Brands that Breathe: full transcript

Keynote, approximately 45 minutes
For anyone building a business or brand, creative background or not.
Presented at Startup Sioux Falls as part of Startup Skill Workshop series.

When creating this presentation, Brands that Breathe, I was thinking about the last 20 years.

I originally was a fine art photographer. Then turned into a designer.Then became a business owner and a strategist. And realized some people in this room are going to be brand new to branding, and there's people that are going to be in the creative space, so how do you figure out the pain points clients have?

I'm going to take a step back and tell you a little bit about myself. So you have a little understanding, too, I started my business five years ago.

My key mission is to elevate businesses by visually enhancing their brand identity and online presence.

The branding challenge is it's in one of two ways:

1. I need a logo or website asap.
2. There's so many mediums out there. The industry is changing fast. Where do I begin?

You're either: Very focused on a one-off project, which, won't move your branding forward by one piece itself. It really is all of these different pieces and parts that orchestrate together and that's an evolution.

I'm going to walk through the process with you: First, rather than thinking externally, need a logo and what it looks like, let's take a step back and look inward.

Branding is the process of discovery of:

• Who you are
• What your values are
• How you think
• What makes you stand apart
• Who you serve, your target audience
• Clearly communicating your value.

Being really direct in what it is that you can do for them and how you can provide value to them. It's less about you and more about them, consistently in new and inventive ways.

Because the world are changing so fast and the way branding works, it’s about coming up with different ways that makes you stand out and be original. I'm going to show examples here of that in a little bit. And for people to understand what you can do for them—That’s being really clear with your messaging.

And then to think of you in the future. So it's about being consistent, because a lot of times when you're running a business, someone isn’t going to think of you right in that moment. But if you consistently share what you're doing and starting a story with them, that's where they will think of you in the future.

Here's a great example of Let's Eduhake: We launched her website a month ago. Her business, she is a one woman tutoring business, where she helps kids and kids with disabilities, learn in life skills, like going to the grocery store, with their math or their individualized education plan.

What we did with her was going through the branding process of the culture, while she's one person, she still has a culture. She’s very kind, she’s very punny, and that's how we came up with the name, Let’s Eduhake, because her last name is “Hake”man.

She was looking for different domains and wasn't having a whole lot of success. And she's like, "What if we do a new name?" That's a great way to start because you want to be consistent with your name across all of your different mediums. I'm going to talk a little bit about that later.

The culture, observing who she is as a person, what she likes, what she dislikes, and then visually taking that into account with her branding.

The strategy is distilling all the information that she gave, seeing the patterns, looking at what other people are doing in the same industry with tutoring and thinking of ways to make her stand out.

The creativity part of bringing in bright colors, different elements, shapes and fonts that feels both professional for parents, but then also very kid friendlyand overall approachable.

The marketing side is marketing to the parents and families.

And then advertising—say she did Facebook or Google ads— It's directing you back to that website.

This is where I was in the advertising industry for 5 years and didn't realize advertising and marketing were two completely separate departments. Even though they're connected, they are two different pieces, even design and creativity, they all intertwine. It’s understanding how each of those parts work together.

The last part is the human connection and it’s producing testimonials and results—this comes full circle visually through the branding process.

Let's say you're doing all of these things, but you're not getting the results you’re looking for. Here's one way to focus: Look at your branding, use really clear visuals, concise your messaging and be original. That goes back into the example of Let's EduHake and where we went with it.

When thinking about the eraser marks as the buttons, using plus signs and scribbles, it feels professional, yet kid friendly. Even taking into account the pencil tip and the pencil shaving type of mark.

On the tables is my business card and it's a coaster. That was on purpose because it's my conversation with someone over coffee. And it’s something you can take home with you - same goes with this eraser it’s a business card where on the back is the business information, but it's more of a tangible thing where you want to keep hold of it.

90% of business cards go straight into the trash because they are printed cheap where as if you made something functional people will remember you and it's a more of an original way of thinking.

Colors—Now, we’re going to dive into colors and the visual side of branding.

This is AfterMarkets, a post summary newsletter of the stock market. The stock market bell rings at 4 0'clock. It's a financial company and what was awesome about this logo is that you can figure out ways to incorporate the A, the M and the 4 o'clock symbol.

I could have went the route of dollar signs, the bear and bull, or using the color green, which is common in finance, but I wanted to make sure that they stood out. That's something to think about when you're thinking originally think about things that are a little less obvious and think through your branding a little bit more.

