Crafting a Consistent Brand / A Brand First Workshop | Chris Fredricks | Skillshare
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Crafting a Consistent Brand / A Brand First Workshop

teacher avatar Chris Fredricks, Brand Strategy & Content Creation

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Welcome

      1:37

    • 2.

      The Project

      1:07

    • 3.

      The Branding Process

      2:04

    • 4.

      Brand Positioning - Quick

      13:34

    • 5.

      Auditing A Brand

      8:02

    • 6.

      Collecting Visuals & Voice

      5:32

    • 7.

      Building Your Brand Book

      3:59

    • 8.

      Finishing Up

      1:09

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About This Class

Branding is all about PERCEPTION. What the public thinks of your brand is what your brand is. The only way to control that is to have a focused message and to be CONSISTENT. In this class we'll cover 

  1. What consistency looks like
  2. How to audit your existing brand
  3. Gathering visuals and voice examples to build your brand book and inspire your future content creation. 
  4. Building a digital Brand Book to use as a guide for your brand. 

In the end you'll have the framework and the tools to create your own brand book. A guide like this is important to keep you on track, those around you, or anyone you work with in the future. Knowing what your brand looks like, sounds like, and being able to document that will help keep your brand Consistent!

This class is part of a series covering the Branding process. They do not need to be taken in order, but I'd obviously recommend them all. 

1 / Find Your Focus

2 / Find Your Voice 

3 / Keep it Consistent

4 / Tell Your Brand Story

Interested in TENDEN the company featured in this class? You can check them out at TENDEN.us

Meet Your Teacher

Teacher Profile Image

Chris Fredricks

Brand Strategy & Content Creation

Teacher

Hi there! I've worked as a designer for over a decade in a bunch of different roles. I focus on building and managing brands. I've helped a variety of clients develop a brand strategy, and then apply that strategy to the design of their website, catalog, or whatever they needed to share with the world. Designing eventually led me to teaching design both online and at the the University level. In 2019, I was super pumped to join the team at InVision University, where I learn a ton every day while applying my background in design and education. 

 

When I'm not doing all that stuff, I create illustrations for my apparel brand, Grow Up Awesome. Everything I make is inspired by my weird family, and many pets. I live and work in Grand Rapids, Michig... See full profile

