fan, okay? Pardon from my French. But we need to make sure that we give ourselves a little bit of leeway when it comes to doing stuff in a day. So, for example, if we say, we're going to get a website done today, and it takes us three days because, you know, things come up and we learn new things. It's okay, alright? Like, it happens every now and again. But if you're procrastinating on your phone in bed for like 2 hours and, you know, you didn't get the thing done that you were originally set out to do, that's a little bit of a different story. You need to be the best employee for yourself, but you also need to treat yourself like the best employees as well. You need to treat yourself how you want to be treated. And if you **** up, you need to tell yourself, right? You need to say, Listen, it's probably not good that I'm lying in bed 4 hours when I should be working, right? If I'm doing something else, which is productive and I'm learning and I may be making mistakes and I'm progressing, that's fine. But if you are wasting time and you are pretty aware that you're wasting time and you're not doing anything productive, you know, you have no one to blame but yourself if something hits the fan, you know? One other thing which is really important is when you are prioritizing stuff, usually you're going to have kind of small projects, but then you may have much bigger projects, which you need to break down into smaller milestones. Don't try to jam everything into one single day. Try to break it up and attack it over a set period of time. The reason being is when we work on, like, a single project for too long, ends up getting a little bit boring and mundane, and then the ideas just kind of become a little bit steel. So keep it fresh. You know, dive into that. Sometimes I literally have, like, a little clay on my keyboard, just to kind of, like, you know, freshen things up just for like, even 5 minutes, just to kind of, like, you know, give myself a change of pace or just a change of focus. But make sure you leave buffer time because that is one of the most important things that I've learned over the past couple of years. It isn't like I'm a robot, right? It isn't like i. Sometimes it feels like that, but I also am human. I sometimes need a 15 minute nap, right? I sometimes need to chill out and just walk outside with a coffee to get some sunlight. When I'm not stuck in this dark room recording content and videos and, you know, courses. Treat yourself like someone who wants to be treated well and ultimately give yourself a little bit of leeway as well, because what you're doing, it isn't easy, okay? But it can be made a lot easier if you treat yourself correctly. Okay? Hope you enjoy that lesson, and I'll see you in the next. 111. Building your team of freelance 'time savers': So building a team of freelancers to help you. Now, let's say, for example, you're a brand designer and you've been working hard, you have clients, but now you're getting into a stage where you can't manage everything yourself. You have two options. Number one, you heighten your prices, you reduce the amount of clients that you work with. I've said this 1 million times before already in this course, and you make the same amount of money by working with less clients. The second thing that you could do is to hire people or hire freelancers to take certain things off your plate. For example, what I would do is I would take a whiteboard like this. And I would basically write down all of the things that I have to do for a brand identity project. Okay? So one of those things could be logo design, or it could be brand guidelines, or it could be logo animations, right? And after I have each of those things, I would then take a note of which of these things take up the most time. Okay? So let's say, for example, logo, it takes I don't know. This is actually, you know, it takes me the most time, and then we have brand guidelines, which takes me the next amount of time, and then we have logo animation, which takes me the next amount of time, and then we have, I don't know, formatting the files, which takes me no time at all. And then we have email and the client, which literally takes like 2 seconds, okay? So by having this in prioritized order, this is the most amount of time, and this is the least amount of time, I can then start to make really educated decisions in regards to what I can outsource to other people. So can I outsource logo design? Mm. Probably not because it's not like a step by step thing. It is requiring some creative thinking and Are you going to pay someone else to do the logo design for you when that's what you're getting paid for? I wouldn't say so. I personally wouldn't do that because you're probably going to get some logos back that are not that good if you're not paying a significant amount of money. And then that means that you're going to be cutting down on your profit because you're going to have to pay more for good thinkers, and you just can't get a good logo cheap these days. You can get a lot of logos cheap, but it's not going to be good quality, and that's going to hurt your quality that you're going to provide to the client. So what I would do is I would look at the next thing, which is brand guidelines, zero thinking, the thinking's already done, and it's the second most time consuming thing that you can do. So if you outsource this, you literally free up all of that time you don't have to worry about doing brand guidelines anymore. Yes, it might cost you a little bit, but you can literally train anyone really easily to do your brand guidelines for you for pretty much next to nothing. They don't even need to speak English. You can just literally pay anybody to do it. And it literally takes about an hour to arrange them, maybe. And you can just pay them like, what, $10, $15 for that hour. And they're getting paid pretty well, considering you're getting your brand guidelines, which just take time to do. It doesn't take a lot of thinking to do. That's it, and it's done. And I think if you do that for every single step of the process, so for example, arranging the files, arranging the folders, arranging the brand guidelines, logo animation, which takes an incredible amount of time. If you outsource that and you find someone who's reasonable, like I have someone who, you know, costs maybe around 30 to $40, and I sell logo design for a lot more, then it makes sense for me to outsource that because otherwise, I would need to learn logo animation, which I can do to an extent, but it takes me a lot of time to do it because I would say I'm not using the program every day, and that time can help me to focus on other things, like, for example, acquiring new clients, like treating my current clients, like over delivery in other areas of the business. So by doing that, you allow yourself to focus on more important areas of the business that only you can do. If you can outsource something to someone else, then let them do it. Okay? But if you have to do something and you are kind of a bottleneck for that particular thing, then just try and be as efficient as possible with that particular thing. And you can find freelancers anywhere. You can find them on medium. You can find them on five. You can find them by Googling certain things. You can find them on Instagram. You can find them on TakTOk you can find them anywhere. Once you find someone who's good, just get in touch with. Try to create some sort of relationship. If they're interested, try and train them. Just remember that no employee or freelancer that's working with you on your business is going to be as passionate about your business as you are. It's just not the case. They have to be incentivized to do so. So they will probably give you the least amount for the most pay, okay? But some people are better than that, but you just need to remember that people are ultimately always going to be out for themselves when it comes to freelancing. So you need to