And, oh, I was suppose to talk about the colors! The color red is a sign of urgency.The psychology of red, even before we can talk, we associate red with fire, blood and passion. Red is a really bold color. Less companies use red and more companies use blue and green. I'll go into detail about that later. In this case, urgently, the bell rings at 4 o'clock. It makes sense and that the color red was used.

The color orange—I like to use as a pop of color versus it being flooded because orange is a strong, intense color. Orange means optimism, signifies change, think of autumn and leaves changing. There's some of those things that are in psychology and color.

Yellow mimics the sun, a color that is more optimistic as well. The Early Bird is a newsletter that launches at 7:00 and thinking about the early sunrise type of color.

Going into the blues and greens, We’re first going to talk about those colors and we'll talk about purple later. Green, means growth, leaves, and the finance industry. Blue is skies, water and it's calming. You see more logos in those two colors than any others in the color wheel.

Gray is also very calming and neutral. And you see a lot of logos in those colors.

Purple is for royalty and a unique kind of colorthat's used less.

Black, a luxurious and sophisticated kind of color.

Let's talk about fonts.

You can have a font that's energetic and sporty.

You can go more decorative and make it delicious.Going back to the colors, if you look in between the 1 pint you have the peppers and onions and thinking of colorful ways to visually show that simply when it comes to salsa.

You can have fonts where they are the main show. They're very punchy. They want you to have all this information in front of you.

Fonts can be mysterious, film noir-ish. It's really interesting how fonts can make a huge difference because if I use this font with the farm, it wouldn't have the same connection.

Going into another form of visual branding is shapes.

You can use certain shapes to call out certain parts of the design of a product: Go back to the bright orange and making it more eye catching or you can use an angular shape to bring your eye down the page as you're looking at a website. This is a more direct and straightforward way.

Now let's say we round the corners that makes more for a friendlier shape — so you have more of a direct client previously, and now this is more a friendlier client.

It's thinking about going through this page, looking at the fonts, showing a more professional headline, with a more of an easier to read body copy. The word, coach, is a friendly script font. The eraser is the little cherry on top.

Photography

Photography is taking into consideration, if you have lots of different photos and you don't have the same lighting there's not consistency across the board one easy way to do this is to add an opacity layer with your brand's colors.

It doesn't have to be super dark like this...it can be something more like this where the opacity layer is a tan color.

Going back to this is that you can create different visual dynamics where this is the background color, but it's also images.

Desty is a travel software company where they are thinking of your interests and you are picking your interests. What's nice is these images come from all the interests built into the software.You can see visually, all the interests, all at once, and then you can dive in and choose your interest one by one.

This page is more of a call-out to visually and quickly explaining what's going on without having to read the copy next to it or it can go side by side.

This is one of my favorite slides.

My husband, Doug, had animated this slide. He’s an animator. Before I show you this slide, I want to show you the way that our eyes take into consideration how we look at movement. I'm going to play this and I'm going to break it down piece by piece for you. I'm really excited for this part.

Here's a frame by frame:

Notice the color: Bright color, white color, dark color, light color, bright color...

Notice I'm not using white, white, white, blue, blue, blue because you visually like to have differences in contrast.

If you take it a step further, The first slide goes inward and the second goes outward. Third one's inward and outward. When you get to the truck, the movement goes down. MarketBeat goes up on the next slide. It goes in, out, up, down and zooms out.

It's about playing with different waves of motion and making it consistent.

Now let's talk about the basics of branding and starting with your company.

One recommendation for when people are starting a business or they've been in business a long time, is have your name, your social handles, your bio and tagline be consistent across the board.

When people are looking for you online, for example:
bewiredesigncompany for Facebook
wiredesigncompany on X
wiredesignco for TikTok

You're starting to muddy up the message of who you are—That's where being consistent with what you're saying is important.

Everything that I have is Wire Design Company. If you look online, that's what my social handle is as well. I chose to take a step further with the tagline:
Lead With A Vision.
Branding • Strategy • Design Solutions

Keeping it really short. On social media, it's about being concise and short.

Here's a few more examples of consistency across different social mediums: I recommend, even if you don't plan on using TikTok, create the social handle so someone else can’t come in and basically start becoming you. Having the ability to figure out what your social handle is going to be and do it across the board.

For example, if you have a common business name— wiredesignco was taken—One way to do this is by using little words in front of the name to emphasize and be consistent across the board for your business.

With my business, I came across the snag. If you count out the characters, it's 17 words. On Twitter, now X, there's a 15 character limit. How do you solve for that problem?

Because I am a one person business that works with subcontractors, SEO specialists and web developers, I wanted to brand myself. Because I couldn't use wiredesigncompany, I added my title and company name to the bio line so people can know where the tie to the business name is at.

