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Hi friends, this is Jules and welcome to the pool party.

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Recently this month we've been talking about effective branding and creating artwork for

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DIY artists, entrepreneurs, and folks who are just trying to put themselves out online.

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In the most recent episode, we talked about websites for sourcing inspiration.

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And if you haven't listened to that episode yet, go ahead and give it a listen.

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Ideally you know all the design and art websites now where you can find good inspiration that

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is highly curated.

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I mentioned three for collecting inspiration and making an online profile to collate your

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inspiration and resources.

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And this is especially important if you are someone who is building your own brand, trying

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to work with designers.

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You need to have your sources of inspiration online and easy to connect to.

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I mentioned three websites, Arena, Pinterest, and Behance.

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Now let's say that you use Pinterest.

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I use Pinterest.

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And now you want to create more succinct, collected mood boards that will help you drive your

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initial brand details.

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And I also talked about this in an earlier podcast on the tenets of creating a foundational

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brand that consists of succinct color, font, and image inspiration.

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Today on this podcast episode, we're going to talk about structuring a mood board to

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work with designers to build your own brand.

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And if you're a designer, this is also a really succinct process that I use to cultivate

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a new brand, whether that's for startups, corporations, or for my own personal projects.

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So this is going to be an audio workshop today, and we're going to use PowerPoint to create

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this mood board for your brand.

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Ideally, you already know what your brand values are.

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If you haven't listened to that episode yet, go ahead and give it a listen.

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We're just going to talk about structuring your mood board today and what it should consist

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of.

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So if you're ready, if you've listened to the other episodes, let's go ahead and dive

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in.

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To create your brand mood board, there are a few things you want to make it comprised

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of.

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And I'll go ahead and give you a few of the pages that you need.

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You're going to need a page for colors, fonts, and images.

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Eventually, you'll create a table of contents in an intro.

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There are three essential pages that we're actually going to put images onto for your

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mood boards.

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And those are the colors, fonts, and images pages.

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Each mood board should have a single page for colors, fonts, and images.

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And since we already talked about brand values, I want you to go ahead and find what your

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brand values are.

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You may have written them down already.

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Let's say, for example, that you are an artist and you're trying to create an artist's persona.

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What you value is creativity, community.

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And let's say that the other one is being different.

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Being different might have to be honed in on.

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And let's actually talk about how you're different.

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If you're a visual artist and you like to draw things by hand, you might want to have

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some sort of handmade component to your values.

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You can decide what your words are.

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But essentially, what you're going to want to do is write these values at the top of

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each of your pages for colors, fonts, and images.

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Let's talk about where to make your mood boards.

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So for this, we're talking about making a presentation.

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And you can use slides.

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I personally, as a designer, use InDesign.

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And I like InDesign because you can size all the images to fit nicely and lay out well.

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If you're not a designer, InDesign is definitely going to be a bit clunkier than what your

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needs are.

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So I would say open up slides or a PowerPoint.

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So now at this point, you should have three pages that consist of colors, fonts, and images.

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And then at the top of each page, you're going to have your brand values.

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This is important because we're going to start with each page now.

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And you want to reflect on what your brand values are.

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You want to have your name at the top.

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And we're going to spend about 15 minutes each mood board collecting images and putting

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them in to get a sense for what your brand is going to look like.

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So we're going to start with colors.

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And if you remember from the branding episode, you want to choose as few colors as possible

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to translate the message of your brand.

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So let's say if you're trying to go for something a bit more friendly and artistic, you like

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the colors blue and red.

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So for your mood board, you're going to want to choose six images that reflect these colors

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together.

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Now your images can be a variety of print products, websites, and color combinations

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in nature.

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But I would say think about where your colors are actually going to be used and what your

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first deliverable is going to be.

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I think a website might be a lot to think about when you're first starting out.

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A lot of the inspiration images you might find might actually be print products.

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And I think Designspiration is a great place to look for colors for your mood board.

