Brand Identity Design for Beginners

1. Trailer: Hey, my name's Jeremy. I'm a brand identity designer from Sydney, Australia. I've been in the industry for over seven years now and I want to share everything I've learned so far about creating a brand identity from scratch. I work with a lot of small to medium-sized businesses all around the world and I help them with their visual identity to make sure they differentiate and stand out in the market. I'm going to share with you my whole process as well as shortcuts, tips and tricks on how to deliver a brand identity project from scratch. I'm going to show you my process from all the way from the initial consult call, some tips on how to do a discovery strategy session. Then going all the way to creating style scapes, a logo design, bringing that into creating distinctive touch points for the brand, and then bringing it all the way to pre-production, and delivering the final files to your client. I'm going to share with you tips on how to present your work, how to create amazing mockups in Photoshop as well, and also some other ways on how to speak with your clients, ask the right questions, as well as create visually appealing designs that's going to create a deep impact. For the class project, I've created three creative briefs that you can choose from. You're going to actually pick one and create a brand identity from scratch. This will be a great way to actually be practical and learn the skills that I'm teaching in this class. Each brief is a little bit different than the other, so you can pick one and you're going to have super fun at creating the identity for your class project. If you're a beginner, a designer, or just the creative person that wants to learn the brand identity process, then definitely enroll into this class. It's going to be super amazing and I'm super excited on what you're going to create in this class. Let's jump into it and I'll catch you in there. 2. Defining Brand Identity: When it comes to defining a brand, branding or a brand identity itself, a lot of people get mixed up with all the definitions. See, a logo is not a brand, a brand identity is not branding either. All the meanings are similar, but I want to give you some clarity on some of the meanings when it comes to a brand identity and a brand. Number 1, a brand identity is this, it's a visual representation of the brand in the form of distinctive assets that make up the image of the brand. Visual assets can include a logo, colors, typography, photography, a website, advertisements, print design, signage, and wayfinding. In simple terms, a brand identity is the look and feel of the brand. It's the overall theme, it's the logo, it's the identity. It's all the combined colors and type in, all the cool stuff that you see on the outside, it's not the inside, but it's the outside of the brand. When we're out in the world and you see posters or you see banners or ads or cool designs or icons, that's all the brand identity. What is a brand then? I like Marty Neumeier quote in his book, The Brand Gap, he also has other amazing books that you should read as well. But he says a brand is a person's gut feeling about a product, organization or service. What he's saying is it's an emotional connection, it's an internal belief about a brand and that's what forms a brand in the mind of a consumer. There's another cool quote from Stef. He says a brand is a distinctive experiential promise that represents a business. I just love this quote, it's really shows that when a brand is and Stef is a [inaudible] and he's really cool. But I just wanted to share that as well. At the end of the day, a brand is a connection, it's a gut feeling, it's an emotion, it's a perception, it's a belief about a brand, and it's in the mind of the consumer. That's what really determines what a brand is, it's a position in the mind of the consumer. That's what a brand is. Now, what's branding? The answer is similar. The difference is what branding is it's distinctive assets that customers engage with over a long period of time to form a consistent belief and perception about a business. That's my definition of how I define what branding is. It's really similar to what a brand is, but I think that's really cool. There's another cool quote that I like from Michael Hodgson's which I think will give clarity as well. He says is the art and science of creating a brand personality. You've got to think of a brand as a person, a person with emotions, with a personality, with a character. That's what branding is. Then what's brand-building? I love this cool quote from Peter Wilken. He's a strategist and designer as well, he owns a studio. He says it's identifying, articulating, and then building this territory in the mind, which is your brand. It's something that needs constant management, nurturing, checking relative to what your competitors are doing and to what your customers. Brand building is pretty much a process that happens over a long period of time of evolution of responding to customers needs, to understanding them. Because at the end of the day, customers evolve as technology and society and culture grows, your brand starts to move and innovate and becomes something new over time. Even though your core values and your why stays the same, it starts to evolve over time. That's typically what happens when it comes to brand building. Then we've got brand strategy. I love this cool definition from Stef, again, he's really cool. He says, it's a platform that bridges business strategy with branding and communication. Super simple, but it involves marketing, involves branding, involves a strategy, but I like to think of it as a roadmap that goes from A to B and it helps you connect to the customers. Because at the end of the day, you need to understand the business problem then you can find the best solution for the business goal and the uses. Because without a strategy, you can have great execution. But if you're not giving the right recommendations to your client to take action on and aim it at the goal or the users, then you're going to create a design that's not going to be really effective, you understand? That's why brand strategy is important. But at the end the day, a discovery session is just as fine. Instead of going heaps deep into strategy and stuff like that, you can do a discovery session that's going to ultimately help you connect with your client so you can understand their problem in the best way. 3. Brand Studio Inspiration: For me being a creative designer, I love finding inspiration online, in books, in museums on Pinterest, Behance. It's everywhere. For me, I love following studios that really inspire me because it gets the creative juices flowing, or when I'm starting a new project that I need to get some images or just find a source of inspiration, I love finding it from the best places. But I just want to quickly share a list of studios that focus on brand identity. It really inspired me and hopefully they inspire you. So I'll put a list up and there's heaps of them. You've got Pentagram, you got Hoodzpah, you got We are collins, Gif studios, Farm Design. It's just a few of the ones that I really, really love. The design is just such top-notch. It's really high-quality, they work with amazing brands, and I feel like even if you're just a one man studio, it's okay to follow these bigger studios because you can always get ideas from everywhere no matter what level you're at. There's also some brand identity books that I really love. When I first started I read Brand Identity Designed by Alina Wheeler. That was one of my first books as I read when I was studying in university. Number 2 is Identity Designed by David Airey. He has a studio in the UK and he has a really nice book which is really cool. Another one is How To buy Michael Bierut. That's got a lot of stories and brands he's worked to and some examples of really cool brand name. You've also got the Books of Branding by Radim Malinic. He's from the UK as well. Then you've got Branding in five and a half steps by Michael Johnson. He talks a bit about the whole process from strategy, from inspiration to the design, execution and delivery. I felt like there's a five solid Brand Identity books that you can use. I'm going to show a few examples of the pages in some B-roll shots. I'll show you some of the books I have. I don't have the Alina Wheeler one because that was a long time ago, but hopefully these sources inspire you. Instead of always going on just Pinterest, or Behance, or Google to find images, it's good to start with books and look at other studios and see how they create their work. 4. The Identity Process: What's the brand identity process all about? Being a designer is totally different from being an artist. There's actually a process that you need to follow because art is more subjective, it's more playful and fun and creating an expression of an emotion or a concept. But when it comes to design, when creating for clients that want results, whether it's a conversion or trying to build brand awareness. When it comes to design, it's better to have a design process. That means every single time that you work with the client, you can be objective. You can focus on solving the problem and make sure that you are hitting on the goals every single time. Because if you didn't have a solid process and if you mess with it all the time, you're not going to get consistent quality and results every time you work with a new client. Make sure that you have a good, solid process, that you deliver quality, and that it's going to be consistent every single time that you work with a new project. If you have a client that's not willing to go through your process that you do have, sometimes that's a red flag which shows basically this client is not a good client to work with. You want to make sure that they are willing to accept your process that you go through. The thing is, at the end of the day, every studio has a different process. It's always going to be a little bit different. As you grow as a designer or maybe into an agency, your process will always shift and change and evolve. My process is my process. You can use it as a guide but build from that, add to it, learn from others and that's how you build a solid process over time. I remember when I first saw that as a designer, I used to just do the magic reveal. I didn't really have a process. It was sloppy and I'll just reveal the logo on a page and the client ended up not liking it. Then I'll end up doing like 5, 6, 7 different concepts and then do like 10 revisions. It left me feeling frustrated and I wouldn't like the project because every time, it was just so frustrating, it was getting annoying. I realized I need to build a process. When I started doing a process, it completely changed my brand design business. I want to share with you the seven-part process that I use to deliver amazing brand identities. As I said before, this is my process right now, but it can definitely evolve and change. I'm always learning and growing, so my process is definitely going to grow. Here's my seven-part process on how to create a brand identity. Number 1 is you want to have a consult call. This quick consult call basically, is to jump on the phone with the client to see if you are a right fit. If you're not a good fit, maybe because it's a weird industry you're not interested in, or maybe the client was acting weird when he started talking about money, or maybe they just didn't have enough information or didn't understand their business, or they couldn't answer certain questions you are asking. These are all red flags. You want to use this time in this call to spot any red flags and the thing is, no should be your default answer. You shouldn't say yes to every project. Obviously, if you're just starting out and you're trying to grow your portfolio, you need the money, you need the cash right away, then it's okay to say yes to a lot more projects. But as you develop as a brand identity designer over time, then you want to be more professional and only work with the clients that you want to work with and build a portfolio on the type of work that you want to get in the future. That's what I always tell designers. But at the end of the day, do what works for you. Once you've done the consult call, which usually gets for about 20-30 minutes, it's really quick. You don't want to go too deep into details. Once you've got the information you need and you feel like they're great great client to work with, then what you need to do is you need to take a deposit upfront. Typically, the way I work is I take 50 percent upfront then at the end of the project, you want to make sure that you're taking the balance before you send the final files. If it's a larger project, five, 10k, 15k, then typically what you want to do is you might want to break it up into milestones. Many the first milestone will be after the discovery phase, 33 percent. Then after the first initial concepts, then you charge another 33 percent, and at the end, 33 percent. That's just one example. Sometimes people do like 25 percent chunks, just depends on how you want to break it up. For me, I use a cool software called Rounded. It's an Australian-based software for freelancers and business owners. But you want to make sure that you find a simple software that you can send invoices that connect with Stripe and PayPal, which make it super easy if you have clients overseas. The 2nd part of my process is the discovery phase, and I'm going to go into detail on all of these parts in the next videos, so just make sure you watch those. But discovery is all about digging deeper, getting insights, talking with the client, answering and asking questions, and just really understanding who they are as a business, who the brand is, and who their users are. After you've done discovery phase, typically I go into a research phase where I'm going looking at competitors online. I'm studying their business. If they have a website or if they already have history then I research that brand. If it's a fresh new startup, then the research might be a little bit different. We'll just mainly be focusing on the competitors. But you want to research online, do all that type of stuff, and that leads me to the 3rd part of the process, which is style-scapes. Now, style-scapes is something I learned from the man, Chris Do from The Futur and I really like doing style-scapes compared to mood boards. I use it as get images of Pinterest, Behance, Dribble, wherever I could find and just dump them on a page or into folders. Mood boards do well for some people, that's totally fine. But I love doing style-scapes because it's focused more on the user. I have more credibility to guide the direction of the visual tone and look and feel of the brand. It just allows us to be a bit more objective. Number 4 is the logo design phase. This is where I extract all this [inaudible] from the style-scapes. I also go through my inspiration, all that type of stuff and started jumping to the logo design. We'll be going through sketches. I sketch out some designs, do different concepts, and then bring it into Illustrator and create the actual logo and go from there. But this process is probably one of the finest process. It was all about the design and productivity and just curating and exploring different ideas. Once you go through the initial stages of getting an idea of the Logo design, then we go through revisions. Typically, there's 2-3 revisions depending on how happy the client is and what the project is. But typically, I have 2-3 revisions during the initial phase, then we have one round, then we have the third round, etc. Typically that's how it goes. Sometimes clients are a bit more fussy or the process wasn't as objective, so they might want extra revisions. That's fine. You just charge extra for that and add it into the scope. The 5th part of the process is the identity touch-points. Once you've nailed that logo, you want to start expanding it to other parts of the identity. It could be a business card, it could be a website, it could be signage, wayfinding, marketing material. It could be a whole bunch of different things. You need to really think about all the touch-points that the brand has in the real world, whether it's in a physical brick-and-mortar shop where a client has to come in and buy something. Think of the Apple store. You walk into the Apple store. People have t-shirts on, you got the nice stickers on the wall, the nice labels, and the logo, all that stuff. These are all touch-points that we need to start to design. Once you've done all the touch-points there, we want to move on to the production. This is like finalizing the designs, finalizing the files ready for printing. If your client is not doing printing, then it could be handing off to a developer or building a website. You need to get all the right files, SVG files, all that type of stuff. So you need to make sure. This is the part of the process where you proof everything, you check everything before sending it off to the printers or before sending it off to the client. Then lastly, you have delivery. Delivery is all about delivering the final files in a nice little package. I typically have a call with the client to break down how they can use it. I sometimes add a little bit of a training, which is really awesome. But it's all about delivering and making the overall experience amazing for your client. That's my seven-part process of how I do a brand identity. We're going to go down and I'm going to go into more detail on each part of the process in the following modules. 