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Hello, it's Jules. Welcome to the pool party. If you didn't know this, I am a brand designer

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and I've been seeing a ton of horrible brand design out there these days. There's a lot

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of images generated with AI and I just think to myself, gosh, if we didn't lay off all

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the designers and art directors, things would look a lot better because there definitely

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are rules to design. It's not just creativity and doing what your heart desires. So I'm

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going to help you out because I actually do believe that people should be using the tools

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available to support the brand, tell stories and basically share their talents and mission

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with people. Whether you're an artist, you want to create a cool logo or you're an author

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and you're thinking about making a book cover that matches your website. Branding is important

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because it's what makes you recognizable across all platforms. Let's say you're looking for

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a job and you're on LinkedIn, you have a website as a writer and you're trying to pick a font.

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These are all very simple branding things that you could decide ahead of time in order

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to make your work look simple, get to the point, tell a story and be more recognizable.

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The key point here is not to overcomplicate it, but there are several facets I want to

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mention today, including fonts, colors, images, icons, and creating a mood board that will

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be helpful in guiding you with your branding journey. So welcome to this special edition

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of the pool party. This is how you can create good branding, stop overcomplicating it and

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take back your brand story. If you ever work with a designer too, these are good for you

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to plan out in advance. Side note, I see many people work with designers and they fill out

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these questionnaires about what their brand represents and they're too wordy. They're

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trying to accomplish way too many things all at once. And so we're going to make this really

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simple. Again, we're going to talk about fonts, colors, images, icons, and creating a mood

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board. This is aimed for the people out there who are not designers. I will talk about some

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technical terminology, but let's go ahead and get into what good branding is. Again,

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we wanted to talk about keeping branding simple and having it tell a story about who you are,

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what you're offering. It's important to have a very clear pitch, at least one to three

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sentences of what you do. Go ahead and write this down just as an exercise. It doesn't have to be

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perfect, but let's say you're a fitness instructor. If you work online and you film videos, write that

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down. If you work in person, write that down. If you have a niche for only doing fitness classes

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in nature, write that down. These are all important facets of your brand and they're going to determine

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the look and feel of the direction you go. It'll make you unique and help you stand out. But again,

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we want to keep this simple. So let's talk about some of these facets of branding. So choosing

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fonts. What is a font? A font is a style of type or letters. How would I describe a font to a five

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year old? So when you open up a document on your computer, let's say like a word document, or you

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see any words on a book, whatever the style is of the words, that's going to be your font. I'm sure

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a lot of us are familiar with the font Comic Sans. A lot of times Comic Sans is used in preschools

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and with kids or when you're joking and it has that effect of being comical because it's friendly

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and it's round. So there's a friendly quality to it. We're going to go a little bit more technical

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now. We've graduated kindergarten and we want to talk about two different types of fonts. If you've

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ever wanted to know the difference between a serif and a non serif font, this is a super easy way for

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you to decide which font to choose. Now let's start with our serifs. Little history lesson.

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Serifs are essentially the lines that you see at the end of a line. So let's take the letter I,

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for example, capital I. Sometimes I is just a straight up and down line. But when you have

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a horizontal line on the bottom and the top that makes it look like a sideways H, that is a serif.

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And the whole reason why we had serifs to begin with is because type used to be handmade with blocks.

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Type setting used to be carved out and then made into metal blocks that were actually put into a

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printing press. And that is how we had our first printed books. One of the first printed works was

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the Gutenberg Bible. We're going back way, way back now. And you'll notice a lot of old fonts,

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a lot of classic fonts have these serifs because they were physically needed in order to put the

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letters into a physical printer. We don't need that these days. And then so we developed non-serif

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texts. Non-serif text is everything else that does not include the lines at the end of each letter.

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Actually considered a lot more modern. The reason is because serifs are not necessary for typing on

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the computer. We decided that it was important to actually make design way more simple. The lines at

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the end of letters were considered to be way too much and complicated for the eye. And over the

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20th century that anything that was unnecessary or not needed, you would just take that out.

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Think about the letter C, for example, you're not just going to put a line at the end of each

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point of the C and you don't need it. Let's make this even simpler. Is it a brand modern? Is it in

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the technology space? Do you consider yourself something that is relatively new as a service?