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Designspiration is a website where you can go on and find a lot of print products, books,

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hats, canvas, tote bags, et cetera, that are nicely designed and take a look on there and

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then find your colors in action.

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There's even a great section of the website where you can put in the colors that you want.

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And from there, I want you to spend just 15 minutes selecting six images that represent

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your colors.

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From there, you're going to pop them into your mood board and there is your color mood

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board.

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Now it's important after you've put all of your images in to make sure that the images

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are not overlapping.

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We want to get a sense for the color of how the color looks.

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And I want you to ask yourself really genuinely if the colors have any variations, if they

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make sense to you, if you like them together.

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I think a lot of times we have ideas in our head that, you know, this is how it should

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look, but I need you to try to at least get the mood board to look how it looks in your

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head.

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And if you can't do that by just selecting six images, it means you're not being specific

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enough or your inspiration sources are not high quality enough.

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So you just want to choose six images.

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And if you're not getting the idea, if it's not reflecting your name and your brand values

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correctly just through six images, spend another 15 minutes on this mood board.

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Up next, we're going to move on to fonts.

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You can say on Design Inspiration, you can go on Behance, Pinterest.

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These are all inspiration what's mentioned in the Design Inspiration website podcast.

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And we're going to do the same thing with our fonts.

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Spend about 15 minutes looking at the type that you see on different assets and print

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materials.

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And I want you to try and be selective here.

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You don't want a wide barrage of different fonts.

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Selecting a lot of different types of fonts is something that you can do on your Pinterest,

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but for your mood board, for your brand, this is when you're wanting to select.

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When you choose six images now that represent very specifically the direction your brand

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is going to go and you want to choose just one type of font, whether that's a serif style

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or a non-serif, try to stay within the family of fonts.

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So if you know the name of the font that you're looking for, look that up and find examples

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of it used in the wild on sites like Design Inspiration or Behance.

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Again, we only want to spend 15 minutes on this.

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And then once that 15 minute timer is done, take a look at your mood board and be real

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with yourself.

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Did you accidentally include another font in your mood board that is outside of what

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you actually want to use?

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How is the spacing on the lettering?

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Is it tight?

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Is it wide?

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Is it narrow down what type of spacing you want to use?

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And again, you should be able to translate the idea and the vision just through six images.

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So if there's a lot of room for questions as you look at your fonts and it's not clear,

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like you could give that to a designer and it wouldn't be clear what direction you want

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to go in, spend another 15 minutes on this.

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Again, I know this seems like hard work, but what we're trying to do is get you to make

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decisions because it's going to save you and your designer time, whether you are the

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designer or you're working with a client or you are the client, you need to make decisions.

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And no matter how much money you spend working with a designer, no one is really going to

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be able to make these decisions for you because you need to be able to feel good about that.

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And if you need help understanding why and how to choose certain fonts, go ahead and

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listen to that big branding episode again.

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That's the first branding episode in this series.

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Moving on, we want to create a mood board for images.

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And for images, let's say this is really going to depend on what type of art you create,

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what kind of product you create.

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But the qualities I would focus on are, do you want illustrations?

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Do you want product photography?

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I would just choose one lane, choose a lane, and then choose six images to represent those

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types of images you want.

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And again, in the branding episode, I told you that if you choose photography, you could

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go for color or you could go for black and white.

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And there are a variety of websites where you can choose stock images, stock photography.

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And what you want to do is try to get a sense for at least harmony in these images.

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And again, we're just choosing six images here.

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So if it looks all over the place, if it looks like all of these images could come from different

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websites in a bad way, you need to refine your mood board.

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Again, we should just be spending 15 minutes on images and you can go back to it.

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But the whole point of this exercise is to spend 15 minutes on color, mood board, 15

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minutes on fonts, and 15 minutes on images.

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On each page, you should have six inspiration photos.

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You need to have your brand values at the top and your name.