5. Consult Call: In this video, I want to talk about the consult call. What's the point of it and why should we even bother with it? Why not just use a questionnaire? When I first started, I remember I was getting a questionnaire. I had about five fields where they can put in text or answer questions on my website. I had a simple little Squarespace website, and to be honest, I hardly got any leads in our website. The thing is, every time you give a questionnaire, you're giving homework to your client. Why do you want to give people homework? People don't want to be overwhelmed with so much information so the best thing to do is, it's easier just to jump on a quick call, talk to the client, talk to the person, get a feel for them, and the thing is, when you're on the phone, you can actually get a sense of their personality, their character. You can get a vibe from them as well to see if they're actually a good person to work with, because at the end of the day, no one wants to work with a bad client. We want to make sure that every client we work with is a good one, that is a person that is fun to work with, that is professional, that is understanding, and someone who is going to be serious. We're not just going to work with anyone, because at the end of the day, if we have a bad experience and some people might want a quick design, you know what I mean? The thing is, make sure your default answer is always no. Don't be quick to say yes because the client might not be the right fit for you. In the call, you want to make sure that you jump on the call, instead of jumping back and forth with emails which takes so much time, you can jump on the call, quickly ask as many questions as you can, and only a few that you need to really understand the purpose, their business, a bit of the background before jumping in and sending an invoice or a proposal. What is the overall purpose of having a consult call. Number one is to see if the client is a right fit. Maybe it's not the right industry for you. Maybe it's just a person that is not good with money or they don't understand branding, they don't understand the value. Those are big red flags and you want to make sure that you avoid that at all costs. Number two is you want to ask questions. Questions allow them to open up to understand their business, to get to know them a little better, and to see if it's something that you are interested in. There's no point in working on a project that you're not going to find interesting. Then number three is getting to know their personality. What are the person they are, get to know their character, are they funny, are they interesting. You can also get a vibe of them as well, like if they're going to be a bad client or not. Lastly is the methods that you can to call them. Obviously, you can use your mobile phone. If it's a client overseas sometimes people use WhatsApp which is good as well, or you can go with a video call approach and just use Zoom or the app called Whereby which is really easy, just send the link and the client can just join on the call which is really cool. If you do a Zoom call, the benefit from that is that you can actually record the meeting, so then you can get some advice and practice, so next time you can look back and see where you went wrong and improve for next time. Zoom call or a phone call is totally fine. Just have a quick consult, 15, 20 minutes. You don't need to keep going because if you go for an hour, that's like a discovery call. But you want to save that for the actual paid part of the project. That's my tips on how to conduct a consult call. 6. Discovery: In this part, I want to share with you about the discovery phase and why it's so essential to creating a solid brand identity. If you skip this phase, you're basically going to be guessing, you're going to be doing the magic reveal, and you won't understand the needs and the problems of the actual client's business. Because we need to be objective as designers. We need to design with purpose. Every time we design, we need to have purpose. We need to understand the business, the goals, the users, the overall target market, the competitors. We need to understand a whole bunch of things to make sure that we deliver a great project every single time. Number one is that you need to dive deeper into the client's business. So asking questions is going to help you do that. I'm going to give you some examples of some high-value questions you can ask in the project section, to gather insights and relevant contexts as well. Digging deeper to the clients why, you want to know the how, what they do, the product they provide, how they get their customers, how they're going to generate awareness. There's so many parts of the process. It also provides clarity, not only to you so you can design better, but it's going to give clarity to your actual client. It's going to give them more ideas. It's going to help them understand strategy and the business a lot better. It also helps you be objective, as I mentioned before, so we can design with purpose. Then lastly, it helps with your research. When you're researching competitors or designs, then it's going to really help you there. There is a few ways how you can actually deliver on the discovery session. For me, I have a nicely designed framework in Illustrator, I share my screen, we have a recorded Zoom call and I take my client through that whole process and framework, and I ask questions, we get the answers and I write down all the notes. Then at the end of the session, I actually finalize and summarize the notes and each section we went through, and it's just really fun that way. It's faster for me as well. If you're on a Mac, you could use Kener, and a lot of people like using that. Number 2 is you can make it a more interactive session. There is a cool tool called Miro. It's actually a whiteboard tool. You can post a post-it notes in the actual browser. It's like an online app where your client can join in, other people can join in, and even you, and you can be more collaborative together and just do it that way. If you're someone that needs to actually do it in person and do like sort of a whiteboard session with your clients, and you want to be more hands-on, then you can do that. Just get a flip chart or a nice whiteboard and you can go to your client, book at a library, or if the client has a space or maybe you own a building, then just rent that out and you can do a session in there. I personally do everything online. It's just easier and a lot of my clients are from overseas as well. It's just easier just to do it on a Zoom call overall. What do you actually include in that sort of framework of the discovery session? The number 1 question is, what is the measure of success? That's a super key question you need to ask because, you need to really choose what is the goal. Are we trying to get more leads, more sales, more conversions, brand awareness in terms of reach or impressions? Are we trying to retain more customers? Are we trying to get new customers? You need to really ask that question to try and find something that is actually measurable and something that you you be objective. Then you can always refer back to the client and say, hey, this is our measure of success. Did we hit that goal? That will prove that your brand identity did the job it was meant to do. The first section of the discovery phase, you want to focus on the brand itself. What is the brand's highest values? What do they believe in? What do they stand for? What do they live by? The second thing is their future desired state. Where do they want to be 5, 10, or even 15 years from now? What's their future desired state? You want to focus on that, the mission statement, the vision statement is super, super key. Then you want to go into some [inaudible] and circle and focus on the why, the what, and the how. This really helps you get heaps deep into the coal, and the emotion of the actual brand. You also want to focus on the brand attributes. What do they want to stand for and be related with in the market? Also, focusing on the positioning segment, where do they want to be positioned in the market? Is it a premium brand or a discount brand? You also want to find out what's the X factor or in other words, the unique value proposition? That's really key. You also want to know the look, feel and the turn of the brands. What's the message and the viables, the sort of visual identity you want to go off? You want to understand the competitors as well. What are their competitors doing? Also, there's something you can also ask is like what brands inspire them, or what brands don't inspire them? That can help you get some relevant information as well. The second part is all about the users. What is the user, or the customer, or the client that the brand or business is trying to target? If it's a Software as a Service company, they probably want customers. If it's sort of a coaching business, they probably want clients. You need to dig deep and understand who are they trying to target and where are these people? Then what you need to do is go into sort of the demographics. What's the age, the employment, their education status, their relationship status, how much money do they earn, what's their likes and dislikes, all that type of stuff. Then you want to go into their psychographics, which is more focused on the desires, the needs, the pain points, what are they struggling with? What are the solutions that you can provide to help them out? Then there's focusing on the customer journey. How does the customer interact with the brand from the beginning to the end? Do they find a social media post then they click on your website, and then they go through your website and they look at your services page? Really, understand like how are they generating awareness with the client, and what is their funnel, how're they bringing clients in. That's a really important key as well as part of the user section. Finally, the last section you want to focus on is the goals. This is all about prioritizing the next steps for your client. You prioritize the goals. What is the next thing that they need to do? If you're developing an identity, you obviously need to deliver the logo and the other assets, then the client will need to take that and the client might need to write content for the social media, for the templates you made, they might need to update their website with the new content, etc. What does the client need to do to generate brand awareness? How they're going to bring in the customers? For example, if you design the brand identity and not doing content, then the client needs to figure out how they're going to build the content, how they going to create certain things to bring in more clients. Are they going to promote market? Unless you're doing that and helping them with it, then they need to do that and you need to suggest things to make them move forward. You also want to ask questions like, how are they going to generate the revenue? How they're going to generate the awareness as well? Because you are the man and the designer. Then, the last two things is you want to put out the timeline of the project. What's the overall timeline and how long is that going to take? You just show them nicely with the dates and keep the client on track. Also, you want to ask yourself, do you need to do a launch strategy? What's the launch? How are you going to launch this new startup? If it's not a new startup then sometimes it's a brand refresh, then you can do a launch for that. We have a new look, and then you have a nice refresh. Those are the key three parts of doing the discovery phase and some of the methods on how I do it and hopefully that was helpful. 7. Brand Archetypes: I want to talk a little bit about brand archetypes and how we can actually use them in branding today. A little bit about the history. The first term archetype was made by Carl Jung in 1919. He was a psychologist who introduced the term. Then in 1949, there was a guy called Joseph Campbell who wrote a book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. He talked about how the collective unconscious is cross-cultural. Talking about the subconscious, talking about how things onto the surface in people's minds. Then in 2001, basically, the book came out by Margaret Mark and Carol Pearson, The Hero and The Outlaw. Basically, this is where they translated those initial ideas, and actually turn them into a real archetypes. So anything about brand archetypes should be attributed to this book. They applied it to branding and marketing, and basically does a book. If you want to dive deeper into all the details, and even go deeper than what I'm talking about, I'm just giving a basic overview. It's better to get the book, The Hero and The Outlaw to learn more about that. By definition, an archetype is a universally recognizable, innately understood character type, role, or image that a brand can personify. So it's basically a character or image in the mind that we know from culture, pop culture, movies, games, all those type of things that we can be embodied or empowered by in terms of branding. It's going to impact the alternative voice the way we do ads in our marketing, messaging, our branding, and the way the look and feel of the brand, and it has an impact on that. Marty Neumeier has a quote which I like from this book, The Dictionary of Brand. He says it's a standardized model of a personality or behavior, often using marketing, storytelling, psychology, and philosophy. I really love that. That's basically the core of what a brand archetype is. In the book, you can go into more of the details of each archetype, but here's a few examples of how they lay it out. Typically, you've got the motto, the core desire, the goal, the greatest fear, the strategy, the weakness, and the talent, and then also alternatives of the name and [inaudible]. For example, the Everyman, their motto is, all men and women are created equal. Their desire is to connect with others. Their main goal is to belong with community. Their greatest fear is to be left out or to stand out from the crowd. The strategy is to be down to earth to have a common touch. Their weakness is losing oneself in an effort to blend in. Talent is basically realism, empathy, lack of pretense. They also can be known as the good old boy, a regular guy/girl, person next door, the realist, the good neighbor. The casual person, the everyday guy, that's just 9-5, does that normal stuff that everyone knows. An example that I'm too is like The Hero. The Hero is all about, where there's a will there's a way. When you think of a movie, you think of like Jumanji or something, and you see The Rock. They try to accomplish the mission of getting to the top of the islands and get the gem. The Hero is all about finding a way, finding solutions, which is cool, but it goes on. The desire is to prove one's worth through courageous acts. Their goal is to expert mastery in a way that improves the world. Their weaknesses is sort of being weak or being a chicken, be a vulnerability. Their strategy is to be strong and competent as possible. Weakness is arrogance or pride. Talent is courage, competence, and they can also be known as a warrior, crusader, rescuer, superhero, the soldier, team player, etc. We see that a lot in movies. That's a few examples, but you can dive deeper in the book. Here is basically the 12th brand archetype wheel. It's breaking down into 12 core archetypes that are created in The Hero and The Outlaw. We've got innocent sage, explorer, outlaw, magician, the hero, the lover, the jester, the everyman, the caregiver, the ruler, and the creator. Basically, they break it up into four segments, with the core desire in the middle. You can see on the left-hand side to provide structure to the world. Then we've got yearn for paradise on the right. As you go down, leave a mark on the world, and then the left side is connecting with others. That's the core desire of those key brand archetypes and then I've given some brand examples. For example, creator can be Apple, Adobe, also even Microsoft. The ruler could be BMW, Rolex. Caregiver can be compassion, usually non-profits are those tougher ones. Everyman is like Kmart, probably TK Maxx, Target, Maya that's ABA thing. You've got Jester would be like M&Ms or Old Spice. Lover, you got Chanel, fashion brand. Hero, I put the Salvation Army, which is really cool, there's plenty of others. Magician would be Walt Disney, the very creative in the way he did the animation is just amazing. Outlaw, it would be Harley-Davidson. Explorer, Patagonia. Sage is Google. The innocent, I just put Huggies there because they're cycling on babies in the way they present themselves. There's an example of how you can pick a brand archetype and use it in your brand voice, in your brand messaging, and to basically direct on how you want your brand to go. Here are some other examples that I mentioned some of them that can be used just for an example of brands in the real world. For example, The Hero, Nike. In the Innocent, you've got Dove and Nintendo. Explorer, The North Face or Jeep, etc. Does it have some more examples? Start thinking of brands in the world of how they embody one of these characters. I have one question, which character are you playing? I've got some images here to picture in the mind of what a brand role, one of these archetypes can be. For example, The Magician. You can see this guy, he's an illusionist, he is creating an illusion with this crystal ball that's called. The Explorer, he's got maps, he's full of backpacks, he's ready to adventure and go out to the outdoors. right you've got the ruler. It's a wealthy businessman who probably owns a company, he's all about status and prestige. Think about which character you can pick for a brand and how you can use it in your client projects to actually help you guide the direction of how the brand's going to be positioned and how it's going to feel to the world. 