Instagram tends to be more personal and relational type of social media. A lot of times brands put their brand logo on there, but because I'm showing my face so much on Instagram, felt like that was the right place to actually use my face versus the actual logo of the business.

So that gives you a more in depth look at the why behind the consistency and when it doesn't work in business branding.

Diving even deeper into the brand.

Let's go back to all the visuals: the fonts, the colors, the shapes and thinking about design...I'm going to show you all the consistency that's built in here.

The hexagon shape itself is a major component of the brand, because the hexagon is the most concise shape in the universe. A hexagon can't be divided down into smaller shapes like a square can or a circle. If you have circles all in a row, there's still spaces in between them.

What I found while doing this is it builds almost like a sense of community. And if you look at bees, they make honey efficiently out of hexagonal combs this way. I was thinking about being more clear and concise and using the hexagon to symbolize it in the shape.

The gray colors are more calming.

The font used is Antonio Bold and it's used throughout the site.

You have hexagons on the left, on the right and center. There's these hexagons that come forward here in a minute. All three hexagons emerge from behind the logo. The reason behind the 3 hexagon shapes is for the what, how and why, like Simon Sinek’s Start with Why book. Understanding your your brand from the inside out. That was a quick overview of consistency in branding.

Here's another client example: Marketbeat. Worked with them for over four and a half years.
When creating their brand, they already had the MarketBeat logo, but they wanted to update their colors, fonts, auditing their website and creating incremental changes over time.

What I noticed right away was the M mark is a line: “What can you do with the line?”
Thought about the visual patterns in financial graphs, I started to notice the shapes - of lines and dots - and thought these would be great elements to bring into the whole brand. If you look closely, the icons have lines and dots.

Also thinking about the colors and making them more of these jewel tones, rich tones, because these are individual financial investors. They're interested in money. And it's thinking about luxurious kind of colors and paring it with Prata, which is a lighter serif font. The pairing gives a luxurious feel. The icons along the lines of the dots. And you can see that throughout.

When we dove even deeper, into some of the landing pages, having visual call-outs of gradients, with purple and green in the corners to lead your eye further down the page, and to bring in their brand colors. The MarketBeat app and reinforcing the brand with the colors and fonts in the gray areas with the line and dot.

The top 3 e-books were created early on with this darker, more luxurious look. Recently, with the bottom 3, got more into this bright and bold and we introduced a new font.
That's where over time you are free to start moving in different direction.

It’s important to still keep your core branding visible.

Because the colors are still their brand colors you have the dot and the line graphics, speed marks, starbursts, and that actually goes to the starburst effect.This is another way of playing with that type of element.

And this was where MarketBeat, BronzeAge and I came together to create a design for the manhole covers in their space. This is the award that came after it. It was the same design.
I was thinking of a new way of even mediums that you never knew were possible previous to this. And again, reinforcing the brand’s colors and elements in new and exciting ways.

This is a piece where it's being more intentional about the folder structure.

When working with clients, I recommend having a short acronym for the client’s name, the number of the project and what the project is.

From there, creating a working file, that's where you put all your links in. Then a proof folder, what you're proofing out to people and then the final folder.

If somebody on marketing team needs to grab a final, they know exactly where to go. It's a lot more simple. It's a lot more easier to get there.
So then that goes into organization.

Going further into it because this is a common thing that a lot of us face when you open up a logo file or a logo folder. You have all these different logo folders, which one do I pick?

Yes, there's black, yes, there's print, yes, there's web. But how the heck do I know which one you pick?

I'm going to dive into how to use the right file format.
I discovered this by creating logo portals where you can visually see what logo you are going to download. But then you have this logo color dropdown right here, where then you can choose white or black in this case it's black already. It gives you an idea of these drop downs.

And then logo use, if you want to use it for print. Here's an example of how to quickly find a logo that is white and for print. It's really that simple.

When you are going through the folder structure, where do I go? This is such a great tool.

And the other benefit is you can download the whole project up in the right-hand corner, but then you want to share with a web developer or printer, you can go to Share Projectand it sends a link directly to them.

You can go into advanced filters. At this point, when you're new and just starting outthis is the direction that's most intuitive.

We are going to talk about functionality next.

Your branding, like Dakota CPA, needs three things.

They need to have a website header, which is a horizontal logo in most cases, and then small applications like social media or embroidery. Having a clear and easily defined mark or icon. That's where creating logo variations come into play.

And it's because the designer is thinking 3 to 6 steps ahead, how do you think about all the possible applications that could be used by this client? Taking it one step further you want to have a black logo and a white logo, making sure these types of marks work in those applications too.