Level: Beginner

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Transcripts

1. Welcome: Hi, my name is Chris Fredricks. I'm a graphic designer with a focus on building and managing brands. What does that mean exactly? I run a few businesses including an apparel company called Grow Up Awesome, a new printing company I'm launching this summer called By Fred and a design agency called Open Coat. I also do brand strategy and design work for my clients helping them tell their story better. When I'm not doing those things, I'm a visiting professor of graphic design at Grand Valley State University, here in West Michigan. Today's class we're going to talk about brand consistency. How you craft a consistent brand and why it's important. Spoiler alert, consistent brands build trust, and your customer is trusting you is probably the most important thing. So, it's worth paying attention to. I'm going to demonstrate this by using a small business called Tendon as an example. It's run by my friend Todd. He makes handmade apparel and accessories. I think it's really an example because he's a one-man operation. Not only is Todd responsible for running the business on a day to day basis, but he's also responsible for everything that's put out into the world on behalf of the brand. What we'll do in this class is we'll run through what he's currently doing with his brand, what he's doing well and what could use some work in terms of consistency. In the end, we'll develop the start of a brand guide for him. You can follow along and develop one for yourself, too. What this will do is it will show them what their brand looks like visually, what their voice sounds like, and how they can keep that consistent across everything that they put out into the world. 2. The Project: The project for this class is going to be you creating a brand guide. Like a lot of my classes, this is going to work in a workshop style. So, you might want to pause, brainstorm things for yourself, and then come back and finish the next step later. Or watch through whole thing, brainstorm everything at once, and then come back where you have questions and feel free to ask questions in the discussion. I'm happy to answer them to help you get through parts where you might be stuck. What your brand guide is going to look like is one, a sheet of paper that defines your brand. Really simply but also really thoroughly. So, someone on your team or someone that you work with in the future can read it in probably less than a minute and really understand what you stand for as a brand, what your focus is, what your differentiation is, what your brand voice sounds like and then you will add on things like mood boards to show visual consistency for your brands and also create a sheet that shows consistency and voice. What does your brand sound like, what are some headlines that you would write. We're also going to talk about what kind of content should you be sharing. Before we get started on your brand book, though, we're going to cover real quick what branding is, why it's important, and pretty much why I do what I do. 3. The Branding Process: Branding is all about perception. Marty Neumeier said in the book The Brand Gap, it's not what you say you are, it's what they say you are. He also said a brand is a person's gut feeling about a product, service or organization. Again, if you've watched my other videos, you've heard those things before and that's because they're super important. You need to understand that your brand is about perception. Your job, as the person putting that message out in the world, is to keep it consistent so that perception is what you want it to be. Because if it starts going the wrong way, you're not going to be super happy. So, how do you control a brand? Again, this class along with my previous two are about my process as a brand strategist. This is how I do it. I start with one, find your focus. What makes you the most different compared to your competition? That's your focus. Two, find your voice. So, when you're talking about your focus, when you're saying things that are related to your focus, how do you say it? What does that voice sound like? That's your voice. Then step three is keep it consistent. So, why is consistency important? That's why we're here today. So, the goal is to be consistent because that creates authenticity and it creates this realness about who you are. If you say the same thing over and over again, that creates trust. So, consistency equals authenticity and that together equals trust. If you're trying to develop a brand, being a trustworthy brand is by far the most important part. Trust is what makes people buy one product over another product. If this is the first of my videos that you've watched and you want to learn more about finding your focus or your differentiation in finding your voice, check out my past videos. It's super important to know those things. It's going to actually be hard to craft a consistent brand without knowing those things. But, next up, we're going to kind of cover those really quickly. If you feel like you need to go more in-depth after that, definitely go back and check out those videos, but otherwise feel free to follow along with this consistency class today. It's going to help you either way. Thanks a lot. 4. Brand Positioning - Quick: When making a brand book, we have all these things that we've gathered, all these things that we brainstormed about what we stand for, what makes us different, et cetera. We want to make sure if that's a mess right now, that we grab it all and we're going to narrow it down and put it on a single sheet of paper. That way, if you need to be reminded or you need to remind a new employee or a designer that you're starting to work with what your brand stands for, you can do it and you can do it in about a minute. Knowing your focus and your voice, that all acts as a guide for those people, not just yourself because you probably know your brand pretty well, but