make sure that you partner with good people. Two, don't pay them upfront. And three, make sure that when you are working with people, you treat them well because obviously it's the most important thing to be nice to people and to make sure that they're taken care of. So anyway, hope you enjoyed that lesson. Hope it was helpful, and I'll see you in the next one. 112. Planning your days, weeks, months, quarters & year: How do you plan for your entire year? Okay. So this is why this entire program was actually created in the first place. It was created to give you a framework to get from where you are now to becoming a brand designer that can actually charge money for your design work, right? Now, with prioritizing your tasks and prioritizing your investments in yourself and in your business over the full year, it comes back down to priorities, okay? So, for example, if you can write down everything that you need to do and honestly just sit down with a piece of paper and a pen and just literally write things down. Like for example, I don't have a website, blah, blah, blah. And then I want to improve my abstract logo design. And then I don't have an automated booking system set up for my sales calls. And my sales process is actually pretty bad, so I need some sort of structure for that. I want to practice the pitch perfect sales flow from Scott, that tall, handsome British guy that does that course thing. I don't create content, so I have no way of actually acquiring clients, so I need to get on that. You take a step back and you say, Okay, out of all of those things, which is going to get me the biggest return on my investment, and how soon can I do it? So, for example, out of those things, website, abstract logo design, the sales call talenty things set up and then also actually practicing your sales calls. Which of those do you think is the most important? What should you do first? How do I think about it? Does it make sense to do your sales training first? You're not getting anyone bucking sales calls. So that can be it. Does it make sense to get your automated sales setup put in place, yeah? Well, you don't have a website yet, so how can you do that? Does it make any sense? You've got a website and your abstract logo design training. Which of them is best to do first? Let's think about it. If you have a website, you can showcase your work. If you have work. But if you don't have any work, then you kind of have to do the training first and actually learn the abstract logo design skills first. And you don't have to be great. You don't have to be mind blowingly good at abstract logo design. In order to put it onto a website, you're gradually going to get better. And the work that you're doing now is not going to be the stuff that you are showcasing in one, two, three, four, five years time. But what you need to do is you need to prioritize the things that are the most important to you right now. What is the thing that you can do to help you get clients and money through the door as soon as humanly possible. So in this instance, between abstract logo design training and website development, which of these should you do? If you have any form of evidence of work that you've done, like if you've even designed, like, one or two logos, do the website first. Get the website done, showcase your work, and then build on top of that. If you have zero work, you can build a website, but it's not going to work for you because you literally have nothing to show for it. So this is how it's very personal for everybody. You need to make sure that you're thinking about your personal circumstances and what is best for you right now. If you can do that, then you can make a full list for the full year. You can section it out and say, Okay, in this month, I'm going to do this, this, this, and then next month, I'm going to do this, this this. You stick to that plan, and then you follow up on that plan. And again, you're constantly reassessing your priorities, okay? So, for example, if you start becoming overwhelmed with sales calls, then you need to start getting sales training. You need to assess it on a weekly basis at the end of every week, reassess your full list for the full year, move things around if needed, and reassess your position, okay? If you're playing chess, you don't just stick to the exact same game plan the entire game. If the other player moves a certain way, and the world kind of dictates where you're going to go, you need to make sure that you strategically position yourself in a way to give yourself the best chance of success. It's really simple stuff. So take some time to actually sit down and have a coffee and just spend an hour writing down all the things that you want to get in place, and then, most importantly, prioritize them. So you're getting the most important thing for you done first, second, third, fourth. And if you have any questions, and if you need any support on this, send me the list of the things, and I'll actually give you advice on what to do first, what to do second, what to do third. I'll send you a loom video. That's the entire reason why brand designer Pro was put in place to help prioritize the things that you need to do to help you get from where you are now to where you need to be as soon as humanly possible. So anyway, I hope that little lesson was helpful and I'll see you in the next one. See you soon. 113. 5 ways to instantly improve your work life balance: Is to instantly get better work life balance. So let me just be completely honest and upfront with you. In the very beginning, it's a little bit harder to get work life balance because obviously, you're trying to learn so much, you're trying to get so much in place. You have to put so much energy behind the business and yourself to gain momentum to get anywhere, it can be a little bit tough. However, as long as you take things steady and you take things step by step, I maybe went into things a little bit too hard, which is kind of just my nature. But if you want to take things a little bit slow, that's absolutely fine. Just make sure you're consistent with that energy and with those efforts. Now, a couple of things that I would say that are really important and really helpful when trying to create kind of that perfect work life balance. When I first started the business a decade ago, I didn't have kids. I didn't have a wife. Now I have a wife. I have a little boy, so I need to make sure that I'm kind of, you know, a little bit more stable with my time, if you know what I mean. So first thing is set boundaries. You need to make sure you're setting boundaries with your time. If you say you're going to finish work by 5:00 P.M. Or 6:00 P.M. You finish work by 5:00 P.M. Or 6:00 P.M. And you spend time with your family, you spend time with your wife, your kid, whatever, your husband, you need to make sure that you set those boundaries. If you say, for example, need even more time freed up within those working hours, you need to start thinking about delegating tasks, hiring people. I know it's going to cost you to get those things done, but as long as you are really selective with the things that you outsource, they're going to be very low stress for you because they are something that a 3-year-old child could do, but you're just basically putting onto someone else and paying them for the pleasure. You're going to be buying your time back. It gets to a point where you have so many clients and so much stuff to do. You need to learn how to buy your time back. It's super important. Also, as well, make sure you're scheduled downtime. For example, this week, I literally have this course to shoot completely because I've been scheduling it, I've been scripting it, I've been organizing it, and, you know, getting all the content ready. I need to shoot it by this week, and then I'm going to treat myself on Saturday to a nice relaxing day with the family and with my friends, with my business partner and my brother. That is my