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Are you trying to innovate? You might want to use a non-serif font. Some non-serif fonts that are out

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there are Arial, Helvetica, Poppins, Helvetica Nu. Your serif fonts, again, these are the classic

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ones created for type presses. They're going to be the more classic fonts and that's things like

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Georgia, Garment, Roboto Mono, Warrior Nu. Notice how these are the ones that remind you of your

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typewriters and print books. If you have any work to do that is classical literary, if you have a

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very classical brand and you like that older feeling, you want to go for a serif font. It's

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that simple. All right. Okay. So we talked a little bit about fonts, the different types, serif,

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non-serif, and I made the choice really easy for you. You're going to choose your font based upon

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if you're modern. So if you're modern, choose a non-serif. That's the font with no lines at the

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end. If you're more classic, you're going to choose a serif font. That's the font with the

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lines at the end, like Times New Roman. Think like New York Times. Okay. Next thing, when you're

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considering your branding package, you only want to use two types of fonts. And there are a few

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things you can change. You can change the spacing between the letters, that's your tracking. You can

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change the kerning. This might be getting a little bit too technical, but we're basically talking

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about the spacing between your letters. And you can play with this easily on Canva. Write down the

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word dog, make it wider, make it more crowded, and just see how that changes the way your font looks.

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Some people like more space in between each letter, but consider the story that the spaces between

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your letters is telling. If it's more crowded and tight, maybe that's because you want to create a

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feeling of coziness. If it's more spaced out, maybe your brand has something to do with airiness and

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creating space. Maybe you're a yoga teacher. You definitely want a little bit of space in between

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your letters then. And that's another way to change up a font without choosing a million different

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fonts. I promise you, you only need one to two. If you have more than that, it's going to look

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amateur. And I know that you have decision paralysis, but choose one to two fonts. And if you want to be

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a baller, just choose one. Let's say you like a really cool funky font. That's what I'm going to

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tell you to choose to. Your funky font is going to be one, and then you're going to choose a very

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simple font for your second one. Make it so simple. And the reason is you don't want to write your

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paragraphs with funky fonts. It just doesn't work. It looks bad and no one can read it. Okay, great.

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All right. We talked about fonts. Let's go on to colors. Again, we want to keep it simple. I'm

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going to force you to choose three colors. And we're going to use all of our senses now to think

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about what these colors represent. And we're going to use adjectives, words that describe things like

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strong, dark, vibrant, maybe subtle. I need you to choose which category your brand or your product

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fits in. And we're going to choose colors that match this. Pick three and make sure the colors

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look good together. You're going to want at least one color that you use on everything. Be mindful

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of how much you use this color. Keep it simple. If you need help, choose black, white, and then an

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accent color. Maybe that accent color is pink because you're Barbie. That works if you're Barbie.

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But let's say, for example, that you are a hot sauce brand that is made with orange peppers. It

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might make more sense for you to use the color orange. So pick your color even based off of if

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your product has a certain color. Just make it simple. Again, if you want to be even more elite

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with your branding, just choose one color. In the three color palette, I told you to choose white,

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black, and an accent. Typically, I would even say just choose one color. And then white and black is

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a given. But if you want to play around with more color, just make sure these colors look good

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together. But you're generally going to need white and black anyways. And run it by some of your

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friends who are visually inclined and play around with even writing the name of the product in white

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or black on this color and see how it makes you feel. See if that is something you want to stick

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with. And that will develop your color choice. All right. Next up, we're talking about images.

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Now images, unless you're a photographer, we don't have to get super detailed into the types

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of images, but there are a few things to consider. One thing that I think about a lot as a graphic

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designer and a brand designer is if my photos I'm going to include are going to be in color or in

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black and white. Sometimes when I work with nonprofits, it's a lot easier to make the colors

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of these photos black and white because it gives a sense for people, but it takes out a lot of the

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noise. And I'm generally not trying to put a lot of focus on photos, but it does a really great job

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of unifying the imagery. If I make the images black and white, you can do this with any filter, but

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I would highly suggest not really using filters if you're not good with color grading your photos.

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And you can be honest with yourself or ask someone because sometimes images just look way better

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without filters on them or just in black and white. So keep it simple again. Have your two options,

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color or black and white, and then leave everything else, saturation, brightness,

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alone unless you are a professional and you know what you're doing. Okay. So let's talk about high

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quality imagery. You don't need to have studio shot photos these days. You can even take your

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own photos with just your phone. Make sure that you wipe the lens though, because I will tell you

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the amount of times that I get images that people shot on their iPhone. And then once you upload it

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onto Squarespace, if there's just like a little bit of oil on your lens, you can see a light halo.

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It looks grainy. It doesn't look good. And then in that case, if you don't have your own photography,

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use a website like Pexels, that's P-E-X-E-L-S or Unsplash. This is free photography you can use.

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That's professional. You can search up images. So you can find images from things like people

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working out at the gym or a sauna or water bottles that you could put your logo on, things like that.

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And then this will help create the imagery for your brand. Keep it simple though. Make sure to

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look at all your photos together and you want to make sure that they look like the lighting is a

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little bit the same. So again, that kind of goes back to that whole color or black and white topic.