for anyone that you're going to work with in the future. If you ever need to change these things, go back and do it. Brands change all the time. Brands reinvent themselves all the time. There's nothing wrong with doing that. Again, if you're going to do that, just make sure you pull it off consistently. That's how you can build that trust and sometimes rebuild that trust by revamping your brand and keeping it consistent. The first step of this is to make sure that your focus is narrow. Take all that content that you've created through my previous classes. If you haven't done it, that's okay. You can try to work through this sheet with the info that you have in your head right now. Do some brainstorming. Just do a rough draft of it, and then go back dive deeper later if you need to. Take all that content you have. A lot of times when he go through my other classes, there's tons of work sheets, there's lots of notes. You might have dozens of pages, and you want to narrow that down. So, I'm going to challenge you with the work sheet that I provide you for this class to narrow that down to one sheet of paper. So, if you take a look at that sheet of paper, what you have is your brand positioning statement. What that's doing is, it is telling you first your target market, so your number one audience, and then your brand promise or your differentiation. Again, that's what I usually call your focus. It's what's most important. It's what makes you the most different compared to your competition. Then the reason to believe, why should we believe your brand promise. After that we have your values, your top three values. Your top three personality traits, which you'll find when you work through your voice. When you work through the find your voice class, your top three audiences. So, number one is your target audience again. But then after that, it's other audiences whose opinion you care about. Sometimes, it's other people that are in the same field as you, so your competition, potential employees, et cetera. Then what we say, so examples of the way you might talk. An example headline that might be the first thing on your website. Anything you want to include there and we dive deeper into that later on too. This one sheet of paper is a really solid guide for what your brand stands for. So, keep it close, keep it memorized and share it with people that you're working with. So, how we make a brand book, we take everything that you've gathered, and we narrow it down and we use that worksheet for this purpose. The goal is to bring even more focus. That's the goal of all of this. Your best bet when it comes to controlling your brand and the perception people have of it is to have a focused brand. Know what you stand for, know why you do what you, be focused. First, we're going to work through the brand summary for Todd. So, we can narrow down his existing brand positioning. We've never actually gone through the formal process of doing these brand work sheets with Todd. So, I asked him a few questions via email. He answered them quickly and gave me some good answers, and I'm going to narrow those things down. He didn't totally understand all my questions, which is totally normal. I don't expect my clients to branding experts. So, it's actually helpful because I got, I feel like I got honest answers from him and we can help craft those for him. So, I'm going to go through that process right now. So, to start with we have a brand positioning statement, which basically is for your target market. Tenden offers your brand promise. So, whatever makes you the most different, whatever you can promise your customer that your competition cannot, and we offer that because then that's your reason to believe, so why we should believe that your offer is true. So, we're going to follow a similar format to that. I asked him what his focus was and he gave me this answer, "My focus is making solid quality products using timeless color palettes and styles, producing a garment or accessory that the customer enjoys putting to use. Because of the thoughtful construction and attention to detail, I feel I am different to my competition because though the final product may be slightly similar, being self-taught, I have learned the ins and outs of construction testing different techniques and applying the ones I feel best fit for each individual application. Also, with no professional training, I feel I am not limited to any certain parameter." So, I think overall, there's good stuff there. It's really wordy, a lot more wordy than it needs to be. So, we're going to narrow it down, which again I say that all the time because it's really important. I usually start with focus to our brand promise because it's the most important part. So, if you know your brand promise, you know what your focus is as a brand, you're 100 steps ahead of your competition for real. I'm going to call out a few different things that I think he is saying pretty well. So, quality he talks about, timeless he talks about, someone enjoying it is important to him. He also points out that he's different from his competition because he's tried a ton of things while learning how to sew and how to construct these things. So, he's applying the best one for each individual piece. So, i think that would be attention to detail. So, offers hand constructed clothing and accessories made with a focus quality, durability, timeless style. So, I think that's a good start. So, I also asked him whose target market was. Again, he gave me a lengthy answer. Twenty five to 45-year-old male, cares about what he supports, realizes that it feels good to put on a pair of jeans that he knows were crafted by an individual that enjoys what he does. Believes that buying one thing for X dollars is way better than buying 10 things at $Y knowing that X will last longer than the other. So, a little wordy once again, but I think the essence of it is 100 percent there. So, he's making my job easy. So, I'm going to say 25 to 45 