plan for this week. And if I achieve that shooting schedule, I'm going to treat myself at the end. So you need to schedule in that downtime because it gives you something to look forward to and also it gives you kind of a light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak, which, you know, is obviously extremely important when you're working so hard. Another thing, which is, you know, it's kind of like a little additional lesson is learn to say no, okay? You're going to get some clients who come to you and they try to, you know, kind of, please take the project. You know, you can take the project, please take the project. You know, I'll pay double. I'll do this. I'll do that. If you are overwhelmed, either schedule it for a later date or just say no, right? It's not worth getting too stressed because think about it. When you're super stressed, you're not a good person to be around, at least I'm Um, I'm, you know, I'm super uptight. I'm kind of I'm very short and very sharp with, you know, my communication. I don't really like enjoy myself. If I don't have something done, I need to get it done before I can actually enjoy myself. It's not a healthy position to be in. You need to think long term, right? Don't just think about the period right now. Think about your health long term. Think about the environment that you're creating with your partner, with your family, everybody, your kid, right? You need to make sure that you think about things from a larger perspective instead of just, you know, I need to get this worked, I need to get as many projects as possible. Give me money, right? It's not the way things go. It's a very short term way of thinking. I know it sounds a little bit difficult to do sometimes it can be, especially when people are throwing money at you. If it doesn't feel right, if you're a little bit overwhelmed, either schedule it for later to give yourself some wiggle room and some breathing space, or you know, just say no. Now, another thing that you can do is utilizing technology. Now, there are some templates inside Brand Designer Pro that can help you use ChapJBT to do things like brand strategy, for example, like brand naming, like, you know, coming up with ideas for logos and stuff and use them, right? They are there to save you time. They are there to give you more time so you can invest it into other aspects of your life like your family, like your friends, like your hobbies, like, you know, brothers, sisters, kids, wife, husband, whatever. That's the entire purpose of this particular program. To give you the best life possible within the realms of being a brand designer. That's ultimately what I'm trying to achieve. So if I can support you in any way, please let me know, and I will be as supportive and as helpful as possible. But on that note, I will see you in the next lesson. See you soon. 114. Meeting availability for maximum workflow & productivity: I'm not going to tell you how to organize your idea or when to have meetings, but what I can share with you is some experiences that I've had in regards to when to open up your availability for meetings to help you to get the most amount of stuff done without any stress, if that makes sense. So when I first started doing brand design, I used to just leave my availability completely open, okay? Morning, afternoon, night, like three in the morning. Because I was working with clients from America, I used to just leave my availability completely open and say, for example, if someone in America wanted to have a call at 4:00 A.M. I would just get up and just have them meeting at 4:00 A.M. Then just work from then. It was nuts, to be honest, and I do not know how the hell I did it. However, when I started to get a little bit more confident and I started to actually understand how to manage my business better, I started to be a lot more selective with when I allowed people to book calls with me. And it was actually a book, I think by a guy called Rob Moe called Life Leverage. I can't remember if that's the actual book that taught me this, but I definitely read it and it helped me out a lot. When you are giving someone an option for went to book a meeting. They're going to book the time that's best for them. But if you give them a limitation to when they can book that meeting, they're going to book the best time that's for them within the limitation, right? So do not feel bad about setting limits to the availability of meetings. If a client texts you out of the blue and says, Oh, by the way, can we make it like 30 minutes outside of that? Just a little extra special requests because I've got to take the kids to school or whatever? That's fine. But if you give them a ridiculous amount of freedom when it comes to setting appointments, they're going to choose the least convenient option for you. Your job is to make sure that you get the meeting at a time which is convenient for you and convenient for them. So you can find, like, this happy medium. What I've found is I used to actually set all my meetings in the morning to get them all out of the way, and then I would actually the afternoon and the evening free to do whatever I wanted. I actually like doing meetings later on in the evening now. So what I do is I do not take any meetings in the morning. I only take meetings from 5:00 P.M. My time to 10:00 P.M. Or 9:00 P.M. Sometimes. It all depends on what day of the week it is. I do not take any meetings on Sunday. I only take meetings on Saturday, occasionally between 5:00 to 9:00 P.M. And that is because I've already had the morning with my wife and my son. So I don't have to worry about spending too much time with clients or worrying about work, so I can really focus on spending dedicated time with and that's the way that thing should be. You need to make sure that you carve out that time to work on projects, to have focused time on work, to find your workflow, to spend time with family and friends. So that's what works for me. I'm not sure if it's going to work for you as well, but feel free to share your experiences with me via email and let me know what works for you, because I can give you a little bit of advice potentially that can help you to manage things a little bit better, if you feel tired, if you feel like you are in a rut and you're just getting overwhelmed with meetings. So on that note, I'll see you in the next lesson, and I'll see you there. Bye bye. 115. Tracking your finances to maximise wealth & agency growth: So how to manage your finances in an effective way to grow your business. So this is my financial tracker from 2023. Now, I will admit in August, I did get a little bit lazy, and I stopped tracking my income just because I was so busy, and to be honest, it's just a really bad excuse, but you can see here how I actually made a lot of progress between the January of 2023 and the month of July 2023. I was up around, you know, roughly about 60 k or something. And then, and this is savings, this is complete savings. And then from there, I only managed to make ten in savings between those dates. So, listen, the proof is in the pudding. When you're tracking things, you actually make progress. When you're not tracking things, you're being lazy, basically, which is exactly what I did. So why is this important to do? I think it's important to do it for a number of reasons, but this is the main reason because if you're not tracking it, you're losing money because you don't know where the money's coming from, okay? So, for example, during 2023, from the months January to July because that's all we've got from a tracking standpoint. I have everything tracked in my ground as to how much I made with each service and where that money came from. So for example, I can see here that in the months that were the biggest, most of that came from website design and hosting. So you can see here, this was a six k a month, four K a month, 4.5. This was 13, this was 22, 14, 15. With those dates and those months, website