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Sometimes it's easier to make all the photos look better together if it's black and white,

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but consider what your brand is. So yeah, just choose a few photos. And if you need to use any

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photography, choose some high quality, free to facial photography from Pexels or Unsplash.

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And if you have your own photography to include, just make sure that you took some care to wipe

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the lens before you shot the photo. Otherwise, I'm going to tell you to shoot again. All right.

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This fourth one, icons. Not everyone needs icons, but let's say that you're making a website and

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your brand, your company is a burger company. You want to have a cute little burger icon.

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You want to have a menu icon and maybe a ketchup bottle. I'm going to recommend the Noun Project.

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This is a website where you can go and get icons. I need you to only choose icons with the same line

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thickness. Do not choose three different icons that have different line thickness because they

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look like they're made by different people. You can tell that they are and they just don't make

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sense. Try to get icons that are made by the same person in a pack. And again, if you go to the Noun

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Project, these ones are going to be free. You can even find paid ones on sites like Creative Market

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where you can download and pay for them. You could search them up on Pinterest, but just make sure

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that your icons are uniform. And if you need new icons in the future, you can edit the icons. Take

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the icon and put it in Illustrator and change the thickness, but be real. Look at the icons and ask

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yourself, do they look like they belong together? Because if they don't, a bullet point is better

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at that point than a bunch of icons that look mismatched. All right, last one. We're going to

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talk about creating a mood board. Now that we've talked about font, color, images, icons, I want

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you to create a mood board. And you can create this mood board using anything. You can open up

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slides, PowerPoints, just start collecting images online, take screenshots of logos you like, of

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websites you like, and then add them to your mood board. This is what I want you to do though. Be

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real with yourself. Make decisions. Don't include fonts that are serif and non-serif. Make a choice.

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Make your decisions. I gave you the options for font. It's choose a serif or non-serif. For colors,

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it's pick three colors, then one, and then white and black, and then with images, black and white

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or not. And then you could even go on sites like Pexels, Unsplash, and the Noun Project to take a

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look at the icons and the photos and collect some imagery that you think you would want to use. If

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you don't make these decisions, someone else is going to make them for you. And what you're doing

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is you're basically paying a designer to make the choice for you because you can't. And that's not a

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great place to start with your brand. I know that a lot of times we think that designers, it's easier

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to hire a designer because they're making the decision for you, but it's actually better if you

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have some insight into what you want and why, because it's going to make it more likely that you stick

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to your brand. It is super annoying when people hire a brand designer and get a brand package done

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and then they don't stick to it. It defeats the whole purpose of branding and it makes your brand

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look messy. It makes you look unprofessional. So create a mood board. And in this mood board,

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if there are multiple decisions you like, create multiple mood boards. But at the end of the day,

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you're the one who needs to make a decision. And when you make a decision and you choose a route

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that's going to make it a lot easier for you to basically, you just created your brand packaging

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right there for free and you can evolve on this over time. But branding isn't the most important

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thing in whether or not your product or business, your service succeeds. It's just a thing that

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helps you feel confident and put yourself out there. It's what makes you recognizable. And that's

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what you need to do when you're trying to promote yourself. So don't get caught up on things like

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branding and indecision. Just make your decisions and create a mood board. You could even use things

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like Pinterest and search it up. There are templates even on Canva for developing branding assets

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and you can fill it in right there. I encourage you though, don't try to do way too much with

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your branding. The strongest branding is actually really simple. It's very direct and because it is

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so simple and resolute, it's easier to expand upon. It's easier to give to a designer. It's easier to

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get right. The more you complicate your branding, the harder it's going to be to work with other

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people and there's no one else to blame for that but you. Okay? All right. A little bit of tough

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love today on the branding sector, but this has been how to create good branding. Stop over

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complicating your branding. I beg you. I'm giving you free advice as a designer. And again, there

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are a lot of tools out there these days. We didn't even talk about AI art today. I just gave you some

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really foundational ways of making your branding look better. And I really hope that you follow

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these as you make your resume, you create your LinkedIn, you make your first Squarespace website.

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And if you need more help with branding, if you already did this exercise and you're like,

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Jules, please help me. I'm lost. You can go ahead and look up my website. It is juliaaspero.me,

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J-U-L-I-A-E-S-P-E-R-O dot, that's a period, M-E, and contact me on my website. Take a look at the

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branding projects there to get some inspiration and I would love to help you with your brand.

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This has been the pool party and if you like this episode, give it five stars. Follow this on Spotify

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and we're going to continue with this series because I'm tired of seeing shitty stuff online.

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I don't care if you made it for free or if AI made it. Make some decisions. Don't let the computer

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make them for you. Have a backbone. And that's been my sub box rant for today. Thank you and goodbye.