year old men that care about where their clothes come from. They also care about quality, sure. But I think that's all implied in that statement. It's a really simple way to say that they care where the things come from, they care about quality. They obviously spend more money on things that are going to last longer and they know where it came from. So, all of that is implied I think in that statement. Next up, we have the reason to believe. So, he says, "I've been at this for a long time. The first pair of jeans was constructed over 10 years ago. You can trust that I have gone to every extent to learn the proper best way to produce my products." So, it's an interesting reason to believe in that. His reason to believe is really about that he's self-taught, which doesn't necessarily always sound like a plus, but through that process of being self-taught, he became more reliable at construction, and probably knows more about it than most people. I actually think focusing on why he got into this in the first place for his reason to believe might be a better way to go. He started doing this because he wanted to know where his clothes came from. I know this from many conversations that I had with him. I just hope to make a kick-starter video. So, I think bringing that up where he gets his target market. So, saying something along the lines of I started this because I wanted to know where my clothes came from. I taught myself to construct these items because of my concern about quality materials and craftsmanship. My focus on quality shows in my work. So, a little bit wordier than I usually like for a reason to believe. But I think it works pretty well. So, I was going to put this together in the format that you find on your work sheet. So, it's going to say for 24 to 45 year old men that care about where their clothes come from, Tenden offers hand-constructed clothing and accessories made with a focus on quality durability and timeless style. I started this because I wanted to know where my clothes came from. I taught myself to construct these items because of my concern about quality materials and craftsmanship. My focus on quality work. My focus on quality shows through in my products, in each product. So, it doesn't need to be super pretty. I tend to like try too hard to make it sound pretty when I'm writing it, but this is really an internal statement. So, it's really just for you. It's for you and other people that are working with you. Up next, values. He wrote quality fabric, knowing where all components come from, timeless fit, durable construction. Here on the values, I think he's pretty close. I'm just going to try to rank these and later on, I'll ask him what his favorites are or he can move them around. So, I think probably quality materials actually from talking to him. I think the first thing is knowing where things come from knowing the source of materials and timeless. So, durable construction, that could go under quality materials. Timeless and durable. Let's put two in one just because we can do whatever we want. All right. So, values, knowing source of materials. Actually let's change that again and saying ethical sourcing because that's really what it's about for him. He wants to know where things are coming from, he wants to make sure things aren't made in sweatshops, ethical sourcing. Two, quality materials, three, timeless and durable, beautiful. Next up, personality traits. He actually had some personal traits. So, he took it a little bit wrong. He just wrote actual traits of him as a person. So, talking about the company, really talking about personality traits. I'm going to just go off of my gut on this one, and I'll let him change it later. Again, we're just laying the groundwork for this brand book. Personality traits of the brand. In this case, it's just Todd. So, you can kind of go with things that are related to him. I might change that order on these but I'm just going to go from my gut on these based on what I know about Todd. I've known him for a long time. Determined, he's always trying to improve on things. He's trying to figure things out, he's trying to make things better. Principled. I'm going to say determined, principled and friendly. He's friendly, relatable. I think, like I mentioned before with this target market, he knows who's customer is because he is his customer so super relatable to people that would be buying his products. So, next up, audiences. Again, I don't think he's super new, what I meant. But he got pretty close. So, his number one audience is going to be his target market, 25 to 45-year-olds that care about where their clothes come from. It could also be like partners of the target market. All these items are really good gifts. Some of them might be a little too pricey. It should be gifts, but you know. Number three could be other makers of clothing and accessories. What we say, yeah, just starting on what we're getting dive into later with this one. So, he says handcrafted products that you can feel good about owning. Thoughtfully made, unique in production process, ability to buy directly from the maker. Let me know if it's good. He's tired. I'm sorry Todd. I made him stay up late. I think that's a great start. So, we're going to stick with these things right now, and that is basically the content for our brand summary, which I think you should go through and try to narrow those things down. Again, the goal of this is if you'd gone through my other workshops or gone through any branding exercises in the past, is it take all that content and narrow it down. If you can fit it on one sheet that becomes an easy tool that you can pass on to other people that you're working with in the future. 