development was the thing that was the biggest seller for me. And this generated a lot of the income. Now, I can pretty much guarantee that I didn't do any websites here. And this is why I didn't make as much money there, right? I'm literally showing you transparently when I didn't make money and why it didn't happen. So here, what would I do after seeing this data? Well, I can see pretty confidently that the majority of the work that was coming through was for websites that was making me the most money. So I probably didn't even work with that many clients here. Probably worked with maybe five clients here, maybe five clients here, five here and five here, but the biggest money was coming from websites. So what does that mean in regards to my plans for 2024? It means I have to find a way to sell more websites to more of my clients because at the moment, I think maybe one client in five was maybe buying a website. Here, obviously, zero, here, zero. Here this was just hosting. Here, sold the website, here sold the simple website, and a simple website again. So by focusing on what is pushing the needle forward across your income, you can then change how you do business and create a better offering to sell those particular services to clients. Now let's look at another example. If I look at the different types of services here, and I basically just look at what is pulled in the most from each of these services over these months, then what I can do is I can see which services are the most profitable. Definitely isn't this one, which is just consulting hours. So it's basically between logo design, brand naming, and website development. So we basically have brand naming at the very top, which is just basically finding brand names, which is actually the most efficient service overall when it's done correctly. Then we have website development, and then we have logo development. But there's something else that is interesting about this data. I am making the same amount pretty much with websites as I am with logos. However, this is probably two clients. This is one client. This is probably around five clients. Is one client. This is one client, one client, and maybe about two or three clients. Overall, this is around 14 clients. This is maybe six clients. So I can do both. And this is like, about 73,000 pounds worth of work. But look at if I wanted to eventually start to use my time to build another business or to do promotional content to get more clients, if I can literally just take away that particular type of work and just do that. I can probably do more websites. I can do less design work with logos, and I can probably make more money by working with less clients, and I can also have more time to actually get new customers. This is how we need to be thinking in regards to getting new business, how to grow the business. And also, as well, it also works on the other side of the coin. So, for example, here, I break down all of my expenses. Right now, it's a little bit different with here. So I have, like, multiple businesses, and I have multiple things to kind of keep me organized with the three different businesses that I have. With this, it's all about making sure that we keep everything aligned and organized, and it's all about basically organizing my net worth. How much is the overall amount that I'm worth in my savings account? Now, I didn't make this all in the same year. Obviously, I currently average at roughly around 85,000 between those months, and then obviously, these months I didn't obviously make that much. Maybe I wasn't working. I can't actually remember, to be completely honest. 2023, what was I doing? God knows. I think I was moving, actually. I think I was moving to Asia potentially. I can't remember. Maybe didn't work too much. Never mind. So anyway, this is something that is going to be super important for you to implement in regards to understanding how to manage your finances, okay? Now, if you have any questions, you can actually download this particular file, so you can use it for yourself inside Brand Designer Pro. But you have any questions on how to use it or anything like that, I'm here to support. Just pop us an email, and we will get back to you as soon as possible. Anyway, thank you so much for your time, and I'll see you in the next lesson. 116. When to add new products and services to sell to clients: When to sell new products or services to a client. Now, I personally think that you should start selling services to a client as soon as you're ready. I think that if we think of ourselves as an asset, okay, we have different skill sets. So, for example, I didn't know anything about brand naming until I started picking up some books on brand naming, and I read them all. I didn't know anything about copywriting. I didn't know anything about logo design until I immersed myself in it and really started to understand how the best people in the world do logo design. I didn't know how to build websites until I put myself in a position where I had to build a website. You need to put yourself in positions to learn new skills so you can add more value. And usually 99% of the time, the amount that you earn is directly correlated to the amount of value that you can provide to someone else. So if I can help someone in real estate, for example, save $1 billion or whatever, my value is going to be significantly higher than if I'm just designing logos, right? You can still make really good money designing logos, but it's all relative, right? If I am working with much bigger clients, I can earn a lot more money, but it's going to come with a lot more stress. I like working with medium sized companies, to small companies, and just working with them in a really accessible way so that I work with them once, and then that's it. Next month, I'm working with someone else so I can keep things fresh and I can keep working on new exciting projects. Adding new services and adding new products. The answer is whenever you're ready. If you feel like you are getting really good at logo design, when you have a client who says, Oh, by the way, I actually really need a website. Do you know anybody? You could technically say, Listen, I've never built the website before, but I've always wanted to learn. Would you mind if I actually take on the project as a free project? I'll actually take on the project for free, learn how to build website design. And if you actually want the website at the end, then you can buy it off me for this amount. Does that sound good? Zero risk for the clients. You are getting paid to learn how to do stuff. Anyway, you can probably sell the service anyway without doing it for free. I've did that millions of times. I had a client who wanted to Shopify website, and I was like, never done a Shop Fy website before. Probably hired someone from FIR to do it. And I know how to make things look nice with Branding, so I can just tell them what to do. I hired someone from Shop Five for like $200. I sold the Shop Fi website for 10,000. It was like, $9,800 profit, right? It was perfect. And it saved me a ton of time because I didn't actually need to do anything. That was probably one of those websites which I showed you in the financial management lesson when I just paid someone else to do it, and it just saved me a ton of time and energy. But I also know how to do it now. So if I needed to, and if I needed to fix anything, I can do it firsthand. Super important. You don't want to put too much leverage on the other person because then they're going to start charging you a lot. And, to be honest, it just gets very messy. So make sure you invest in your skills. So you can offer more value, so you can utilize those skills to offer more services, to offer more products, and to develop yourself as a person because the more valuable you are, the more value you can provide, and the more value in monetary form you can get back in your pocket, okay? The more revenue you can generate, okay? Hopefully, that was helpful, and I will see you in the next lesson. 