8. Brand Tagline: If you're just a startup, it's not necessary to have a tagline straightaway, but if you want to evolve and expand and grow into a bigger brand, having a brand tagline is super important. Why bother having a tagline? There's four key reasons why. Number 1, it's going to strengthen the brand message. So whatever your core brand promises or your core message that you're putting out to the world, it's going to strengthen that. It also will inspire positive customer reactions or emotions. Sometimes brands turn their taglines to jingles and it has a fun motivation behind it and it can make the shopping experience better, especially in the retail context. It can also influence buy decisions as well. A tagline can build trust, it might make the brand feel more professional or bigger than what it is and it can also provide extra clarity. If you have a logo out in the wild and maybe it's a new customer or someone that's never seen the logo before, then without a tagline, it might be hard to distinguish what type of brand it is, but a tagline can provide extra clarity on what the business actually offers and what's it about. A tagline, essentially, is a short catchphrase. It's also a set of words or a phrase that complements the brand logo to create a feeling. It's all about creating an emotion, building trust with customers and with your audience and, as I said before, some brands even turn it into a jingle and it becomes this whole big thing. That's basically what a tagline is, it's something that's cool to attach onto a logo and just expand on that brand identity. Here are some tips for great taglines. I've got six tips for you. Number 1 is keep it clear and easy to understand. Don't try to sound too smart or too witty. People don't want to have to guess what you do as a business, so keep it clear. Number 2 is keep it short and memorable. People skim marketing materials these days, they have low attention spans. They literally just skim through books these days and magazines and articles and stuff, so make sure you just keep it short so they can browse through it. Number 3 is make it simple. Your audience should be able to easily repeat the tagline back to you. It should be so simple that a kid should be able to say it without a problem. Number 4 is be clever and sharp. It's okay to have a clever tagline, people remember that, it gets stuck in their head. For example, Apple is, Think Different, or Nike, Just Do It. Very short, very clever, very sharp, and people will remember that. Number 5 is, does it have a good flow? Does it have rhyme or rhythm to it? Does it sound nice to the ear? Is it easy to say? Is it nice to say? Those type of things will determine if it's going to be a good flow. Number 6 is, does it align with your brand? Is it relevant to the brand philosophy, the value it provides, and the benefits to the customers? So, is it aligned with the brand benefit and the brand offering? Here are some questions to ask yourself when creating a tagline. Does the tagline actually align with the company? Does it reflect a core benefit? Does it have our brand personality in it? Would it make sense to our customers? Is it short and punchy? These are some key questions you can ask yourself when you're coming up with a tagline and coming up with ideas. Here are some brand examples that I love. You've got Nike, Just Do It. Apple, Think Different. Woolworths is an Australian grocer, The fresh food people. Telstra, It's how we connect, and that's an Australian brand as well, telecommunications. Dollar Shave Club is, Shave Time. Shave Money, that's very clever and sharp. KFC, It's finger lickin' good. Those are just some examples there of taglines being used on some big brands and here you can see how it's actually used in terms of the logo. You've got Woolworths and Telstra at the top there, how it's combined with the logo and the colors and sometimes a bit of graphic elements. Dollar Shave Club in the bottom and Apple on the bottom right Think different. So that's how you can see how those taglines are used there. Let's get practical. How do you actually come up with a tagline? Just some key things is, make a list of keywords. Write some brand attributes or brand values of the brand. Sometimes you already have that in your discovery session, but you can actually just write down some keywords. Then, what you want to do is write 10-15 lines. Try and come up with different ideas, different taglines that you can use. It's okay to be a bit messy and just free-flow, come up with ideas, just write it down. If you have more than one person doing this, you might have a copywriter or a director or whatever, then you go off and spend 30 minutes or an hour or sometimes takes even longer than that. Just write down as many options as you can and ask those questions as before. You can also do an Eye and an ear test. How does it sound, how does it look, how does it feel? Ask those questions and test it. Speak it out loud in your mouth, look at it at small sizes, at big sizes, see, is it easy to scan through and easy to read? Then, once you are finalizing, what you want to do is just narrow down to the top three or top five, and then you can present those to the client when you present a tagline and obviously show it with the logo, because that's going to have more impact than showing it on just a wide space as well. With Liezel Torres, the small brand that I worked on. I used my notion board but before that, I focused on getting the tone of voice from the actual brand so when we did the discovery session, this is the tone of voice we came up with. Loud but not proud. Friendly. She's playful, but also helpful and also expressive in the word. So, that was the tone of voice that we focused on. I went into my notion board, I wrote that down to help me remember and then I came down and broke down some keywords. What are some keywords? Bold, voice, creative, vocals, coach, sound, vibration, confidence, grow, relief. I'm just pulling some of these words from the actual discovery session, building up these attributes, the look and feel and stuff. That's where I got these keywords. You can do mind maps and sketch out some stuff. After I did that, I started coming up with some different ideas. Find the voice within, find your voice, connect with your inner voice, develop your creative sound, vibrate your true sound, become a bold vocalist, bold sound for the brave vocalist, create your signature sound, vocal training for artists. That's just it, we came up with 10 ideas there. We eventually settled on, Find your voice, because it's three words, which is low syllables, easy to understand. That was one of the things that my client said during the session as well, so when I was talking about her customers and her goals and stuff, she also mentioned that as well, so I thought it was a good fit. That's our account with our ideas, just keywords and then just playing around, coming up with ideas, taking some of these words and literally just expanding on that. For example, let's come up with some more. The Creative voice. Find your powerful voice. What else? Find the bold within, just stuff like that. Eventually, we came up with the tagline, Find your voice, but there's also some alternatives that I've provided here as well for the client. So it was, Find the voice within, and an alternative is, Connect with your inner voice, as well. Those are secondary taglines which can be used for call-to-actions and then let's write a little blurb here. We want her clients to feel that they can find their potential to unlock their voice because it's all about vocal coaching and she helps them find their inner voice by training them, building their vocal chords, and all that stuff. Then, how that tagline can translate into a call-to-action. A tagline is basically can be broken off into other messaging parts, but this is one part of it. A call-to-action can be on a website learning page, it can be on a piece of content on Instagram, but the main one was, Find your voice here, and then the long form one is, Book a free consult to help find your voice, as well. So that's another way she can ask on her website or something like that. Then if I go to the web design that I created, you can see here, Find my voice. I can use it as a button her. I create a button, and if I go down, you can see the packages and how it's used. I can also use the tagline here on the bottom footer as an extra element. 9. Messaging & Value Proposition: In a noisy world, we want to make sure that we're delivering the right message to the right audience. There are four key pillars that I recommend when doing brand messaging and I'm no copywriting expert or messaging expert, but these are things I've learned along the way doing brand design. Number 1 is value proposition, the second one is the elevator pitch, number 3 is the messaging and communication strategy, and then number 4 is the tone of voice. These are four core pillars that you should implement, and they work great for small to medium-sized businesses but you can obviously expand and there's a lot more to these elements and you can dive deeper when you start working with bigger brands, but I feel like this is the main things you need. Number 1 is the value proposition, this is what describes the primary benefit to your customer and what they can expect from your product and service. It's basically the X-Factor. I don't know if you've seen that show called The Voice, there used to be an old one called the X-Factor. Basically, someone with a unique sound or unique singer would come on and they'll had that X-Factor, so that's what it is. It's the unique offering, the competitive edge that sets you apart from your competitors. What makes you unique, what makes you stand out, this is the value proposition. I'll quickly jump online to show you a few examples. Number 1 is with Uber. Uber is a driving app and you can see the first thing you see is a sign up which is pretty good for UX. Someone can jump on and sign up, but they've got their words, Opportunity is everywhere, and then as I scroll down, it can says why drive with us, and they've highlighted a few key benefits here. Number 1 is set your own hours, number 2 track your earnings, and number 3 get support at every turn. I love that they're highlighting, you can set your own time, you can work when you want, and you can also track your earnings so it'll be easy to analyze all the data during your work in all the rides that you're doing. Earn on your schedule. They're clearly highlighting, you can work at any time at your hours at your pace, and that's their value proposition here that they're highlighting on the Uber driver page. If I jump to Lyft, which is their competitor, they have a similar thing but their proposition is all about, be your own boss, like making money on your own terms. They say, Want to be your own boss? Start today. Then if I go down, they highlight a few benefits here, reliable earnings and a few necessities. That's like a background check but they're highlighting, be your own boss, make money, it's reliable, you can rely on it as a daily job, and if I scroll down, you can see they're highlighting the word earnings which is really cool. That's what they're highlighting on their page. Then we've got Ola Cabs. I'm pretty sure this is an Australian-based driving company. They are less common but they talk about, Drive with Ola. Keep more in your pocket. They want to highlight low commission, so you'll keep seeing low commissions, 24/7 support daily payments. If I scroll down, you can see that they highlight there with the icons, once again, they're really focusing on daily payments, your money doesn't get held, and also there's a low commission percentage, and that's what they're really highlighting here. If I scroll down, there's nothing really much but you can see how they vary differently but those are their key value propositions. There are four key questions when you want to craft a VP. Number 1 is who are your users and your customers? Who are you really targeting because you want to know who are the key people that you're actually selling to? Number 2 is what are the pain points they experience? What are the problems in their daily life or the challenges? What are they going through? Number 3 is what circumstances cause those pain points? Whether it's maybe a mom with two kids and they're at the time pole, maybe there's a student and he doesn't have much money so he can't invest in a big machine or PC or something like that. Really ask the right questions and find the pain points. Number 4 is how do you help them overcome these pain points? What are your solutions? How do you help them overcome those problems? Here's an example of how you can actually write a VP. It's basically the XYZ and I laid it out like this. We offer X, which is your service or product to Y, your user or your customer who experiences, then you state the problem so they can do Z, which is the benefit. An example I've written here is we create bold brand identities for funded fintech startups, fintech is finance companies, so they can connect to their audience in this digital world. This is a fairly basic one but this would be for a brand agency or a brand design company and that's how you craft it. Just keep in mind that a VP is very similar to the elevator pitch but it's just a little bit different in the way you say it and that leads me onto the elevator pitch which is just the quick short 30-second pitch. This is the pitch where you're on the run, you're in an elevator and you're picturing you have to pitch to investors or maybe you're at a conference and you're talking to someone and they've got short time, so you just want to quickly speak on what you do. Basically, a quick summary of your business, the value you offer, and it's basically a response to the question, "Oh, hey, what do you do?" You know how people ramble on, that's when you say your 30-second spiel. Just remember, it's not your life story, you don't want to start rambling on, just get to the point quickly, deliver that message because you want to make sure that they can connect you with someone straight away or maybe they need your services or maybe they have someone in the network that needs design or whatever it is that you're offering. You want to make sure that you say it quickly. Then lastly is focus on how you could help and make the customers lives better. So focus on how you can help out and focus on selling, focus on the benefit you deliver. Three cases, you want to emphasize customer needs or the solution, you want to emphasize the customer results, and you also want to emphasize on the customer pains and problems. Those are the three parts that make up your elevator pitch. The formula is the problem plus solution plus results, and that equals your elevator pitch. A quick example below is we help brands who struggle to generate leads online with high-converting landing pages so they can get more traffic and increase digital product conversions. Very direct, very specific in the way I'm framing it. Remember we highlight the problem first, so what is the main problem that this type of person faces or industry or whatever it is. You can also start off by saying, "Do you how..." and you can say the problem. Then you go on to saying the solution and the results that you deliver based on that solution or service you're delivering. Let's move on to messaging and communication here. When it comes to core messaging, you want to highlight the key primary messages that you are communicating to the world, to your audiences. That's basically the main messages that you have, you'll see it probably on the homepage at the top, you'll see it on the business card, on the billboards, or the main places that the brand touchpoints are. Then you've got secondary messages, so these are backup messages. They're not as important, but they're lower down in the hierarchy. If it's on a website it'll be on a secondary page on your back page or something like that, but these are basically support your brand values in your core message. It's all about how you want your audience to perceive you or see you in the world, how do you want to sound to them? That's why core messaging is really key to get right and you always got to think from their eyes, in their shoes, what's in it for them? What impact does your brand have? What are your products? What type of impact is going to help them in the daily life? It's connecting back to the benefits there. What problem are you trying to solve? How do you solve that problem? Those are two key questions as well, really that you need in messaging. You don't need to have 5-10, 20 different types of messages, you really only need a few key messages to really communicate you're benefiting your brand and your business. Because at the end of the day, most people skim online, so you need to communicate fast. One of the key things when I'm doing messaging is I research competitors. I look at my competitors messaging, go on their website, go on their socials, see how they communicate. Then what I want to do is find patterns. What are the patterns that are highlighted or they use? What type of words or keywords are they using? This will help me determine to try and avoid those types of words when I do messaging for a specific brand. Because the thing is you don't want to sound the same, you want to avoid that, you want to sound different. Look at their offerings and look at how they speak because it will help you avoid sounding the same and also differentiating, you want to differentiate and be distinctive. Just some examples here. Number 1 is from Koala. I'm just going to get back to the Internet so we can go on their website. I'm going to show you three mattress sellers in Australia. The first one is Koala. You can see here they're very friendly, they're very open, nice imagery here. Their key