5. Auditing A Brand: Really the next step is to audit your brand. What that means is you're going to re-evaluate your touch points so, anything that you put out into the world. In this class, I'm really going to focus on social media because for small businesses that is a huge part of what they put out into the world besides their actual product or their service. That's their advertising. And then once you've evaluated it, once you've gathered these new visuals, gathered kind of this language that you talk in and refined it, then you have to create the content. So, one thing I remember from seeing Todd's posts on a daily basis is he uses white backgrounds a lot which I think is really nice and consistent. He takes a lot of close ups of his products which have a nice detail to them. His other products are typically shows that he's out in markets that he's attending and then he also does a good job of showing photos of people wearing his products. So, he's reposting stuff that people have posted of his work where they're wearing those actual products, which I think is a nice touch. It's helping to build that trust. So, really I think overall Todd's visual style for his social media posts are pretty consistent. So, he's showing his products in use which is really nice because these products are meant to be used. He's showing a little bit of the process. These are some new inside pockets where we printed artwork on the inside of them. A picture of his daughter so showing a little bit of his personal life which I think is a nice touch for a business that's ran by one person. So, pretty consistent overall I think. Again, showing pretty much every picture is a product shot which is nice or something about a market that he's doing. So, just kind of brainstorming thinking off the top of my head here. Like what could he improve on, what could he talk more about. I think visually he's doing a good job. I think we could see a little bit more of his actual process in work. I know right now he's in the process of moving all of this stuff to another space so that might be part of the issue but right here. So we get this photo is a couple months old him sewing some pants together. It's also if you're someone who runs a business by yourself you probably know that it's hard to get pictures of yourself doing something because you don't have anyone there to help you. I run into that all the time too. So, that's a total common thing but try to get someone just ask them once in a while while you're doing something cool to come down and take a picture while you're doing that. So, these pictures are really nice. They're all three days apart there so, he stacked three process pictures in a row and then in-between other product photos. So, I think more consistently maybe scheduling out that process would help him out. But I think visually he's doing a great job. While we're here, let's also take a look at his caption. So, we're going to cover voice too and talk about like what that voice sounds like. So, made by me in Green Haven Michigan. A pair of two new denim jeans, start breaking in a pair today. So a little bit more kind of like advertising copy trying to sell. A nice picture of one of his grooming roles being used as an artist's role so showing like multiple uses for a product without again being salesy about it because he doesn't have to say "Check it out, you can use my product for this and this and this." He can actually share pictures of people using his product which means people already trust him. So, he's kind of building on that trust he's already created. Showing pictures of his products and saying something interesting about them. So, selvedge denim jeans made in Grand Haven, Michigan. One pair at a time by one pair of hands. So, again focusing on that handmade aspect something you can't get from his competition. Obviously, there's other individuals that make jeans but you can't get that from a department store, you can't get that from Walmart, you can't get that from Target. You can get a handmade pair of jeans from someone that you can meet and shake their hand in most cases. So, that's a good thing to point out. I think that's a great thing to point out. Again, I think where he's missing something is on process. So, talking more about like why I chose this denim, why I chose this leather, how I constructed or how I choose to construct it, kind of like giving a peek into the mind of the creator, I think would be a nice touch here. Let's check out his website. I actually just helped him launch a new website. We haven't worked on content yet though so this is just content from his last website mostly. So, you get to his website in construction. All products start out in my mind evolve over time and then turn into a sketch on paper and drafting the prototype and then constructing it. Slight changes may be made until final fabric choices are made and patterned pieces are laid out and a new product is born. So, I like that he's talking about process first of all. I think it could be a more concise statement we could work on like the wording of that but that's what I was just talking about a second ago like he needs to start talking more about process sharing that process because saying that here's a pair of jeans made by me is cool but actually showing that being made in photos and short little videos, I think is a much quicker way and a much more effective way to connect that in your customers mind that oh wow. Yeah, he actually is making those and that's pretty awesome. So, utility role waxed canvas hand cut and dyed veg tan leather, leather latigo lace at this great price you'll have to find a use for it. I don't know what some of those things are. So, leather latigo lace, I don't know what that means, at this price you'll have to find use for it. I don't know that for Todd that it's important to talk about price. Overall his stuff is going to be more expensive than anything you'd ever buy at a store because it's made by one person in America and most of the stuff at the store is not so, nothing at the store is made that way. So, obviously, there's a price difference. I don't think a handcraft someone who's like a hand craftsman has to ever try to compete on price. So, my recommendation to him would be not