117. How to negotiate your way to higher profitability & growth: Okay, so how to negotiate yourself to better profitability and growth. So there's a few things to think about here when it comes to negotiation. When you are negotiating with someone, the person who cares least will always win. So what do I mean by that? I mean that as soon as possible, you need to put yourself in a position where you don't care, right? You need to put yourself in a position where you have enough savings and you have enough income in the bank where you don't have to take on every project, because if a client comes to you and you need the project and they ask for a discount, or are you going to give them a discount pretty quick to get that project? It is not something that you want to put yourself in a position for. It is not a position that you want to be in. So the first step of negotiating to become more profitable is to make sure that one, your website and your portfolio is up to scratch, you can showcase that you can do the work. Secondly, make sure your sales pitches are on point. Again, go back to the pitch perfect sales flow, which I have built in this program to show you exactly how to close any client that is closable thirdly, put yourself in a position through savings, through financial means and management, using the lesson which I've got in this particular course and also the asset that's in this particular program. Use it to manage your savings, to build up a nest egg so you don't have to take on every project, and you can say no if you really want to. That is literally the secret to effective negotiation. Be willing to walk away. It doesn't fit you, have a nest egg there for safety, so you can go into every single client call, very confident that you know how to do what you need to do with your skills, but you also have the money there to back you if you don't take on the project, if the client just isn't right for you, and then make sure that everything about your digital presence, your website, your portfolio, your social media channels, everything is super clean, polished, and people respect you as an expert within that particular industry that they know that you know what you're talking about, and you can provide the value that they need you to provide. But as well, just one last little tip, you need to find that balance between you winning and there being a win win solution for both people. If there's a client who is genuinely struggling to meet the budget and you don't really want to not work with them, you kind of are interested in the project, but their budget just won't allow it. Try and trim the package to meet their needs. Okay? Don't just say, Nana. You're not good enough for me. You're not good enough for me, bro. You are Mm. You are looking for someone who is cheap, and I am not cheap. You don't have to be, you know, like that, essentially. I've never been like that, but I think that if you just go into each conversation, just trying to be as helpful as possible, kind of like a helpful brand doctor, that can really help you to be seen in the right light. It always comes back in good karmor anyway. And also, you can kind of just say to them, Listen, I can't give you one of my current packages for this amount because it's just going to stretch me too thin, and I can't know, really deliver a great service. What I can do is if we take, like, one concept out and we take the brand guidelines out, I can give you two logos to that amount if you want. But yeah, let me know what you think, but that's the best I can do. That's going to at least give them an option to work with you. And what they'll probably do is sometimes they generally try to find the money from somewhere else so they can actually work with you fully instead of just, you know, sticking to an imaginary budget. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this lesson, and I will see you in the next one. See you soon. 118. Assessing your client journey to get more dream clients: I've worked with thousands of clients over the past decade, and this is the system for how the best clients found me. Now, how did I find out about this? Well, I got some advice from a mentor of mine who told me that I need to take every client I've ever worked with in the last year and basically break down how they found me. What was the first thing they got in touch with me about? How did they end up spending so much money with me? So I took all of my clients, and I basically broke down the ones that spent the most money with me and I looked at how they found me, what their first action was. Did we have a sales call? Did we not have a sales call? What pages did they go to on my website? I broke everything down. I spent 4 hours doing this, and I found that all of them followed the exact same structure. The exact same structure, the best and highest paying clients who worked with me on multiple elements of their branding, all worked with me through this structure. They found me on fiber first and this might be backwards or something. I'm not sure if you can actually read this, but I'll read it to you anyway. First and foremost, they found me on Fiber. So this basically means that they would either try to work with me through Fiber or they would go to Fiber and then go to my website. They would check out my website and try and find out more about me. Okay? So obviously they're interested in what I have to say or what I have to do because they are interested in seeing more of my services. They would then go to the custom packages button, okay where you can actually get kind of a unique quote for your project, or they will go to a sales page on my portfolio. This showcases that they're interested, right? They're interested in what I have to offer, they like what they see. Okay. From there, they will go to book a sales call. Now, how do I know this? How do I know this is happening on my website? If you haven't taken the Hotjar lesson on the web floor, website building course, take that, install it. It's free, and it shows you exactly what people are doing on your website, and it's the best tool ever. It's great. It can make you a ton of money. Sales, call Activate. This can be done through fiber. So I have an automated link that is sent to any message. So if you message me on Fiber, you get an automated link to book a call with me, and basically, if we think we're a good fit for each other, then we can have a call. If not, then obviously, I'll just delay it and we'll discuss alternatives that are maybe within your price range or someone who might be able to help you a little bit better. But you can book a sales call here and you can book a sales call on my website here, okay? But the first step to working together is booking that sales call, so I can kind of see what you're like, if I want to spend time with you and actually work with you and if you want to spend time with me. All right. The next step is email. So what I would do after the sales call because I would have their email address because they would actually have to leave their email to book the sales call, right, little trip there, you would then email them and say, Hey, really enjoyed our sales call. Here's some additional info and some additional resources and some additional value that I can provide based on our conversation. This is where you start to create a relationship. Now, what usually happens is they will either at this point, do one of two things, they'll either say, Listen, I'll just save the 20% because FVA actually charges clients as well on their side, I think, 5%, and then they'll actually charge you 20% to do it through their platform. Sometimes a client knows that and they'll say, Okay, can we just split the 20% and you save 10%, and I save 10%, and then we'll just do it directly. Sometimes they do that. Sometimes, for the first project, they want to work through FVA just as a security measure. That's fine. I