message is stay inside your comfort zone with Koala mattresses. You can see how they use lowercase as well and a friendly blue, it makes it feel more casual and welcoming. Going down, Koala the home of comfort. Boom. Very direct, clever, a little bit of humor but mostly friendly, lovely well lit images. It's not dark or anything. It looks very chilled back, laid back as you can see there. I'm just going to scroll down on here. You can start to get the feel, the tone, the attitude. About us, we're fixing the furniture industry. They're positioning themselves as the newcomers because Koala is an emerging brand, and they're trying to change it up because this top industry is very dry so they're shifting and rallying things. This is Koala. Number 2 is Forty Winks. These guys have been around for years. Straight away you can see their shop is all about sales, that's what they're highlighting just their mattresses. If I scroll down, there's no real messaging. It looks clean, it looks nice the design, the menus are responsive. They've got their collections, Welcome to Forty Winks, they're very dry just professional, very direct and no messaging. You can see it's very different to the last page we saw. The next one is Snooze, this is an Australian brand as well. You can see their logo, similar style, clean white space. Once again, they're highlighting sales. Again, just saving money. It's all about saving money, become a member, save. You can see the images that is focusing purely on mattresses not the lifestyle as you can tell to the imagery. They've a few images here but it's more focused on reviews as you can see there. But no core messages really just straight to sales. If I get back to here, you can see I've highlighted the benefits and some of the key things that I pulled out of the pattern. They're friendly and welcoming, they're not pushing sales, they use fun gradients with the blues, it feels very young, they use open space and also they've got some humor around their site in terms of their messages and they clear on their products, which is cool. If I look at Forty Winks, they're very dry, professional, stale, clinical even, the bold blue color stands out. They do have bold texts as well, but it does feel a bit sales and their focus on deals. Then Snooze, one thing I picked up is their logo is not legible, they need to revise that because in small size you can see it's a cool idea but just legibility is lacking. Also salesly, so save up, just about shopping and saving. They're really focusing on just mattresses and not the lifestyle compared to Koala. The red color really pops which is good. Also the call to action is clear like shop now, buy now, etc. You can tell it's a discount brand because they're just focusing on sales but some of the images of the product is nice. Which one would you choose? Which one would you pick? I'd personally pick Koala because it's more targeted at, feels like a younger audience, feels they get me, it feels clean, fun, professional, it looks good quality as well with images compared to these other ones, they just feel old school to me. Hopefully, that example helps. 10. Tone Of Voice: Basically, a brand voice refers to the personality and emotion infused into a company's communication. It's all about attitude, personality, tone, and how you sound to others. The reason why you need to have a tone of voice is because it will affect your copywriting on all your brand touchpoints. Everywhere, online, offline. It determines how you sound, because everyone has a sound, everyone talks a different way, everyone has a certain way of speaking, and it's really important in messaging. It also shapes your audience's perception of your brand. If you sound young, and fun, and humorous, then you're going to appeal to children or millennials or young people. But if you're really professional and authoritative, probably like a university, you just want to be very straightforward, direct, no fluff. It also influences how your key messages are written. In all the copywriting, in all your touchpoints, your call-to-actions, and in everything on your print, your flyers, your brochures, on your website, it's going to influence how you write. It's going to determine the specific words and keywords in sentences in all the text, in the body text, in all that stuff. It's a big important part. Here are some examples of words you could use when you're writing or coming up with a tone of voice for a brand. I've just checked a list here, but you can add to it. For example, I'll just say a few words. You can sound academic or spirited and charming, which is probably like a Disney character. Cheerful, friendly. Are you passionate or are you not zealous and you're more dry? Are you authentic or are you tough, a rough guy, a rugged guy? Or maybe you're more of a sage, the wise, soothing saint that helps the hero. Are you bubbly or feminine? Are you more masculine or are you direct? Or maybe you're cute and whimsical. You got to specifically determine five words is probably a good way, or 3-5 words you want to niche down and narrow it down when you're working with a brand, and I feel like that's enough words. You can make a whole list and select a few. Another cool exercise is doing, we're this, not that. Basically you want to determine how we do sound and how we do not sound. In this example, I just put out some words. For example, we're friendly, welcoming, casual, helpful, empathetic, and encouraging. This could be like a pharmacy or a medical clinic or maybe a coaching program or business, and that's why I've decided to use those words. For example, how we do not sound is like impatient, expensive, unprofessional, angry, prideful, harsh, rude. That's pretty much the opposites of those words. This is a cool exercise to really help you determine and narrow down on the specific words. There are a few types of voices that we can use, and I'm going to show you some examples now after this. You've got your clear voice, warm voice, the knowledgeable voice, the positive voice, and the humorous voice. I'll give you some examples now, which I think will really help. I'm going to show you three telecommunications companies. The first one is from Aussie Broadband. On their logo, you can see it says, a bloody good broadband. Australians usually say, "Oh yeah, bloody good mate." It's just a friendly, positive way of saying, "Yeah, good on you," type of thing. You can see they're very direct on the flyer. Join the telco that gives a, it's meant to say probably shit, oh, crap, whatever. But they put asterisks there. They're being very clever, they're no-nonsense, they're just being straight up. But they're relating to the common man. They're not trying to be too upper class, they're trying to appeal to the loaded middle class people. Just being themselves, being authentic. Scroll down. Their highlight reviews are just great, "High speed nbn with unbeatable customer services." You can see they're trying to be one that's competitive one, which is cool. "Aussie Broadband are the best. Seriously." Very, very straightforward, which is nice. You can see that and you can start to think of, what type of voice are they using? Are they using humor? They're using a bit of the clear voice and also positive voice. If I go to Telstra, so this is Telstra. This is probably one of the biggest telecom in Australia because they have all the lines. This is the nbn, so we're focusing on Internet here. "Mega home Internet deal. Get $20 a month Premium Unlimited data plan for six months plus zero connection fee." They are highlighting not the service, but they're highlighting the deal. They're focusing on money conscious people, people who want sale, people who want the best deal. No fee, no lock-in contracts, superior home WiFi, which is questionable. Then they're showing you the plans here. As I'm scrolling down, hot offer, as you can see, surely is number 1. They're using authoritative voice, knowledgeable, but also they're focusing on the selling and the deals of the customer. I'm going to go to the next one. This one is Optus, which is another big one, and I'm on their Home and Internet nbn page and it goes, "Share the exhilaration. It starts with fast home Internet." That's very clear. It is about fast Internet, I get that, totally. Now scroll down Home Internet, choose from a range. You've got products there, and they're also highlighting deals which is fair enough. "Get that nbn savings feeling." They're highlighting the feelings as well. If I go back to here, you can start to say, okay, what type of voices are they using? Are they using positive, the humorous, knowledgeable? Telstra and Optus are using more of the clear, warm voice. Then you've got the opposite which Aussie Broadband's using humor, using the positive voice and using knowledgeable voice, which is very, very interesting. Let's talk a little bit deeper on some of the things here. Clear voice is all about simplifying words, cutting down the sentences, being straight to the point. It's focusing on clarity, not trying to be clever. It's no fluff, no nonsense, and they also cut out adverbs. It's very focused on just simplification. The second voice, which is the knowledgeable voice, is all about providing evidence. Also showing stats. It's also a boost to your credibility, so focusing on credibility. Maybe you're an author and you've written a book and it's the bestseller on Amazon, showing some testimonials from that or success stories. Also we highlight the benefits and link the features to benefits not just stating the specifics of a product. That's a clear voice and knowledgeable voice. Then the other three is the warm voice, so it's written in an active voice, not passive. You also use words like you, we, and I. It's more of the collective essence, and there's another technique where they also ask some questions. Instead of just making statements, then you can pose questions in the headlines or the subheadings, which is different. You've got the positive voice which converts negatives to positives. For example, instead of saying something like, don't waste time or don't waste money, you can change it to be like, oh, save money or increase productivity and earn more time, something like that to shift it from negative to positive. It's also a focus on being a problem solver, helping, being helpful, and also overcoming objections. People will come to your page or your website or whatever and they will have some objections, so it's like, how can you highlight that negative objection and show the benefit or the positive emotional benefit or the impact it's going to help their lives in the long run or the daily lives? Then you've got humor, which is all about really being whimsical, being playful with words. Also, like talking about unexpected things. As we saw with Aussie Broadband, it was unexpected, it was different. It's also cool to find words that rhyme so you can actually tap into thesaurus source synonyms and actually try and find things that are going to be a little bit different to the common direct voice. I'll show you another three examples from some Crypto companies in Australia as well. We've got Swyftx, which is a Crypto company, and they're sort to Aussie Broadband. They've got a cool headline, it goes, "Join the Australian Crypto Exchange that gives a dot-dot-dot." The best they're saying, they give a crap. They actually care about their customers. They've got a click-to-call action, sign up now. Then the button over here is sign up. Very clear, nice design, got some illustrations going. "It's easy as one, two, three trade." One, two, three is like a common saying, and they're using that to the advantage here. They're highlighting the process of paying or buying Crypto. "The only exchange you need." They're trying to be straight-forward, direct, but also humorous. "Simple and powerful UI for mobile and desktop." Using a passive voice, clear voice. "Our users love the Swyftx platform." Boom, boom, boom. They're using a mix of voices, but I think these guys are really doing well. Let's go to Binance now. Binance is very similar as well, and they're just very dry like, buy and sell Crypto in minutes." Just focusing on the clear voice. Now, it's not really warm. It's more of like a knowledgeable. Just focusing on stats, data. "Trade anywhere. Get in touch, stay in touch." As you can see here, so nothing too crazy going on, but it does look more of a developed platform. It's probably been around for a lot longer. Then we've got CoinSpot as well. They're Crypto exchange, and they're very easy and clear voice as well, so "Buy, sell, and swap Cryptocurrency. The easiest way to buy Bitcoin and a whole load of other digital currencies." Scrolling down, "Crypto exchange you already know how to use." Cool, cool. "Everything you need to buy, sell and manage." They're focusing on managing Crypto. It's support, very professional. "Start trading in a few minutes." Very similar to Binance, but compare the three, they feel different to this one. If I go back, we start to think, "Okay, which was clear voice, warm, positive, humorous or knowledgeable? This is a good way on how to write and develop a tone of voice. I just want to share lastly, some free tools and books related to copywriting and writing in general. Number 1 is Hemingway Editor. This is really cool because they have an online version and they also have a desktop version you can buy. But basically, if you throw in texts from here, it's going to give you the options on the right of how to improve it. It will basically edit it for you, show you if it's very hard to read, what grade level readability, how many words you've got in adverbs, in passive voice, so you can actually show them. For example, if I go copy this text and I'll drop it in here. It's going to show me grade level 3, which is perfect. We can see that it's easy. Whenever you're writing something, [inaudible] points or content or whatever, just go in here and you can process your messaging in there. The second tool is the Free Headline Analyzer by CoSchedule. I can type in the headline here. For example, five graphic design tips to transform your business, and then I can analyze. Obviously, it's going to try and make you sign up now because they have a report. You can also download the extensions so they actually have a Google extension. But basically it's going to give you all the things that you're doing right in terms of balancing in the words and readability and stuff. You can see you can download the extension and basically it's going to give you that, so this is another cool tool. Lastly, there's a few books, How to Write Copy That Sells from Ray Edwards is really good for copywriting. But there's a few other ones On Writing Well, by William Zinsser and then Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. These are some tools that I use that I think are really great in terms of writing. 11. Stylescapes: On this video, I want to talk a little bit about stylescapes and moodboards. When I first started out in university, I used to do moodboards, which was fun and playful. A lot of people still use moodboards, which is totally fine. If they work for you, they work for you. But I eventually learned how to do stylescapes from my friend Christa. I just love this method better because it tells a story better, it's a lot fun to create a stylescape, and it's just a bit different. I like the way it's used in my process. I'm going to say some pros and cons and then share the differences between moodboards and stylescapes and also some resources on how you can actually create your own ones. For those of you who don't know what a moodboard is, a moodboard is a select bunch of images used for inspiration of a visual direction. It's good for a quick inspiration, to drop some images on a board just to get some ideas. It's also good to show your clients because it's just a lot faster than a stylescape. What are stylescape? It is a more dense and expanded version of a moodboard focused around the user. It's all about the target, who are you targeting? The difference is, it's curated, it's words translated into a visual direction of a brand. That's why I like creating stylescapes because it's more curated, it's more targeted, and it's more purposeful in the way I create it. Let's talk a little bit about the pros and cons between moodboards and stylescapes. When it comes to moodboards, it's a lot faster. It's really quick just to grab images, dump them on a page and later in a nice grid. I feel like a lot of people like using it because it's quick like that. You be able to create multiple moodboards very quickly within a few hours. Another pro is that clients are probably used to seeing moodboards, so it's a trustworthy thing. They might not be used to doing stylescapes, so seeing moodboard, getting a theme, getting a vibe, they're probably used to that. You'll have more confidence in presenting that if that's your style. The cons to a moodboard, however, is that it's less curated, it's less intentional. Sometimes people just grab images instead of creating or manipulating certain images. It's also hard to share or show a story compared to a stylescape. That's on the pros and cons of a moodboard. When it comes to stylescapes, the pros are: it's actually better in showing a story than a moodboard because you can control the style, you can photoshop images, colors, and you manipulate the whole board. It also gives you more space to work with. You got a wide angle space where you can check images and just make it more balanced. Another thing is that you can make stylescapes more relevant to the user and focus around that. I just find it's a lot little better. In terms of cons, it actually takes longer to create because you're going to spend hours on making sure that it works. You also need Photoshop or Illustrator