This goes back to the file structure and organization. Now, we pick a digital logo.
For example: You don't have the logo portal and you only have this folder to work with. You choose a horizontal, full color logo for digital use. But here you got all these different types of file formats—What do these mean?

I am going to visually show you how this works.

This is an an illustrator file. It's called dot AI. It's not artificial intelligence, which makes it confusing.I'm going to show you the difference between .ai and the one on the right hand side is a .jpeg.

The reason why these two are so different:
This is a scalable image on the left.
On the right, it is not scalable.

Let's say you are a sponsor for a golf tournament and you send the .ai file to a designer. They can change the colors and do all of those things.

With a .jpeg, what happens is if you get too big, the logo starts getting pixelated. If you’ve ever had a pixelated photo on your website or your print materials you're using a .jpeg or a .png.

Here’s the difference between the two and I'm going to dive deeper into this:
.ai is the best type of file format for logos and animations.
.pdf is a great second option, but there's an asterisk*—I'll get to that in a minute—where the logos and animations are more for Adobe Illustrator, InDesign and 3D software is where it is used.

.jpeg and .pngs are raster they are not scalable without losing quality. You can scale them up, but it's based on pixels, where vector is actual calculations.

That's kind of where you have your photos, presentations and email graphics, these are fixed sizes. That's Canva, Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Adobe Photoshop.

My first logo that I ever did in college was in Photoshop, and my teacher said, "No, you need to do it in illustrator and this is why..."

When to send a designer a logo file, the best option in most cases will be a .pdf and this is because with an .ai file you have to have Adobe Software or a special design program to open it.
If you don't have that kind of software. The PDF is going to be your second best.

The reason why there’s been an asterisk behind .pdfs this whole time is if you embed a .jpeg into .pdf it’s basically catfishing. It's a box inside of the .pdf and it's a designer’s worst nightmare.

There are tools out there to vectorize your raster images, and there's a lot of AI software systems that are starting to do this. I recommend playing with them, but they are still quite rudimentary. There's still a lot of fine tuning. If you're planning on using a vector tool, you will want a designer to finesse the logo.

I'm going to jump into intellectual property.
I'm not a lawyer, and I have a legal disclaimer down below: Please seek advice from a licensed attorney in your own state or country.

When you are thinking about trademarking a logo hire a trademark attorney.

If you want to familiarize yourself even more, go to the USPTO.gov website. This is where the trademark application happens. You can watch videos and learn about the process in their website.

I highly recommend updating your terms and conditions on your website, and have an attorney write that, especially if you are a e-commerce or SaaS business, software as a service, it’s really important to have your terms and conditions and privacy on your website.

That’s a little bit about intellectual property.

Now, let’s talk about AI generated images.

An AI generated image is not trademark-able by itself. If you Google this and ask:
"I created my logo with AI, is it trademark-able?" It’s not eligible for copyright.

If you are able to change altered the logo by human hand—For example, the image on the left, was a AI prompt where I wrote:
"Insulated blue mug, fall running trail in the background."

That's what came up.

Now, if that was an AI-generated logo and I used it as-is and put it on all of my marketing materials, somebody else could come in and use that same logo. We can't do anything about it.
You got all this brand recognition around your business, but now it's kind of like, well, now what?
These are potential pitfalls I want you to know, especially when generating content into AI.

When it's altered by human—and this is still in a lot of gray area of how much and how little you can change—the image to the right could be eligible because I took a stock photo that I paid for of the smoke, added lighting effects, all of the leaves were stock photos purchased.

They are on both sides of the image. I created that shape, but the biggest component here is I did take the buffalo head and I superimposed it onto the mug. Now that becomes a more human-made piece and could be eligible. That’s where it gets gray.

I wanted to give you an overview of branding from a visual standpoint,from a messaging standpoint, and then looking into the future and seeing what that holds.

I'm really excited to see where you'll go with your branding.

I'm going to open it up for questions.

First, can we give Kristi a round of applause for sharing.

I have a couple questions, but I will wait on those: Does anybody in the audience have a question?

Kyle. Hi Kyle!

With that logo portal, was that a proprietary thing? or is that a third party tool? What was that? I think we need that tool.

It is something that I had created with The Logo Package.com it requires a lot of understanding design software and being able to use design software to use it. If you go to logopackage.com you can follow the tutorials and do it yourself, but it does require certain criteria.

I think this is a question for someone who's had a business for a while:
In your experience, when should someone rebrand and Why? Sometimes you feel you're getting stagnant or maybe your business is shifting. I was wondering, what you would say your time to rebrand is good and how often?