don't really care either way. This is where you start the relationship. This is where every single one of my highest paying clients started a relationship, and ultimately, ended up making me, I think each client was probably worth about 14,000 roughly give or take, over the full span of their time working with me. So this included getting the name right, getting the logo right, getting the website. All of those clients took those three packages before I even done Brand's strategy, to be honest. And that was turning point for me. Because now I understood exactly the clients that I should accept that are more likely to go through that whole process with me, which now means I can select the clients with a far more educated mind, and I can understand which ones are going to be most profitable and which ones are not. So hopefully that gives you a little bit of insight in regards to how you can personally do this. Obviously, if you've never worked with clients before, this is something which is going to come further down the line when you're actually looking to scale the business and obviously create a better work life balance. But hopefully that was helpful, and I will see you in the next lesson. See you soon. 119. Organising your brand design template stack: So what does it mean by having a brand design template stack? Well, this is what it means. It means saving a ton of time and energy. That's what it means. So let's look at my template stack that I have on my computer. Now, this is a lifesaver, to be honest. Do you know when you start a brand design project and you need to do mock ups for the actual project, I have a set of four mockups that I use for pretty much every single client that I work with. And it includes generic things that pretty much any single client would need. So, for example, a letterhead, a flag, a levitating notebook, and business cards. I usually add like an additional one. So, for example, if it's a coffee company, obviously, you would need to add, like, a coffee cup or something because that would just be silly not to do that. But actually, what I would suggest is go to websites such as Mr. Mockup, go to free mockups and just download a set of really great mockup files for free, that you can save to your computer and use whenever you need them. And just use the same ones again and again because you're going to get faster, you're going to be better at actually changing them. Like, for example, sometimes the lighting is a little bit off in some of the mockups and it kind of looks a little bit weird. And there are some really great quality mockups here, to be honest. Like, Look at this one, look at this one. These all look absolutely great. Try to get them so that they actually suit each other. So, for example, these two would look great because the background is a similar color, and it's kind of a similar style. Whereas putting these two together, this one and this one, or this one and this one wouldn't really fit. Now obviously, within BrandZigaPro, we have lots of assets and files and templates and stuff so that you can save a ton of time anyway. But if you feel like you need anything else, please let me know, because I'm probably going to have it already in my files, and I can actually just share with you uploaded a circle so you can download it whenever you need it. Anyway, I hope that was helpful to you and let me know if you need anything else. I'm here to support and help in any way that I can, and I'll see you in the next lesson. 120. Testing new pricing strategies: So how do you test new pricing strategies? Now, this is one of the things that I like talking about most, to be honest, because pricing strategies are one of the things that is either going to make or break your business over the long term. And what I mean is, if you just continuously charge extra nothing for your services and you are not kind of evolving in regards to your skills and getting better at doing the thing that you actually want to do, then, you know, no one can really help you, right? As long as you improve your skill set and you create better and better work, right, you can eventually charge more for your services. That's just a fact, because the marketplace is the marketplace. Clients are going to be out there looking for the best quality within their budget. And if that budget is $1,000 and you're the best at the style that they want for $1,000, they're going to hire you. It's as simple as that. So all you can do is focus on what you can control, choose your niche, which we've already been through in this course, invest in your skills and invest in education, which obviously are with this course and obviously working with us in our support to help guide you and give you feedback on your designs, et cetera, et cetera. And then price yourself accordingly for your skill set. So when I say price yourself accordingly for your skill set, if you are pricing yourself at $25,000 and your skill set just not there, you're not going to get clients. It's as simple as that. So what I personally like to do is I like to slowly edge my way up. So, for example, the brand accelerator program at the moment is $3,750. Before that, it was $3,000. I sold three of them really, really fast, and that's when I thought, m, wait a second, I'm going to put this up by 30% or so, because I think it's worth more than that. It's literally sold super, super quickly. So I sold an additional three at $3,750 and probably actually probably closer to five. And now that has taken me onto the next step of probably putting it up to about 4,000 or 4,250. The reason I can do that is because I have confirmation from the market that it is worth that. My work on the portfolio showcases a certain standard and level of thinking, and I in the sales call was able to convert at least three people into buying that product or service for that particular price. That is product market fit. That is telling me that people are willing to pay this amount for this particular product, okay? When you get to a point where people are not willing to buy anymore or your amount of clients that you are actually working with reduces to a point where it's like, one in every month or one in every quarter, that's when you need to start thinking about, okay, maybe my skills are not quite there yet, so you either need to increase your skills or drop the price down until you get to a point, which is actually probably the way that I would do things. I would drop the price down until I get the maximum amount of clients that I can take then I would start to look to slowly ramp that up ever so slightly until I'm at a point where I can actually get more clients at a higher price. So basically, testing pricing is all about using the price anchoring approach, which I mentioned earlier on in the course, but also slowly, but surely starting to ramp up your pricing to get an idea of the maximum that you can charge whilst attracting a reasonable amount of clients per month. Anyway, if you need any specific help in regards to pricing or strategies or some feedback from me or the team, please let me know. I'm more than happy to help and be as supportive as possible, but until then, I shall see you in the next lesson. See you there. 