skills. If you use Canva or PicMonkey, then it's probably not the best to actually create stylescape. You're going to need to manipulate images using Photoshop majority of the time. That's the key points when it comes to a moodboard and a stylescape. What do you do when you go to create stylescape? After you done the discovery session, you want to make sure that you go into creating stylescapes right after. You gathered all the information, the insights from your client, now it's time to start putting the words into a visual direction. Specific for me, what I do is I usually create two to three stylescapes. For a big client, you might need to do four or five depending on how big the budget is. It's a bridge between the discovery phase and the initial design. That's why I like doing this phase instead of rushing into the logo design and trying to figure it all out as I go along. Another key point is that it also inspires the client to purchase more services from you because what it does, it shows the potential. Because in the stylescape, you can actually put certain elements whether it's like print design or stationary or website, whatever it is and you can target that to make the client want to bring those things to life. Because sometimes some of the services they don't really picture in the mind, but once you start showing it on the stylescape, you can actually show that which is really cool. For me, how I create my stylescapes, and I'll show you some examples towards the end as well, is that I create my stylescapes in Illustrator. Then what I do is I actually go and cut out all the images in Photoshop. Then what I do that is bring them all into Illustrator and start to lay it out. I prefer Illustrator because I'm a lot better with that, but some people prefer InDesign. That's also a good layout too. Some people can design it in Adobe XD or Figma or even Keynote probably. But for me, Photoshop and Illustrator are probably the best options for you. In terms of sizing, you want to go with the 1,080 times 5,000. It's short but very wide and that does allows you space to scroll through. It's like a storyboard, like you're scrolling through that. I think it's really key that you do that. What do you actually put on a stylescape? It's actually very similar to a moodboard, but once again, it's more curated images. First up, you want to actually create image folders on your desktop or in your client folder. Then you want to search images online. My top sites would be Behance, Pinterest, Dribbble, even Google. I look at some blogs as well. Abduzeedo is a good blog or Dieline for packaging. What you want to do is look for different stuff. Like logos, textures, packaging, interior design, layouts, illustrations, logos, signage and symbol, icons, patterns, topography, colors, heaps of different stuff. You want to just get a whole bunch of stuff, but make sure there's a nice flow. Don't just put it all and dump on the page. You want to lay it out nicely, have a flow to it. The cool thing is is that you want to make sure that you're showing potential design options. For example, like a logo, you can actually do a quick mock-up, but you can also make your own mock-ups and you can show identity design and all the other designs as well. This is just going to speed up the process. The clients starts getting a picture in their mind of what the brand will look like after the stylescape is done. There's also heaps of other image sites as well. Apart from Pinterest and Behance, you've got Unsplash and Pexels. They have free stock images which it can be used. Also Stocksy, Pixabay, you got Adobe Stock, which is really high-quality, Depositphotos, Shutterstock, and also Freepik to get those vector elements as well. Those are probably my top image site that I would recommend to you to gather images and find the things that you need. In terms of color, if you want to get inspiration on color, you can use Adobe Color, Color Hunt, Coolors with two o's. Happy Hues is a good one. You've got brandcolors.net, you've got colormind.io as well, and a whole bunch of other ones, but those are the key ones I probably use. When you're a creating a stylescape, you need to think of the user. When I create the user, what I do is I need to find high-quality photos, not pixelated, and I need to put it either the left side or the right side of the stylescape. What I'd like to do is actually cut the image out on Photoshop so I can overlay it, so it's got a transparent background. Then I want to have the user looking into the stylescape from the left or from the right. This is guides the eye to read a stylescape. You also want to keep it within the frame. Don't cut off the user's head or anything like that, and make sure they've got a good posture, like sitting up or standing, not sitting down. You want to find that right balance of a good posture, so it looks like a clean photo. When it comes to presenting, I know some of you might not be confident, but I just want to give some tips on how you can present a little bit better. Always have a positive term when you're speaking to the client and walking them through the presentation. Also I mentioned that things are not concrete, things can change. There's a lot of commitment. Things can change and shift, then you feel like their each element will have to stay like this. Also, you want to be able to get feedback as well from the actual design, and just inform the client that you're making this decision together. You're guiding them, but you're also going to choose a stylescape. Makes them feel that they're a part of the overall process. Clients love when they're involved and that they feel like they have an emotional attachment to the brand and they helped you in that process. I just want to give you some questions that you can ask during the presentation on the stylescape. Number 1, does this scape reflect the brand attributes that we chose? Always focus back to the brand values or brand attributes that you selected. Another one is, do you feel this scape appeals to our user that we created? Focusing on the user, being objective, focusing on them and not the client or you. What things stand out to you? This is good when the client, you can focus on certain elements. This will help you create a logo or other brand elements that you need to create. Does this best suit our future state is another question. This is focused on the vision or the end goal. Is this going towards the right direction? Are we heading in the right direction for our future desired state of the brand? Another question you can ask is, which scape are you more leaning towards? This will help you rule out one scape if it's bad or focus on the one that is doing the best. You can just focus on that one. Typically I try and just select one and then stick with that design. Sometimes you can actually do a revision where you do a round of revisions for that stylescape, just to cut out elements or things that are not flowing, just so it becomes more concrete in terms of the design. But just remember, you don't have to use stylescapes if you don't have to. If you are more into moodboards, you can totally do that, that's totally fine. There's heaps of templates out there, especially on Creative Market. They've actually got really nice templates you can get from them. But I also provided a template for a stylescape in the project section for you to use. That should help you out. 12. Logo Design: After you've chosen your Stylescape on mood board, what you want to do is that you want to start to move on to the logo design. The logo design is the key because that's the first impression of the brand. It's the top of the iceberg. When it comes to a logo, a logo is just for identification, it's not for communication, so always keep it simple. It also helps with memory association. When someone thinks of that logo, it needs to be memorable very fast. Remember, simple is always better. Make sure the logo is responsive and works in many spaces, both small and big so it can work on a billboard or it can work on a tiny little app icon. Make sure it's responsive. The first thing you want to do is actually do your research first. Always look at the competitors in the market. What are they doing? Look at the brand identity, look at their messaging, look at their logo design, and try and differentiate from them because you don't want to look the same to them. Another thing I do is I get inspiration from other industries, whether it's the tech industry or if it's a lifestyle industry or fitness, whatever it is, I just pull inspiration from everywhere. When it comes to actually designing the logo, there's a few key elements that you need to think about when you're designing a logo. Number 1 is typography. Think of the font you're going to choose for the character of the brand of a logo. You got the icon mark, and icon needs to work as a favicon, it needs to work on an app as well, or setting of color, and also, horizontal and vertical lockups. You need to think of the big picture, how can a logo move? How can it function in different aspects of a brand? When it comes to the actually logo designing process, I do have other classes on how to do that, but I'm just going to give you a quick basic rundown of what I do. I always refer back to the Stylescape and I draw inspiration from the Stylescape. That informs the direction of my logo. Then what I do is I research competitors' logos and I chuck it on a page so I can see to avoid what to avoid, and I don't want to be the same. I also start to get inspiration on Pinterest, on Behance, and all these other sites that I've mentioned in the Stylescape part, and I just start to get images and put it within a folder. Once I do that, I like to do a lot of sketches. I'll try and do 3-10 pages of sketches, and I'll just keep it very rough. Just get my pen and my paper, and I'll just do these different sketches of the logo. I like to actually write out the name of the brand in all caps, in lowercase, and start to figure out how I can start to use this logo. Obviously, I want to refer back to any brand attributes, any words, sometimes, I like to do a word map or a word clouds, and that helps me spark ideas when I'm actually sketching out the logo. Then after I'm done sketching, what I do is I pick my top designs, top 5 or whatever it is, and then I bring it into Illustrator to start to vectorize it and make it clean, make it professional, make it look amazing. Then what I do is actually mock up the logo on high-quality mockups. You need to show within contexts, always show the logo, not on a white page, but within the context of the actual brand. If it's a mechanic, then show the logo on a workshop or a car or a piece of invoice paper, letterhead. Think of things like that to be relevant to the actual client you're working with. What do you need to actually include with the logo design? Typically, what I do is I have a primary logo, so you want to have the main logo as number 1. Then what you need to do is make a secondary mark. I like creating a stamp or a badge, sometimes a monogram or an icon or do something to complement the main logo so the client can use it in other fun ways, and it just adds more value to the actual project itself, anyway. That's why I love playing around and trying to come up with multiple logos from the main one. You also need to create an icon for a favicons of a websites. The little icon on the browser, you need to have it for that. Also, think about the horizontal and vertical versions of the logo design because it needs to work in multiple different areas and multiple different applications whether it's print or digital, and that leads us to also figuring out the digital and print versions as well. You need to save files for that because you can't use a RGB file for print because the colors will get messed up. You need to have a CMYK version for the print version of the logo as well. You also want to have the black and white versions as well as the colored versions and gray-scale. This just allows the logo to be used on different backgrounds. If it's a black background, you don't want to put a dark version of the logo, you need to put a white version or a gray version so it can be readable, so it can be legible when someone looks at that brand, whether it's on a website or printed brochure or whatever it is. Those are my tips when it comes to actually the logo design portion of the process. 13. Presentation: You're excited, you designed your amazing logo and the identity, and you want to present these concepts to your client. I want to share some tips and the structure of how I present my designs. You want to make sure that your presentations should always be objective as possible. There is an element of subjectivity in it because some decisions you would have made based on some things that you prefer or maybe it looks better based on your taste of design, which is okay. But primarily, you want to make it objective. Base it on the users, the goals, recapping on the personas, the values, the positioning, all those things. You want to make sure that you're basing it off facts and data, and also your research. The way we go through the presentation is number 1 is you want to recap on the discovery, the goals, and any insight you've uncovered. Keeping your objective by always recapping. Before showing any concept or any design, you want to make sure that you're going through the things that you pulled from the discovery session or the strategy session that you had with the client. Number 2 is you want to break down your design decisions with logic, especially for the logo. You can show sketches, if you want. Some people do that, it's up to you whether you want to show sketches. But you can show icons or elements or things you extracted. You can show the process of your thinking, if it's a word map or something that you've extracted online, or something from the stylescape, just show you how you sort down that decision, especially for the logo part of the section of the presentation. That's [inaudible] important. Then number 3, you want to tell the brand story, be confident as you speak. Those are the three key things that you want to keep in mind when you're presenting how you want to start off the structure. When it comes to the actual structure of the presentation, typically, I have full parts. Number 1 is the introduction. This is where I set the agenda and expectations of the presentation. I talk to the client, explain how I want the feedback. I always ask typically, wait until the end to give feedback, and just sit back and listen as I present and explain the designs and everything. Always have that. It's good to mention to the client this may take a little while, so make sure to have water or something on the side there. Number 2 is a recap of the discovering findings as I had mentioned before. The goals, the values, the positioning, show the style show anything that you've extracted from the initial stages. That's going to really make it objective and remind the client, we're aiming, these are the users; the personas, it's not about us, it's about the brands, where we're heading, our feature desired state, and it's about our bad. The third part is actually showing the logo design and the identity concept. Showing it on mockups, showing the breakdown, showing it on black and white, showing on social media, showing basically everything that you've created in terms of the design and the mockups. Number 4 is the next steps. The next steps is providing the feedback. Typically, the clients can have 2-3 days of mulling over the designs and the presentation. You typically want to send it over a PDF on email. They can get feedback on the spot if you want, just something quick, just first impressions, which is cool. But yeah, sometimes they need some time just to go over it with their team or just think it through. Then you've got revisions. After you've got the feedback, then it's time for revision. You need to eventually book another meeting or the next meeting, and typically that's what happens with the next steps. Keep everything simple and clear in the email. Always recap after the presentation, just summary points of the next steps in an email and also on the call as you got your client on the video call. Typically, the excitement always starts a little bit lower when you're at the start of the presentation, but you want to build that out. Obviously, I want to see the designs and everything, but because you have to take them through the structure and recapping, and just the normal chat the start, then you're going to slowly build up, build up and show the best until the end. Typically, if you have 2,3 or 4 concepts, you want to typically keep them engaged during the first couple of concepts. Sometimes people leave the best to last or they show the best at the start, so it just depends on how you want to present that. But typically, this is how it is. So you want to keep building the excitement over the presentation. One key thing is that you want to stand out with mockups. I see a lot of beginner designers use trash mockups, the low-quality, pixelated, or they just don't look good, or they try to customize something. But the best thing to do buy just buy premium mockups. You can make your own if you want, but just save time and invest in good mockup packs. Then number 2 is you want to add brand colors, textures, and patterns. If you want a textured paper, make that feeling come alive with a texture on a paper in the mockup, you're going to use Photoshop and you're going to have to manipulate that somehow, but it's going to give that extra dimension to the mockup. You also don't just want to slap the logo everywhere. Try to add messaging, try and add textures, and the patterns and other elements that you can use instead of just putting the logo everywhere. Then