to even talk about price. Machines, machines and machines. Very rarely does technology not improve a product. When these old machines were made, the designers knew exactly what they needed to do and nothing else. Leaving us with quite a scavenger hunt exploring around the country, looking for these few remaining works of art. Not to mention, it is kind of fun tearing them apart and rebuilding them. So, I love that. The machine story is a good one. I know he's traveled a lot to find machines to use and he's added several to his collection in this past year. But I'm not seeing that on his Instagram page or social media like he needs to talk about that. He needs a show that journey when he goes into a weird store where there's hundreds of old sewing machines, he needs to take a picture that. So, showing that journey, showing that he's a collector and part of his focus is kind of that appreciation for things that are timeless and handcrafted at a level that you really can't compete with anymore. So more of that. More of that. What else do we got? That I used to build my take on solid, classic designs that I use on a daily basis. Sewing is like meditation for me and the result is a product that will stick with me and you for a lifetime. So, I like that. I may have helped him write that I don't remember. So I like that because I think it really quickly gets to the point of what he makes, what's important to him, why that matters, and why it should matter to you. It's relatable. You can get why he cares about what he does and that's cool. So, going through the audit, again I think he's doing a good job. Visually, I think he's doing a good job of describing products when he talks about his process briefly on his home page. I think it's great and I think he needs to do more of that. So, that's what we're going to talk about developing that story a little bit more in a second. 6. Collecting Visuals & Voice: Next up, I want to talk about kind of crafting that visual consistency. So, talking about social media and websites that's photography, color maybe, and kind of figuring out how you can gather those things and how you can share those things with other people. If you're like me, you like to do a good job but you also like to do it as quickly and as efficiently as possible. So, a lot of times when it comes to doing like a mood board, something I could teach a whole class about, I'm going to always suggest whatever place for gathering visuals is the most efficient for you, use that. So next up, I want to start to work on gathering visuals that represent the direction we want to take Tendon. Like I mentioned, I think Todd's doing a lot of great things already on social media and on his website with his visuals and his voice and his writing. I think he's headed in the right direction. A lot of times what I'm going to do is look to those that he admires to improve on that. So, I asked Todd for a list of companies that he looks up to in his industry and slightly outside of it. So, it's mostly clothing and accessory companies. Then I started gathering, I looked through their social media pages because it's the easiest way to start gathering photos and also gathering text, voice. I'll keep calling it voice, but I mean the copy or what they wrote about the photo. So, I'm gathering with those things. So, I went through Instagram and I grabbed some of those things. I also grabbed a few things that I had recently made with Todd for a kickstarter video. So, this is an example of a denim photo of a nice closet denim photo that one of the companies that he likes took. This is a nice photo in the shop of one of the companies. You can see plans for different clothing pieces on the wall behind them and then they're featuring this little flag that was made. This is actually a screenshot from a kickstarter video I made of Todd, so a processed photo. Like I mentioned, he should be sharing more of those processed photos. I think they're really valuable, and I love the steam coming out of the iron. I grabbed this photo of Todd also. This is him cleaning up after his toddler which I think, again, it's nice to show the personal side, the personal life in between making things currently in his basement. Some other photos from companies that he looks up to. So, these are like models wearing clothes. So the photo was kind of funny. Other photos of other people working on their stuff. Again there's ironing. Cool vintage iron. Cutting patterns. We're going to get more pictures of him doing that. This is a screenshot from a video I took for him of one of his machines. It's beautiful machine. So, featuring some of that old timeless equipment that he uses on a daily basis is really nice. So I'm going to gather these things up and I'm going to add these to the brand book and describe the categories of things that we're going to show pictures of in the future as a guide for him. While I was at it, I also grabbed examples of voice. So, things that Todd is already seeing on social media. A lot of it is great. I really love the direction he's taking a lot of these things. Then I also grabbed a few things from those companies that he admires. Where I thought they were saying something really nice, I grabbed that. It mirrors what he's saying already but it just reinforces that for him. So, I think that's valuable, too, and I gathered some of those things. So this one is kind of profiling an artist friend of his named Adam who wears his shop apron. So it's an apron Todd made. He's been wearing it for a long time and then kind of talks about the history of this artist, what he does and it's cool. It's a nice little story sharing those stories about not only his artist friend but about the products that he makes. When you make a product that can last a long time, like Todd is doing, you have a story that goes with it. Another nicely lit photo. Welcome to Small Business Saturday. I really like this part. No deals, just fair goods at fair prices. Thanks for the support. A