121. Using Hotjar to optimise your website & improve conversions: So what is Hotjar, and why do you need it? Well, you need it because it is amazing. It is literally free, and you can get so much value from it. Okay? So, for example, this is the Clementine House Hotjar behind the scenes, behind the curtain over the past 30 days, I think, last 30 days. And basically, you can do anything here in regards to, yes, Google Analytics. But, for example, you can see where my traffic is coming from, which is mostly Google. That's where most people find me, ultimately. You can also do things like heatmaps, which is basically when people come to my homepage, what do they click on first? What do they do first, right? And this is just the cream of the pudding, right? There's plenty more where this came from. I could build something like, for example, Clement to House here, the last 30 days, move this out of the way, continue, and it's going to create heat maps for me. You show me basically where people are clicking, which is awesome, right? Because then I know what part of my website is working and which isn't working. You can see here, for example, all of these pretty much work. Let's just do this one. Just click on this one. Okay, perfect. It's going to show me. And then literally within what? A minute or 2 minutes, it's going to show me. People go to solutions first, which is great. People generally want to go for strategic brand development. People are watching the reviews, which is awesome. And then you can also go to another URL, which is our work, so I can actually see which projects they're clicking on most. Here you can see that they're clicking on pretty much all of them pretty evenly to be completely brutally honest. But mostly this one and mostly this one, obviously, because at the top, this one as well, seems to be pretty popular. But this is just the cream of the crop. The best up is where you get into recordings, and that's just on another level. So you click recordings, and then you can see here, you can see the landing page, the exit page. That's basically where they come, and then when they leave, for example, I had someone from the United States come to my website literally on 11 February, which is today. And they basically checked out my services, I believe, or at least they checked out something so you can see that they're actually scrolling through my website. They're looking at all these different logos. They're scrolling through my website again. And then they actually take action here by clicking. What do they actually click? They're actually clicking on different pages and then making more pages than just the home page. They're staying on their home page and then opening more pages as well, which is really interesting. Now they're going to actually check out my projects, which is super interesting. That's it. So they probably booked a sales call or something because obviously it doesn't show the calenty account. It just shows your website. But I literally have hundreds of different recordings showing lots of different people on my website what they're doing, where they're going. So for example, here, I've got people who's coming to my blog post. I have people who are coming to my homepage. I have other people. Who are going to, for example, my story, there's a guy from Nigeria, although he was only on the website for about no 0.1 seconds, which obviously wasn't great. And one thing that you can do, as well with Hotjar, once you install it, it's pretty easy to do, to be honest. It's like a YouTube video way to actually install it. It's not hard. It takes about 3 minutes, and you can do it on any website on any platform. One thing which I thought was super, super helpful was if you get a booking in for a meeting, and the meeting is for someone from the USA, for example, on Calendar, because obviously, you can tell by the phone number that they use, the country code. And you've only had one recording from the USA in the recent like half an hour on the last half an hour, you can pretty much see exactly what that person did on your website to make them book with you, which is super interesting because it can help you to refine your website and make it better. It can also have a better conversation with that client because you can literally say, Oh, so you know for a fact that they were looking at naming, that they looked at particular project on your portfolio. Maybe they looked at the center fi logo, for example, for a little bit longer than the other ones. So you can actually spend more time on that particular project when you're in the sales call and use that as an example for how you can help them. It's literally like groundbreaking stuff, super, super important to do, especially if you're just starting out in your brand design journey. If you start implementing stuff like this, you're going to be so ahead of everyone else, it's going to be crazy because most people don't even use this, and they should. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this lesson. I'll see you in the next one. See you soon. 122. Breaking larger projects into smaller milestones: So breaking much larger projects into small manageable milestones. Now, this is good for many different reasons, but most importantly, your mental health. I have worked on thousands of projects over the past decade, and what I found is there's a few things to really keep in mind when you are managing super big projects. Now, the first thing, as I've mentioned before in previous lessons is to set really clear expectations. Make sure that your client, before you even start working with them, knows the phases that you have in place to get them from where they are now the solution that they're trying to get to. So say, for example, brand naming, okay? I'll just share a little bit about my process. The first step of the process is to have our strategic meeting. After that, we will then discuss different directions and ideas. And once we confirm those ideas and directions, then we'll go on to the next stage, which is developing the actual names. So we don't even develop any names or creative work until we have our strategic meeting and we confirm the ideas together. After we confirm some ideas, we then develop some brand names. After we do that, we will deliver the presentation to and you will generate feedback for us. Once we generate feedback, we then get to a point where we can ultimately start to revise and create names that are more aligned with the types of names that you like personally, okay? So first step process, strategic C, discus ideas, generate names, refine. And if you go through that process, you will get the result that you're looking for. It's exactly the same for brand identity design. It's the same for brand strategy. It's the same for website development. You need to make sure that you have a set process, and don't expect to have this mastered within, like, the first project that you work on. It takes a little bit of time to go through it, but doing a little bit of research and actually having a structure with your brand identity design is going to help you to get so much more clarity when you first start working with a client. And also, you're also going to be able to be far less stressed because you know exactly where you are with each stage of the process. For example, with brand identity design, first step for me is always a strategic call. The next step for me is to confirm the idea behind the actual icons. So for example, I'll summarize everything that we discussed in our meeting. I'll also say, I like this idea for this particular icon. I like this idea for this icon, and I like this idea for this icon. Does that sound good to you? And then if you do like it, then we'll move on to the next stage where I'll actually develop the icons for the brand identity design. And once you do the icons, the next step is to develop the brand identity mockups and, you know, overall structure of the actual identity within a different phase. So once we confirm the actual icons themselves, we'll choose which two we want to take forward to the next stage, and only then will we start to add color? Will we start to add typography? Will we start to add mockups? Will we start to, you know, create a color palette and show how it's going to work? This is all part of the process. And once we do that and that's confirmed and we decide which one to go with, then we move on to the last stage, which is bringing together your elements, okay? So your brand guidelines, business cards, email signature, all that stuff, which is included in the package. And as you can see, those processes can take anywhere between, you know, for example, six days, two, ten days, or maybe