you want to keep it relevant to the context. Make sure the mockups are relative to the deliverables or future potential deliverables or to the context of the brand itself. Make sure that they're relevant. If it's a coffee shop, you don't want to show a box packaging or FedEx thing because it's not a shipping company, or shipping container. You want to show coffee mugs and wrappers and some of that. Some more bonus tips as well, you want to make your own template in Illustrator or InDesign. I typically love using Illustrator. InDesign is great as well for layouts, just save the time because you can have master pages. You also want to keep the mockups relevant to context as I just mentioned, and then also let the work shine. Sometimes I've seen designers have some crazy, weird layouts with the old branding on it and colors and stuff. You can relax and chill, just keep it clean and neat. Focus on presenting the work. Let the work shine itself. Have lots of white space around the images or the mockups, unless it's a full-page mockup, and that's fine. Also, make sure that your client can see the full picture. Make sure they're not on their phone or a small iPad. Make sure they're on a decent size laptop or computer screen to actually see the presentation in its full glory. Then you want to don't rush, go at a casual pace. Don't go too fast or start speaking too fast, just go slow. Go into casual pace for the client, and that's going to ultimately be a lot better. So for my presentation, I actually have a template that I use in Illustrator. I update it every year and sometimes I add and change slides depending on the type of client. You can see here, I've got the slides and I've got my guidelines on, I can turn them on and off, which is really easy to use. But I start off with having my cover pages, then I've also got title slides so you can see brand discovery recap. Then I take them through the goals, the ideal customer, the positioning matrix, stylescapes. Then we present Identity Concept 1. Let me get through the logo design from the main logo just on blank, and then on black and white. Then got some slides, so breaking down the logo, and then showing any secondary logos, and topography as well. Then we go to the brand colors. Then we go into the mockups and showing the brand application. Then I usually show roughly 3-4 four small mockups, then some medium mockups as well, and then also some large mockups, which can be a big poster or a billboard or on a vehicle or something like that. Then we go through logo with competitors. I show the logo amongst the competitors, if there is any. Then some extra slides here if I need to add or change things, then we get to the next steps and the thank you slide. Basically, that repeats the concept too. That's my template for the brand project for Liezl Torres. As you can see, here's an actual example. Here's the example that I did in 2020. You can see logo design, we've got the goals here recapped. You can see the position matrix, the user, and also the stylescape that we picked. I'm just going to scroll through here in a slow manner. You can see Concept 1, so showing the different concepts. We've got black and white. You can see here, breaking down the logo, so I got the idea from two different beats or notes, and then applying the LT initials there. So just really keeping it simple. I can put other descriptions and explain things if I want, but I was confident in this concept and I explained it whilst I was on the call. Showing how can it work in an icon, showing the brand colors as well, and then giving them names like electric and sunflower, which just gives it a little bit more of a X factor, makes it special. You can see here the fonts there, then it's putting some placeholder text to show what the headlines could look like. Then just going through some different mockups, so like business cards, if they wanted to do an album or a debut, how can they put that on a CD? As you can see there, some Instagram, what it could look like. Then here the webpage, the hero image, which is really cool. Then because it was simple, I didn't do too many mockups for this one because it was a smaller project. You can see Concept 2. This is the second concept. Go into the black and white, breaking it down, so you found a beam note and how I turned it to a shape, then use the LT. That's just a quick way on how to show the breakdown, the logo, and you can go into the construction. If you use guidelines or grids, you can show that as well. Then similar, showing the icons and the color palette, and then the fonts here, basically saying free font and just adding a script font here. Once again going through different business cards. It's okay to reuse the same mockups and add the new design, which is fine. We've got a different design here for the CD or the album cover. Some different options See. Hero image in the website. A little bit different, using different textures in the background as you can see, and adding it on a nice laptop mockup. Then I've got a few extra mockups on this one because I was confident in this concept. You can see we added a cool pin there which is looking cool, and then obviously some other Instagram posts using this halftone pattern there, which is really nice. Adding it to a nice phone mockup. You can see if I just move it around, it's all just like PNGs, transparent, sometimes it's a full JPEG image. So it just depends how you save the images up. Then I just show both concepts next to each other, the main logo, and next steps. Thank you. Basically, that's how you can do a presentation. Obviously, i it can expand and become bigger, just like I showed you in this template. More mockups, more explanation, but if it's a small project, you can just change it up and you can add things or take away things. 14. Production: In this part of the process, it's all about pre-production. I'm all about focusing on checking all the files I've created, preparing them for print, and also making sure that they're ready for final delivery to the client. At this point, all your designs should be at around 95 percent completed. When you present the design to the client, they should be pretty close to almost finalizing and getting it ready for printing or final delivery. You always want to make sure that you've tweaked it and you've done your final design touches after all the revisions and everything is done. When it comes to prepress, the word prepress is a term that just means you're setting up a file that's ready for print, so you're the designer or you send to a designer to just set up the file ready to print. Now when you think about printing there's two things when it comes to actually printing in color. You've got Pantones, also known as PMS, and you also got CMYK, which stands for cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. Now, I'm just going to share a little bit about Pantones. I'm not going to go too deep into color in this section, but I just think it's important to mention. When you think of Pantones, it's actually more expensive than CMYK because they use separate plates when they put it in the printing press. That makes it more expensive, but the colors are lot better. The colors come up more vibrant, more consistent, and that's why it's better than CMYK. You've got two modes. You've got coated. The coated version is used mainly for glossy surfaces, which is like different type of materials and where its got shine or a sheen on it. Whereas uncoated, which is also a U, is mainly for like textured paper, things that are non glossy. You want to make sure that if you do want to invest in like doing Pantones or Pantone book, I do recommend going to the Pantone website to find out more. They've got a basic guide called the formula guide, solid coated and uncoated colors. That would probably be the most best one if you're a graphic designer into packaging and stuff like that. You can check out that in your own time, but I'll put a link. There's also a free extension which is really cool and I love using it's called Pantone Connect. You can actually get it as a free extension as part of the Adobe Creative Cloud. You can download it at Adobe Exchange, which is going to help me convert colors into Pantones, all in Illustrator or Photoshop or InDesign. You just have to download it on Adobe Exchange and it's going to be super helpful to you. Think about if your brand that you're designing for is digital or it's going to be print. Make sure that if it is going to be that, a cool tip is that always design in CMYK first because when it changes the color gamut, when you go from CMYK to RGB that's fine. But if you try to go to RGB and then switch it to color mode CMYK, the colors get messed up. You can do it the other way around CMYK to RGB, just keep that in mind if you know that the client is going to be printing stuff or if you know the project is going to be both print and digital. For me personally, many of the brands I do work with these days are mostly online and digital. Printing has become less prominent over the years because the technology, because of social media, everyone is online, everyone is on their smartphones. These days, I work with startups or sometimes you get a small client that has a tighter budget that can't use Pantone colors because of the tighter budget, but you can use RGB or CMYK, which is totally fine. Now when it comes to finally checking the files that I've created, whether it's old designs, icons, the banners, the identity, what I actually do is check a few of these things. Number 1 is the document bleeds, so that's the key for printing, I need check the millimeters, make sure that it's set. When it comes to actually exploring the files at a Photoshop, Illustrator or InDesign, whatever I'm using, I check a few key things before sending it off to the printer or the client. Number 1 is document bleed. I make sure that the margins on the edges, which is also known as the padding, I make sure that that's correct so when I send it to the printer, they cut it correctly. Number 2 is pixel dimensions. Just making sure that the resolution and the sizing is correct for social media. Then I check color modes, so if CMYK, RGB, making sure that if it's a print thing it should be in CMYK. I also check photo PPI and dimension. I make sure that if I'm using photography or stock image that's high resolution, and also that the DPI or the PPI is actually at 300. If it's a digital artwork, it only needs to be 75 or 150, but if it's print, then the minimum for that is 300. Sometimes if you're doing like screen printing, you might want to bump up the PPI to like 600 or 1200, whatever the printer is actually allows you to do. I also go ahead and check for any typos, and I use spell check for that. InDesign and Illustrator come with spell check so you make sure you turn that on. Just check all your files before printing something, you don't want to send it off with a typo. Then lastly, what I do is actually test my designs online. I have a few accounts that I use, just to test my designs for my client work to make sure that it all fits on social media. When I export my files, I love using the export for assets feature. It comes in Illustrator and then Photoshop has an export as feature as well, that allows you just to export a whole bunch of files all at once. Number 1, it's going to save you time. Number 2, it just makes it easier to manage and organize your files. Because you can rename them, you can save a whole bunch of them as like a transparent PNG, at the same time I can also save JPEGs or PDFs all in one go and I'll just export it out. It just makes it super fast, and I like how Adobe Creative Cloud is always updating and making it better over time. In order to do my logo, I use these cool tool called Logo Package Express. My friend Michael came up with it. It's actually a cool tool that is an extension for Illustrator. It allows you to export all the logo files literally under five minutes with a few clicks. I will put the link there in the description of the project section and you can check it out there. One key tip to remember, is that you want to make spare accounts on social media platforms that you're going to use for your client project. I usually have one for Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and when I design the social media banners, I'll actually go in that fake account and test out all my designs. Because the thing is I want to make sure that nothing is cut off, that all the text is in the legible, that it's in plain sight, that it's readable, and it's effective. Make sure you test all your banners, any icons, design elements, photography, whatever design you've created, make sure that it all fits within the frame and the dimensions of social media. Make sure you're up-to-date because it's better to be safe than sorry because you don't want to have an error and send it to your client because that's going to lead to frustration and you're going to have a bad time. Another cool thing with being a graphic designer and working with print is that you get to work with paper stocks. There's so many different printers out there, so make sure you find the right printer for you in your local town. But there's three that I've used that are really good. Number 1 is Moo, number 2 is Hero print, and number 3 is Easy Signs. Artists love them because they do provide free samples, and I'll show you a couple of examples that I have here. If you're in the UK or Australia, Moo print is from the UK, so they actually gives you a free sample pack. They give you this which shows you their stocks. They got matte, they got gloss,. satin, different ones. Then they got business card examples here. For example, if I pull up some of these cards, you can see I'm touching right now, they're very textured and you can see they put the details on there. They've got 330gsm [inaudible] they've got satin front uncoated, linen 330gsm. They got the thickness and they show you the type and the texture, and I think that's really awesome, especially if you want to print something. I'll just quickly open this up and see what they have. You can see some of their business cards as well. They show you the styles, the thickness, and the gloss. They've got like foil stamping as well, which is really cool. Hopefully you can see that. But make sure you just ask and see if you can get a sample because you want to make sure that you're printing with high quality. Another quick example from Hero print, and this is based in Australia. They actually sent me their free sample packs, so they've got this cool pack. It's got all the foil step in there, so you can see that. Super amazing, and they just do a really great job, they're really high quality. They also give you a whole stock book selector. They've got a whole bunch of stocks here in a coated, they've got stuff synthetic, UV, heaps of different stuff. I typically use this when I want to go print that. If you struggle to know the sizes for paper, maybe it is only for a business card or a post or a flyer, then there's a cool site called papersizes.io. You can literally filter by country and just find all the different sizes for different print assets. I've been using that and I think that is super helpful. Just a few extra printer tips as well. Always avoid cheap printers, typically the quality is good, only use it if you're on a really tight budget. Always try to build relationships with your printer because it can lead to referrals, you can get discounted rates and you get used to the way they do things and you get used to how they move the files around and stuff like that. Remember, this part of the process is super important, don't ever look it and make sure you deliver quality design files not only to your printer but to your clients. That's why pre-production or prepress or whatever you want to call it is super key to making sure that you have a amazing project towards the start and the end of the project. Just want to remind you that this part of the process is super important, make sure that you don't neglect it because you want to deliver the best quality files to your client. You don't want to send them off to the printer and then they find that there's an error or a typo or column mismatch or something. You want to make sure that it's the best possible quality you can produce and you can't skip this process. Make sure you double check things, make sure you prove things. You can always do a proof and send to a printer or test it at your house. Always test things and make sure that it's going to work when you release it into the world. 