Yes, that’s a great question. The way I approach branding is to be continuously improving. Little things here and there. Make small steps because the industry changes so fast. Focusing on small steps and the end goal.

But when you are thinking about a full rebrand, there are certain situations where you want to rebrand:

• If you're engaging with a new kind of audience
• Struggling to understanding your audience
• Wanting to promote your new services or if you're releasing a new product

That's something to be considered—when there's a shift or a change in the direction that you are going with your business. It's a good time to consider rebranding, and sometimes, it's more about connecting the smaller pieces. It's not necessarily "we need to change everything now" mindset.

Let’s take a step back. Let's look at your business as a whole and see what you really need versus trying to do all the things. Branding becomes super overwhelming when trying to do all the things all at once.

Kind of a related question: How about business owners who are just getting started, I'm not quite ready to go full-on branding, but I need a few of the basics. What are the things you'd recommend that they focus on when they're maybe not quite to the point of...In my case, for example, I'm starting a small business on the side, it's overwhelming to think about doing all the things at once. What do I start with?

I would start with going back to organization and structure of your business name and being consistent across the board with your:

• Messaging — that’s taking all of the social media accounts and putting that in there.
• Get your url in the same name too. Your business name dot com.
• Get on Google Business. It’s free and easy to do. If you have customers who could give you reviews, ask them to write you a review, it's free.It helps build awareness and boosts your online presence.

When you're starting your business, really focus on your customer.

Get the foundation down, your business name, who you serve, what you can do for them before you even start thinking about branding.

Because if the culture is struggling and you have people leaving, a job recruitment marketing campaign isn't going to save your business. It's figuring out the culture and the looking inward of who you are, who you serve, and what your value is to your audience.

I love that advice because if you're focused on your customer before you think about branding, it helps you know where you are. Kind of like the Let’s Eduhake example. It can be too, an inward reflection on: Who am I serving? Before even talking to you about creating my brand.

Any other questions?

I don't know much about t graphic design, but we've always used .svg files — why is an .svg your third tier preferred file format?

.svgs are usually used in web. Some people need things for print and .svg is not a file format for print, but it’s scalable. So if you want to have a logo, that's the third option. Svgs are most often found when you're working with software companies and more website-based clients. So this is more of a generalized approach if you're working in all mediums: print, digital, screen—That’s your guide overall.

.svg is a good file, especially for web applications.

Do you recommend mixing short marketing videos into your branding messaging?

I do. It helps people understand what you're doing. Very concise, under 30 seconds, 60 seconds max. I’m actually doing this right now with my brand—I'm creating YouTube Shorts. You can do it in LinkedIn, you can do it in Facebook, you can do it on X and on Instagram.It helps seeing your face because people want to connect with people. And that's important to think about looking forward is gettingyou in front of the camera as much as you can.

Kristi, does it matter how’s the fidelity of that video? I know sometimes people are worried about really highly produced videos when they're posting on social media. But sometimes I've heard people connect to actually with a more raw on your phone.

You can play with both of those and see what happens. I know people personally who have over 100,000 followers on certain social media platforms, and they still get most of their business from the relationships they build offline, not directly from social media.

Now, if you're doing e-commerce, it's a little bit different because you're selling products.

But at the end of the day, it’s to build awareness of your brand and develop relationships socially. The social platforms are made for social.It's not necessarily about selling on social media sites, but to share stories, show processes and being able to connectwith another person— that's where social becomes really successful. Great question.

Any other questions?

I had no clue who you were prior to signing up for this workshop. I don't know if I went on the Startup Sioux Falls website, where I actually saw your first image and your first image that I saw was you upside down. If you want me to be completely honest, I clicked on your image like ten times. Did they get this wrong? Why is it this way? Does she know it’s wrong?

That’s the whole thing. That's my question. What made you do that?
Because to me, I was like, and then I saw it up here and she’s doing it on purpose...
That’s brilliant! But what made you do that?

I get this question lot.
In 2016, I wanted to do something that evokes joy, because I’m a joyful person. I'm doing it to have fun. It's not necessarily sell you something. Doing something different and creative takes a lot of guts.

And I think people need to embrace their originality and go out there with their talents in ways like: "What if I do turn my photo upside down?"
Then it becomes this conversation starter between us of "Why did you do it?"
And that's the reason why...and then you clicked on it 10 times.

And then I get five emails here: "Hey, Kristi’s photo is upside down." No, she’s just cool and interesting. It’s unique. It’s upside down on purpose.

I can turn in right side up.

No, I love it. It's who you are.

Any other questions?

Can you all help me thank Kristi one more time?

Thank you.