even longer if it's a much bigger project with multiple logos or a lot of research to do. But ultimately, it comes down to just cutting away the fat, okay? If you can be super clear with the process, it cuts away too much back and forth, it cuts away any uncertainty, it cuts away any lack of clarity which may be there with the client, at least in this initial stage, and it allows you to just add as much value as possible by being as streamlined as possible. Now, when you master structuring single services, you can then start to structure an entire project and campaign. So, for example, with the brand accelerator program, this is me going through maybe five or six sometimes different services to offer a holistic approach to branding, which requires me to stay very structured throughout the entire process, link certain elements from the third service to the first service, which is brand identity to, you know, think about everything as we're kind of working through things and then refer back to the things which we've already developed. You know, there's a lot of stuff in play. But by staying organized and going through each single step of the process, when you're developing your branding, it just helps you to get so much further, so much faster. And one thing as well, which I learned pretty early on is that a client accepts that good things take time. So for example, if you started a conversation with me, and we signed the contract, and we got started today. And then tomorrow, I developed your logos within a day, which I could potentially do if I literally, worked from morning till night. If I delivered that particular logo within 24 hours, you would think, m, that's only took them 24 hours. That can't be good quality. However, if I deliver that exact same logo in seven days, you're going to perceive that I took seven days doing that logo, which is, you know, almost definitely not the case because I always take time to think about ideas and let them mull over and then, you know, come back to it and then refine it and then, you know, do a whole load of stuff before I actually send it to the client. That does take seven days just to kind of procrastinate on things and the ideas that I'm actually developing. When you are presenting stuff to clients, don't be too quick to get back to them. They may think they want quick, but what they actually need is they need time for the actual ideas to foster, to kind of materialize so that you can get back to them in a reasonable amount of time, yes, but also in an amount of time which reflects the amount of effort that you're putting into the project, your delivery dates the same. If you finish the work earlier, that's great. But make sure that you give yourself a little bit of a buffer before you actually deliver the work to make sure that the client doesn't think you've just rushed it. And obviously, also, you can use things like notion, for example, which can really help you to stay structured within your actual processes and just keep on track with every single client that you're working with if you're working with a large amount of them. Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed this lesson. I hope you find it helpful, and I will see you in the next one, I'll see you soon. 123. Passive income opportunities for brand designers: So passive income opportunities for brand designers. Now, personally, for me, there have been three or maybe four main income streams as a brand designer that I have taken advantage of, which is just being complete passive income. Now, the first one is if you build websites, you can sign up to WebflowsPartnership Program, which basically allows you to create a link so that if you get that client to make a Webflow website, you can get whatever they pay in hosting 50% roughly, which is absolutely incredible because the average hosting is like $200. You can get like 19 to $95 per client that you referred to Webflow for the lifetime that they use Webflow. So if a client has been using Webflow for five years, you're literally getting $100 each year forever, basically, which is awesome. Now, another thing which I think is really good is if you have any templates, you can sell them on things like Gum Road, you can fill them on the likes of Bee hants. You can sell them online on Instagram, for example, you can make your own website like we have, and you can sell your templates that you've created for yourself over time if you think it's going to add value to somebody, much like what we've done. Now, that leads me on to the third wave passive income, which is essentially creating content, creating courses, teaching people your way of doing things. We currently have, I think, around 20 courses altogether, but like ten main courses. And those ten main courses, you know, generate anywhere between, you know, $1,000 to $1,000.5 on Eudimi and Skillshare. But then we also have brand designer Pro, obviously, which is, you know, packed with 500 members pretty much all year round. And as soon as one person leaves, the other person comes in. So it's just one of those things where we are constantly trying to add as much value as possible with courses, and that helps us to create another arm of the business so we can reinvest into content, into creating sets into equipment, so we can make better quality content for you guys and ultimately drive more value and help you progress further in your career. Now, for me, personally, I actually think the best investment that you can make may not be passive income, but you should invest in yourself. You should get books. You should get courses, programs, much like you've invested in this. You should invest in mentorship. You should invest in bettering yourself as a brand designer, because then that's going to pay back more than anything that you're going to do from a passive standpoint. And also, if you don't want to invest in yourself, which I know you do because you've invested in this program already, but another way that I would look at doing things is potentially looking at just putting any spare money that you have in the S&P 500 and just leaving it there. Because ultimately what I think is the best option for you at each stage of the process is to basically invest in either yourself or invest in something where you can pull it out. And get that liquid cash as soon as possible. I wouldn't invest in property as much. I wouldn't invest in things like I don't know, like watches, for example, or crypto or anything like that. Obviously, you can do whatever you like. But those are the main ones. Selling hosting on Webflow is a really good income. Selling templates and selling your actual expertise in courses and stuff, that's another great one, and that is literally once you develop that digital asset, you can literally sell it again and again and again and again and again, and you never have to really provide any inventory. You don't have to ship anything. It doesn't cost you anything to ship anything, much like starting like an ecommerce company or a drop shipping company. You can actually just focus on sending files and getting paid for it, which is absolutely awesome. And another thing is obviously making sure that it's efficient because you want to be focusing your time on bettering yourself and better in your actual business. So don't get too distracted with passive income, but explore it. You can also do things like, for example, website templates and stuff, but it all depends on your skill set and what you actually want to achieve. I'm more than happy to discuss passive income with you. If you want to pop me an email and you have an idea or something, let me know, and I can give you some feedback and I can give you a little bit of guidance and support. But apart from that, I hope you've had an incredible journey on this course. And if you have any questions, please let me know, because I want to support you in any way that I can. I look forward to hearing from you soon. Take care. Bye bye.