15. Delivery: Once you've done your amazing design, you've got your brand identity and you're ready to offer that to your client, they're going to be super excited with it, so always have an exciting and energetic voice when you send the files over. But here's some things to avoid just before doing anything. Number 1 is don't just send the files over an email. You want to make sure that you jump on a video call with them, get on a call, get on a video call on Zoom and actually talk them through the files, make sure that they understand everything. You want to make sure that everything is clear and simple and easy to understand. Remember, they're our client they didn't understand design jargon, so make sure you simplify things. The second thing is you want to make sure that you explain things very simply, make sure that everything makes sense, that they understand how to use the files, how to implement them, and that they understand everything that they've gotten within the folders. Make this transition as smooth as possible and also double-check the files, and make sure that everything is named properly. Make sure all the files are in there, ready to use. Because you don't want to have to go back and forth with the client because there was a mistake or an error. So make sure that you've done all that really, really well. The off-boarding process is super important as a brand identity designer, you want to make sure that the experience is the best possible experience you can deliver for your client. That's why I always say get on the final call so they can ask questions and you can be there to answer any questions, anything that they're not sure of make sure that you're there and the best way is to get on a call. Always ask them how the experience was, did they enjoy it, is there things that you can improve, even get feedback if you can. Make sure that you attach also a short video trainings because I believe that some clients might use Canva or PicMonkey or they didn't have a team of designers. They might need a training on how to use the files, how to implement them in their business, and how to use the things you've created. Make sure that you do include that and they're going to feel like they've received so much value. There's three key tools that I do use to record my screen and do videos. Number 1 is Camtasia. Number 2 is Loom. Number 3 is Vimeo screen recording, and number 4 is Screen-o-matic. Most of these are paid options, but they do have free trials and things like that. But these are what I typically use when I'm recording my screen or when I want to show a training or something like that to send to the client. Just make sure you use a good program that you know you can trust. When it comes to transferring the files, because the files can be very big, especially if you've got a big AI files or Photoshop files that you need to send over, or anything like that, you want to make sure that you create something like a Dropbox. Another place is Google Drive as well that's free, where you can put so much gigs on their Dropbox. I pay around $18 a month for that to keep all my files in there. I heard it from my client for around six months to a year. I just leave them on my Dropbox, I've got plenty of space. Another way to transfer files is actually with WeTransfer, it's completely free and you actually get two terabytes. Overall, it's pretty good to use that if you want to send the client files over. But those are my main three recommendations I would use when I'm sending the actual files in a zip folder. But if you're the type of person that likes the sort school traditional approach, you can always just grab a cheap USB, put all the files, put all the photos on there and that should be super easy to send off to your client when you meet with them or you can send it over in a mail if they're a bit far away from you. Another key thing to remember when delivering the files, make sure that the folder structure is clean and simple. For example, I have the number 01 underscore logo. Then within that there's main logo, and then within that, I've got full color logo and then within that I got like digital and printed. That's typically how I show it. I'll show an example on the screen and I might give a template as well just to show how it can actually be used. Now, also with the email handoff, I've got a few templates that I really, really keep. One of the ones I actually use as I'm sending it as an email, here is what it says. One more thing when it comes to the client handoff is actually email templates and I'm going to show a quick one with you. I'll put it on the screen, but it basically goes like this, "Hey client, it has been super fun creating this process and brand with you. Here is your awesome new brand identity. Just click on this link to download here", and I'll just put the Dropbox link where they can download the folders. "You'll also find in there the video trainings on which it'll show you how to use the new designs. Finally, if you've loved working with us as much as we loved working with you, we would love to know. Reviews, help us grow our business and allow us to help more businesses get online with these. We would highly appreciate it if you could help us by leaving a quick review on our Google page." Then you want to put the Google link. You can tag it on the word there and just make it easy for them to click. We also offer plenty of other services like strategy and design feel free to contact us at anytime, Jeremy at [inaudible] design [inaudible] " and you just put your email there, whatever your email is, "For all your the digital design needs. We wish you all the best for the growth of your business and brand and look forward to working with you again soon." Basically, that's it. That's the template. You can change it, mix it around. I will include it in the project folders. Just check in there and it's a great little template when you send off the final [inaudible] another cool bonus you can include in the folders and the files as well for your client is little bonus, just add a glossary and you can talk about the file types, basically the formats, and just put a description and talk about JPEGs, PNG, what an EPS file is, what an AI file is, a tiff and EPS just whatever the files are, you can do a glossary and talk about those. That just adds a little bit of a bonus. You can talk about technical stuff as well. If you want to explain about RGB, CMYK, what Pantone is, what Vector is, what a Roster image is, what lossless means or lossy. These are just extra things that the client can learn and you can put that in a glossary. It just a little extra added bonus that you can add to the overall experience. Remember, it's all about the experience; you need to make it count. Because if you have an amazing experience, with your client, they're going to come back and they're going to refer more people to you. There's also a few testimonial questions you can ask to help the client write a few lines, but sometimes they actually struggle to come up with something when it comes to doing a review and you want to make sure that it's positive and genuine. I'd simply say, "Hey, a positive short review would help, it'd great. It really helps me grow my business. If you can write with these questions in mind, then I basically have three questions that I typically put in the email, which really helps. Number 1 is, how was the process of working with me? Second one is, did I help you achieve your goal? Next one is, did you enjoy this experience? Number 4 is, would you recommend me to others?" So those are four key questions you can ask. If you want to get a specific line or specific paragraph for the actual Google review or just a text-based review that you can post on your website, it's up to you, but make sure you try and get a Google page up because I find that having Google reviews just helps get more traffic to your website, and Google recommends your business page when people are searching for designers on Google. Just a quick tip, hopefully, that was helpful. 16. Distinctive Assets: When it comes to designing distinctive assets, it's super important that we create things that are going to attract attention and ultimately attract the right customer to the brand. Especially when we're out in the world, there's so many brands out there. What's going to make it distinctive? I've got example here of two images and I want you to guess right away what it is, the first thing that comes to our mind. I'm pretty sure on the left you can tell that it's Coca-Cola. The reason why is because they have a signature bottle shape that they've had for years and years and years and also that red vibrant color really makes you know that it's Coca-Cola. Number 2, here we've got a purple square. I wonder what brand do you think it is? It's Cadbury, Cadbury chocolate. I personally love Cadbury. I love the black forest flavor and mint is always good. But you can tell the signature color makes them stand out especially when you're on the shelf in the supermarket or grocery. When you get to the chocolate lolly section or candy section, the whole purple shelf is Cadbury straightaway. These are distinctive assets or parts of a brand that really makes it stand out. I want to ask you some of this question, which one should I buy? I'm looking at a shelf, I'm in the grocery. There's so many different drinks. Should I get Fiji water? Should I get [inaudible]? Should I get [inaudible] water? Which one should I buy? This, where it comes into play is distinctive assets. How can we stand out from the rest of the products or the rest of the market? What element are we going to choose? How can we use something distinctive to really make it different, stand out, and actually connect with the buyer? There's a cool book called Building Distinctive Brand Assets by Jenni Romaniuk. She talks a bit about the psychology. She mainly focuses on FMCG, which is packaging of fast-moving consumer goods. But I had these questions, what makes brand stand out on a shelf? They did a study which was really interesting, that color was 52 percent of a buying decision, why someone would buy something on a shelf. Color was a big one, logo was one percent and of course, if you're in a supermarket, a logo would be very tiny on a packaging. If it's an online store, then a logo would matter because you'll probably see it on the top-left on social media. But it's crazy how color is 52 percent. You've got structural design 14 percent and then shelf placement seven percent, and then advertising. Everything creates memory or memory associations. It's all about connections. Creating that brand image in the mind of the consumer and then when they come in contact with the brand, they have that connection. You can create distinctive assets in many ways, but I feel like color is one of the big ones. Also, typography was 85 percent here, which is interesting. But you really got to think about how can you make something distinctive. There are a few key distinctive types that are really important. You've got things like visual elements which are textures, patterns, illustrations, icons, logos. Those things can really make something stand out. You've also got colors, which we've discussed a little bit. There's also things like words and messaging. What are some typography or hand lettering or messaging or key marketing ideas of messaging that you're putting on the packaging of products, those really make an impact. Human faces. People are programmed to like personal and human faces better. It's just a human nature thing. You've also got shapes. Think of how interesting shapes can impact even if it's a shape, pattern, or a gradient or something that is geometric. Those things actually can make something stand out. Then also you've got the story. What's the brand story you're telling? Are you putting a character? Are you showing something there with a vintage illustration? What's the message you're trying to convey? Sometimes you have to avoid the safe corporate route to have a chance at being distinctive. Sometimes I feel like some brands play too safe and we end up being pigeonholed into creating something that's just simple and easy. Simple is good but sometimes it sacrifices the design and ends up being cooperate and stale and boring. As designers, how can we recommend or help our clients pick something that isn't really distinctive and ultimately achieve the goal? I like this quote from Byron Sharp. He is an author of books called How Brands Grow. His idea is, he doesn't agree with differentiation being as most important. He believes distinctiveness is more important. There's a cool quote, he says, "Rather than striving for meaningful, perceived differentiation, marketers should seek meaningless distinctiveness. Branding lasts, differentiation doesn't." The whole idea is that differentiation is very hard to do. Because there's millions of businesses out there, a lot of the ideas or messaging or products are the same, they are very close. To really stand out, then it's going to be a little harder. For example, you have a lot of online businesses that offer free shipping now. It's become global, it's a normal thing now. But back in the day, free shipping wasn't really a thing. In that case, differentiating, that doesn't matter anymore. Distinctiveness is more important. Focus on creating a weird, interesting, cool, vibrant brand that's living and moving and that has a great experience. There's this great site that shows amazing distinctive assets especially in the industry of packaging. It's called Dieline. I don't know if you've heard of it. It's popular, but they show amazing packaging design. If I scroll down here, they also show other blogs in trends and things. But I really feel like they have a lot of brands here. They know how to differentiate and know how to create amazing packaging. You can see all these different types of designs here. They're really awesome. This B1 looks pretty cool. Let's check that. You can see boom, a bright orange, nice packaging. Got really cool typography. You can see that it's got an upside-down A, that's pretty neat, and some illustrations here really interesting. You can see the packaging there, looks really nice. Look at nice design. You can see on the back it's telling the story in a nice way, the flavors and the information, ingredients and stuff like that. That's that's nice. Good photography as well. This idea of these dice, that's pretty cool. These are graffiti. You can see they've got the secondary logo mark on the cart, that's nice. We've got some coasters. I really like how they use the typography there. They use the font really nice. That's just one example, but there are so many other brands. If you need inspiration, especially if it's packaging or design, you can see how the things stand out and pop and it's not just color, but its different elements and that's how you make things stand out. I want to give you some practical examples of how I create some distinctive assets, especially when you're working for a small business or for a brand identity. You can see here I created some social media assets for Instagram. This is the example I've been using for one of my clients. You can see here it's got these halftone effects using the brand colors, using the messaging here with the final voice tagline, and just some of the brand colors in the background. To get this cool halftone effect, you can see that I've done all in Illustrator. You can do this in Photoshop. Well, this is a cool effect that I can do with a plugin called Phantasm. This is from Astute Graphics. All I had to do is click on the image. This image is from Unsplash. I found it searching up a singer or an artist and I got this image. All I'm going to do is click on this halftone live effect. Now you can see that's creating this monochrome effect. I can change the color. You can see I've got all these effects here. I can change the DPI if I'm going to get lower. It will change the size of it. I can go back to 12. See the dots there, I can change the color, so if I want to go to the brown color or the purple, you can see that now it's like this purple color, which is cool. I'm just going to go back and I'm going to go to the dark purple color we have. You can also change the shape. If I don't want circles and I want like squares, you can see I can zoom in and now I've created the square shapes, which is really cool and it's got a whole bunch of other stuff. I can do like text. I can do lines as well, which is awesome, so just by doing this, already, we're having this cool effect. I can also change the gain. If I want to add the brightness, so increase the lights, or decrease the dark areas, as you can see there, and it's changing that affect, so I want more light coming through, which is nice. Then I can press "Okay," I can also create an undercut if I want so maybe I want that layer. I can make it white or I can change the color swatch to like a purple, which is the brand color for my client, that looks cool. I'm going to press "Okay" and then now, I can drop it into this Instagram size like this, and then typically, what I like to do is I like to make a clipping mask. Make sure that it's on the output. Yeah. Then I use my shortcut key and then boom, now I've got this cool graphic for Instagram. If I want to save it in other sizes, I can make it in other sizes, but just by doing this, super easy and super fun to do. It's got textures, you've got topography, you've got color, and already, this could be used as a graphic, we can put many more messaging or sign up, or whatever we want if we're doing a promotional campaign. Another cool way is to use elements from the logo or patterns, our textures, and actually combine it with imagery. I'm in Photoshop and you can see the logo that got picked, I sort the base shape of it and put it within this artist's head and then put a color in the background. To do this, all I've really done is just made the logo and have a white version of the logo. Then if I get rid of the mask, you can see I'm going to make a vector mask. On the bottom right, you can click this rectangle with the circle in it. That will make a vector mass. Let me just delete the mask, and I'm going to start it from fresh. You click that, it should make this mask. Click the mask, press "B" for the brush tool. Make sure that your fill color is on a black, so foreground color, and all I'm going do now is paint black on the parts where the logo is, and what's this going to do is, it's going to hide the logo. I'm going make sure the hardness is on 100 percent and I'm just going to hide that, like this. If you want it softer, you can drop the opacity. I can drop the hardness. If I go to the brush settings, you drop the hardness down, make it softer, just like that. I'm using Shift X to shift and swap if I want to paint or hide. If you want to hide, you do white, if you want to keep it, you just do black there. Then it looks like the shape is going behind her head, which is really awesome. Then all I've done it's got a color in the background. Then what I