lot of times when you're hand making things, it hurts to give a sale, to give 30 percent off a pair of $150 jeans. So, a lot of times you'll see people that are hand making things not discount those things because they think it undervalues their process and undervalues these products they're making. I happen to agree, but I think calling that out is a powerful thing. Some more stuff by Todd, so he says, "Made by me in Grand Haven, Michigan." I love the made by me thing. It might not always be just him. So, I think, well he can. He should pull that out whenever he can. Another one from Todd, "Selvedge denim jeans made in Grand Haven, Michigan. One pair at a time, by one pair of hands." I love that, too. Just the one pair at a time, by one pair of hands. So, calling that out. Again, other stories about products, about them lasting a long time, about how durable they are, about how awesome they are. So, that's what I gathered as far as voice goes. Now, let's take these things and start putting them into a place or a platform where Todd can go back and reference them whenever he needs to, or if he needs to remind a new intern or a new employee or use these to refresh himself. Or if he wants to change directions, he can go back in and adjust things for himself. 7. Building Your Brand Book: For Tenden, I'm going to set up an Invision board. I like Invision because it's really easy to organize and drag things around. You can also use something like Pinterest, or even a Word document, or you can write it on paper and print things out and post them on the wall if you want, it doesn't really matter. So, first of all, I'm going to add those things from that one sheet that covers the brand quickly. I'm going to start with the brand positioning statement. I'm just going to copy and paste that in here. Now I'm going to add his values, and his personality traits, his audiences, and then just a little clip of the description of what he says. So, again, these are kind of a mashup of things that he had given me and I edited them down. We can always go back and edit these things further to further refine them, but this is just a starting point and when I'm done with it, I will share this with Todd. Next up, I'm going to put together the style guide or the visual guide. I want to start off by just outlining the types of photos and videos, the types of content he should be sharing. So, I think that includes showing details. I think this helps to show the quality and the durability of his products. Next up, I think process is really important, so showing him personally making things to reinforce the handcrafted part of it. Again, the quality of it, he needs to keep telling stories, he's doing a great job of that so far. So, not only his story but also the story of his products and how people are using them, and what those products look like five years later after someone's been using in their shop. There needs to be some examples of his studio, and of his workspace, so showing customers, showing the environment that he's in on a daily basis. And then a big part of his business is traveling and markets, so showing that journey, showing that experience. Then lastly, I think personal life, so showing that kind of interaction a lot of times where he's working is also where he's living. So, that's going to be a part of his story for as long as that's happening. Then, I'm including visuals that reinforce this idea. These are going to reflect directly the visuals that we're going to post along with them. So again, I took some of these from things he's currently saying, and then I took a couple from ideas I got from looking at those brands that he looks up to again. So, one at a time I think is a really important theme, buying one. So, as he put it on one of his posts, "One pair at a time, by one pair of hands." Handmade, so "Handmade by me in Grand Haven, Michigan," talking about process. The story of the process, the story of the machines, how he gets the machines, that journey, where the products go, again, how people use them, how long they last. Tell those stories that reinforces quality. Then, these examples including posts that he already has done before that I think worked really well, and then posts from brands that he admires, again, that really show the core of their business, what's important to them, and why they do what they do. Then lastly, after those visual examples and those voice examples, you can also add things if you want to get more technical and make it feel more like a complete style guide, you can add things like typefaces for Tenden. I use trade Gothic Bold Condensed, a slightly rounded version for his wordmark and for headlines occasionally, and then I use Courier New and then the colors are pretty much black and white and gold. So, that is what a full brand guide looks like for Tenden. Now this is good to go, we can go ahead and share this with him and get his feedback. 8. Finishing Up: Thanks a lot for following along today. I hope this has helped you think about how you can make your brand more consistent and help you start to outline the ways in which you can do that. I hope you have a nice, focused outline of what your brand really stands for, like your differentiation, what your focus is, what your voice sounds like, kind of a culmination of all the things I've talked about in previous classes. Then you started to think about what the visuals look like that go with that, what the voice sounds like to go with that. Then just put that all together in a PDF on a Pinterest board, in a notebook, on your wall, or make a giant vision board on your wall. Whatever you want you to help you remember these things and help you share these things with others, do that. Keep pushing that consistency and that authenticity and you'll keep building that trust with your customers and customers will keep coming back to you for that. So tell your story, educate people, entertain people. Build that trust. Keep it consistent. Thanks a lot.