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And from here, you've spent just about 45 minutes if you follow the prompt.

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And now you have three pages of a very succinct brand mood board for your colors, fonts, and

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images.

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If you go over time, that's okay.

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But the whole idea here is to try to get you to spend less time making these decisions.

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I would say finish your mood boards overall first and then go back to refine them.

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Try to spend only 15 minutes on each mood board at a time.

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And if you find that your images are just not really translating what you want, go back

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onto the inspiration websites and find better images because you don't need more in order

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to get your message across.

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You need, if anything, higher quality selection, more refined taste, and to make a decision.

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Sometimes people think that more is better, but it's not.

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It's just more noise and it becomes confusing and it makes you look amateur.

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All right.

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So that was a really quick exercise on how to develop your mood boards.

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And again, this is going to be the starter presentation to where you can include your

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logos, your colors, and then also your brand values.

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You want to collate all of the resources I discussed that you need for your brand within

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this presentation.

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And if anything, this is like your personal little journal where you're going to keep

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track of your changes over time.

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And I would say, you know, make a mood board presentation that you really like and love

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and then revisit it once every three months.

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Don't change it too much.

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But the whole point of this is to track your changes over time and to see how your style

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gets refined.

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Even if you only have 30 minutes to spend on this exercise, spend 10 minutes looking

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for color response and images.

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Set a timer, keep yourself accountable, but it'll get you closer to knowing what your

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branding is without having to involve another person, without having to hop on a call with

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the designer.

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And it'll be a big time saver for everyone involved later on once you start working with

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a larger team.

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If you want to take this exercise even further, you can do this exercise three times over

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three separate days.

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Let's say Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, you split up your branding exercise.

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You spend 30 minutes the first day, 30 minutes the next, and then 30 minutes on the last

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day.

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I recommend separating, creating your mood board over the course of a few days at times,

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because what it does is it helps your brain to rest.

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You move on, you take care of the other things that you need to do.

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And at the end of the day, you've spent time away to work on the process in the background

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in your subconscious.

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And I think that helps me as a designer, at least, to make the decisions.

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If you've done this exercise, then at this point, you could involve a designer and ask

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for help in whittling down your mood boards, or you can at least tell them what you want

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to create.

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And then through giving them your mood boards, we'll have a better sense of where to go.

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And then you can allow a professional person to help whittle down your decisions and it'll

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make your branding even stronger.

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All right.

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So that was our episode on doing a mood boarding workshop, and I want you to go through this

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episode, take it nice and slowly, pause during each section for colors, fonts, and images.

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And I just want you to start out with these three pages for mood boards when you're starting

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out.

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As you learn what you need to create, whether that's a website, you need a book cover, a

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resume, you can even create a mood board page for these specific examples.

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If you need t-shirts or let's say you're trying to create merch for your band, you can create

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a mood board for each of these assets as well.

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But overall, we just want to nail down colors, fonts, and images.

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That's all you really need for a good branding package at first.

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And then you can find examples of each asset that you want to create later.

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But before you try to create artwork and just slap it on all of these different items, find

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some good design out there and develop a good taste for what works.

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And then that way we can also reduce the amount of products and printed tote bags out there

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that get created that are just boring.

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And my hope is to see less boring assets and branding out in the world.

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I want to see stuff that actually speaks to people, actually speaks to your audience and

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reduces waste.

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We don't need more.

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We need higher quality if you get what I'm saying.

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So this has been the mood boarding episode of The Pool Party.

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My name is Jules.

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And if you need more help with your mood boards and your branding, go ahead and listen to

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the other episodes in this series.

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They'll definitely help you.

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And in the very least, if you need more help, you can go to my website.

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It's juliaspero.me.

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That's J-U-L-I-A-E-S-P-E-R-O.

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That's a period.

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Me.

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Juliaspero.me.

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Thank you for listening to this episode of The Pool Party.

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And I'll talk to you next time.