can do is I can go to my libraries and I've actually created a library with some of the assets. I can actually drag one of the textures I've created, so I'm going to bring this in, drop it in, and I'm going to scale it up. For me, I'm going to hold "Shift" and scale that. I can rotate it if I want, scale that, corners, press "Enter." I'm just going to press "Control Shift," bring it to the bottom, bring it above the texture, and then what I'm going to do is go to overlay or soft light, as you can see there, and then drop the opacity to 40 percent. Now, if I turn it on and off, you can see that it is the core texture of the background and already, that's looking distinctive, it's looking different because I'm adding starting to add the logo, texture elements, and any other element I want to add. I'm just going to jump back into Illustrator real quick and I'm going to go to how I made this pattern. This is another way of creating distinctive assets, which I think is really nice. I like having patterns. It's fun. You don't just have to be a textile designer, you can actually create patterns in Illustrator. I've got this shape. Once again, this is from the logo we have. If I just drag the logo here, so this is like the main logo, so you can see that shape from there. I can even bring the shape with the actual letters inside if I want, but I just like having a simple shape. I turned the shape just like this, into a stroke. Then what I do is you select the shape, go to "Object," go down to "Pattern," and click "Make." Now, once I zoom out, I'm holding my mouse so I'm zooming out so you can see. I can change my grid to bricks. I can do by columns. I can do it in different orientations. I want grid now and I try and play around with the width, so add a bit more space and you can Move Tile with Art, you can tick those on and off, it's up you. For me, I'm liking that, so I'm going to just press down on the top-left corner and then now, all I have to do is press "M," make a box, and then in your Swatches panel, you can click the new pattern we made. I'll get rid of the stroke on the edge there. Now I've got this cool pattern, which I think is really awesome. What I can actually do is if I want to change this, I can go to "Object Transform." I can click on "Transform Each" if I want. If I untick Transform Objects and just transform the patterns, it's going to affect the pattern itself, so I can change the angle, I can change the scale if I want, make it smaller. I can move it a bit if I want. I'm using my mouse as well for quick interactions here. You can see that I can put it on an angle, 30 degrees, I can reflect it, do all sorts of weird stuff. Then I can press "Okay." Then now in my Swatches panel, it should have updated the pattern there. I can also press "I" for the eyedropper and select my other pattern and it will copy that old pattern that I had, see there. It's a cool way to create amazing patterns very simply in Illustrator and it's going to be seamless. Obviously, if you make custom patterns, you'd have to make it seamless within a box, but for me, this is an easy way to create a pattern. 17. Brand Examples: I want to show you a real-life project from 2020. This was for a project for a small brand. It was for a solopreneur, she does into music and vocal coaching, which is really cool. I'm going to show you how it is, I'm going to show you my files, showing you how it looks like. I'm not going to try and make it look fancy, I'm just going to show you how it is to be really practical. This is the first discovery session we had and you can see this is the layout. Go through that, the agenda, the rules, and this is what I'm talking about, the brand. As I said before, we focus on the brand, customers, and goals. Then focusing on the ultimate vision, what's her ultimate vision? Throughout this whole presentation, I'm asking questions and extracting information. Then we talk about the differentiation, we go through the golden circle, the what, the how, and the why. Once we do that we move on to brand values. Talk about her brand values, what she stands for, the qualities that she really looks for in people and some creativity community, all those things you've probably heard before. Features and benefits we skip this because this is more product-focused. She's more of a coaching consultant top person, so we just left that out. Then went through the attributes, this is what I typically use to build the attributes, got different columns and I'm tweaking this and editing this. I've learned some things from the future, so it might be similar to something you've probably seen before, which is awesome. Then I'm going to the ideal customer. Basically building out two persona's, know what the demographics, the mindsets, the jobs here, the needs, the wants, the pains, and solutions. That was really cool, writing down notes as I'm going through. Obviously, this is not refined, so I don't have a picture or anything yet, but I'll show you in the next one, the refined version and that's pretty straightforward. Then we talked about brand positioning. I love doing this positioning matrix where it has the opposites. This helps us find out where they want to be in the market and the look and feel. Are we going round or sharp, modern or historical, traditional, are we more masculine or feminine energy? This really helps us. Let me talk a little bit about competitors in the ultimate research after this as well to look at what other people are doing. Then the positioning statement. This is how we develop that positioning statement internally. Then the customer journey we talked about like how she builds awareness. What are we going to do in terms of marketing and promoting herself? Then going along the journey, how she converts that customer and what's their offerings. Finally, the priorities and goals. We focused on finding what's the most priority. We talked about logo design, that's the thing that we're doing now. Then like creating Instagram stories and designs and then Youtube in a website which is going to be laid down the track. Long-term six, 12 months. For us, choose money, focus on just the logo design for now, and a few other little elements and things like that. Then talk about the timeline there. Timeline is pretty straightforward. Just set out the dates and some of that, and then we go to the check-ins and thank you and that's pretty much it. Once we went through that discovery phase, you can see the second session. Don't worry about it if the images are missing. It talks about the goals. Basically, everything is summarized in this document now. It's like the goals are why or how. Talk about the values here are brand attributes, which ones we selected, positioning statement. Liezl Torres provides vocal training for the female outcasts, helping them engage in a creative atmosphere and with a bold voice. This helps them experience, fun, and gain personal growth in their career. I think that was pretty well. Her X-factor is she is a female Pop Punk Style Vocalist, which is uncommon. Then some call to actions, extracting some of those things that I got from the discovering and how they can use it in like taglines or messaging. Finding your voice within. Refining the uses, ideal customer, I'm just going through that pretty straightforward. I don't want to break down every single detail. Then that's pretty much the same. We talked about the tone of voice. How are we going to sound? She's a playful teacher, helpful, supportive, expressive, but also playful and friendly. Let me count the tagline from the voice within or an alternative connect with the inner voice. That's pretty cool. Then the priority is basically focusing on the things that are most important. Once we reach discovery, what we actually did is went into style scape. I recapped on the values, the brand matrix, and also the user persona is there. Then, as you can see, just going to go through here, so we've got stylescape 1. I've got Liezl Torres, this one was a fun vibrant minimal. Really just tapping into more of that creative and a minimal design side using icons but a texture. In the second was more of a loud fun, playful style. This was aiming at a male character or persona. You can see here is some of the topography, bold text, and colors, which is really cool. Then we went into refinement and we revised it. This was the final. You can see some halftones in there. Shows like this font here, playing around just the simple logo, but we expand it on that. We can see some textures and cool stuff. Just really bringing some elements from the other ones and seeing how we can incorporate that as you can see. Then finally, we can compare at the end. I like to compare the scapes, which is really cool, and then thank you. Once we've done that, we went into logo design. I'm going to show you my three logo design files, it is pretty messy, but that's how it is with the logo. I ended up getting some of this like musical notes, these icons online, and just experimenting. We knew it was going to be a top graphic approach. You can see I started playing around with topography, bringing some elements from the style scape. Then going through here, you can see some of the designs I was playing with. We've seen how they can cut out some of the shapes, adding a musical note there. Seeing how we can play with the initials LT, maybe a monogram. See me, how I can play with that. Then you can see just playing around, experimenting, playing around maybe that icon or a mock. How can come up with a special mock, as you can see there? Then so that's a playground as well with this connected node and then forming this shape, which is really cool nest shape, as you can see here. But that was cool, and then we decided to form some of the designs here which was really cool. I was playing around with the icon and just seeing how it's working in different elements. That was the first round that I've gone through and then round 2 just exploring even further, seeing how it's working. Playing around with the gradient and the brand colors, playing on different, vertical and horizontal. Then testing the background there. The rest was part of one. Then revision 3, a lot of that stuff is the same. Then once again going down and exploring some other methods. This is like really refining it. Just cleaning up the design, the icons. As you can see playing around with more [inaudible] 2021, see if we can fit that in there somehow and that looks cool. Then just refining the spacing with the element T there. Then I think we finally ended up on that one and ended up looking like this, which is really cool. Then also the different versions, white and black and stuff. That was the discovery to scapes to the logo design. 18. Exporting and creating for social media: When I go to create the full identity and create touch points and the brand assets, I usually go to the site called socialsizes.io. It's usually updated every year and it's got all the different files for each platform. If you want to know all the social sizes for your Instagram post, your stories or if it's a Facebook banner, then you can just download this file and it's going to have a template for you. For example, if my client is using Instagram and I'm going to design some assets for that, I'm going to click on it and it'll take me down to this section here. You can see it'll give me all the sizes if you want the resolution sizes, which is good, or you can actually just download a file. It's got a few files, it's got Figma, Photoshop, and Illustrator, typically I will download the Illustrator file, so you click that and then just save it, I'm going to save it to downloads. Then you'll get this File pop-up so I'm going to click the file and load it in. Typically, you'll get the file right here with all the resolution. You can see, I don't have that font but obviously I can change the font, and it's got the story size, the reel size, the one-by-one feet, and also the profile picture. Typically, what you want to do is make a template that you can use and I would probably download all the other ones as well, so LinkedIn or Facebook. If you go to LinkedIn, you can download that one as well, download that, open that, and I would make a big file of all the templates there so you can see profile picture, cover photo, business, and stories, and also feed. They're are very similar sizes, so typically I download that and make my own template. Here's an example of how I'll start to create the asset, for example, I start to create my textures and I save it in the right resolution so this sizing could be used for a background, which is really good. Scroll down, I save some other sizes. This size is 1920 by 1080 so this can be used for a YouTube thumbnail, it could be used for a post. There sizes are for an Instagram background or if you don't want to store it, this could be used for a story as well. Just starting to apply the same effects across all the same sizes. The same goes for any patterns or any design. You can see here, I've bunch them together. Then for example, in Instagram, if I want to just do a normal single post, you can see I start to create the campaign or the assets. That's a quick way on how to get all the right resolutions and start to create out those brand assets. Now if I'm going to export these files, typically this is how I export for social media. I'm going to go to File and go down to Export and click Export for Screens. Illustrator also has export assets as well, which is a cool feature, but this is the key way I do it. You can see I've got the artboards and if I click assets, I can actually drag an artwork to make it a consistent asset across all files. But typically, this is how I do it. I start to rename everything so you can see Instagram or gradient or this one would be texture at 100 percent, and when I say 100 percent I mean opacity, the other ones are 50 percent. I've got gradient 1080 pixels, gradient v, which is like vertical, 1920 pixels. You start to give proper names. Then what you can actually do, you can actually change it if you want to see the list like that or the thumbnails. You can also select the Export To, so if I export to make the downloads folder, I will make a folder and I'll put the client name. I'll just go to LT, social media, we can just say graphics for now. Double-click select folder. I'm going to open the location after the export, you can also create subfolders if you'd like. I don't need the blade because it's not for print, it's basically for digital. I can click all or the range or I can untick the ones I don't want, but I want to keep everything on. Then the cool thing is you want to click the little cog then you can go to your settings and actually play around with all these different settings. If it's JPEG 100, PNG, if you want art optimize or type optimized, you can figure that out. Then also the PDF, what size is it going to save as, so I can see digital max. Then what you can do is actually I can add a scale, for this one, I can just do one timescale and I want a PNG, maybe I want a JPEG, so I'm going to click the button, Add Scale, Click on JPEG. You want to save it in the maximum quality usually, so JPG 100. The suffix, you can change that. Sometimes you want to up the scale if you need a specific resolution, I'm just going to go with scale one. The suffix, I don't need to put anything there. I could say JPEG, JPG, and then what I can do is just click export and it's going to export all those files in one go. This is why it's better to have all the graphics in one file in Illustrator. Obviously, if you didn't have a good PC or computer, you might want to save separate files. One for Instagram and one for whatever other platform you're using. Now if I go to the folder, you can see now here's all the images. If I just make sure that you guys can see that. If I just go through all the images, you can see all the gradients, the textures, social media graphics are all there and they're ready to upload. All have to do is deliver them in the funnel delivery package for the client and then they can upload them straight away. 19. Class Project: For the class project, I've decided to create three creative briefs for you to choose, so you can practice creating a brand identity, and the thing is, you can do two of them if you want but I see this mainly just doing one and pick whatever one you feel like is resonates with you and you feel like your having the most fun. Number one is going to be an organic food delivery service. Number two is a live streaming app for content creators. Then number three is an urban clothing label. All the details are in the project section. Make sure you download the brief, whichever one you want to create for your class project and any other templates and resources will be in the project section, just click on the button down below. Make sure you make an effort because this is going to help you solidify your knowledge and all the stuff that you've learned in the class. I always encourage people to practice, practice, and practice. That's the way you grow as a brand designer. 20. Thank you: Thanks so much for taking the class. I really hope that you've learned something new about doing a brand identity from scratch. For me, if I always do a new brand identity and practice, you're going to get better and better with time. Go out there and create amazing work for amazing clients and you're going to get better and better each time you do a new one. If you want to learn more about logo design and freelancing or other crazy stuff, then check out my other skill-share classes. They'll really help you if you want to learn and grow as a designer in the industry. Come say hi on Instagram and YouTube at thejeremymura. I do post content on there so also come say hi, and let's grow as a designer. Thanks so much. See you in the next course.