Hey mom, look at what i made! 🎨

* Deep Exhale *

We’ve covered a lot of big deep topics the last few weeks on foundations, so here’s a week that’s literally playing with colors and shapes.

Fingerpainting, if you will.

But you’ll know exactly what it is you create when we’re done and why, unlike your kiddos works of art greeted with a pained grin and hesitant “And what is this supposed to be…?”

This week is the last week of the Marketing Foundations series,
Where we’re going through the 6 foundations that you need for all of your marketing to work well.

This week is Foundation 6/6: Brand Kits

A Brand Kit is, in short, a repository for your brand assets, colors, and things that make your marketing tick.

A manual, a library, a -

(okay, i’ll step away from the thesaurus now).

There’s reams that have been written on how to create a visual brand.

And while i started out in brand design and am better-than-average, i am not the visual brand maestra that say, Sarah Hart is in your feed or Ben Scheckenback is in products.

If you aren’t, here’s my 3 step process to build a standout visual brand that will serve you until you are.

1. Choose “your” color and create it in 3-5 shades 

This is your main color (orange, pink, teal) that feels like “you”. Don’t overthink it.

Purple is my childhood favorite color. My co, my favorite color, simple as that. 💜 

If you’re not a designer, your other colors should be Black (#000000) and White (#ffffff).

Just don’t choose Royal Blue.

Nobody needs another “professional blue” branded SaaS i beg you.

2. Choose two fonts that you can see yourself using for years

Here’s a no-fail guide to choosing a header (titles, often logo, etc) and body (reading text) font. 

This PDF was previously free, but is now $39.

I’d say that’s pretty cheap to have a font combo that doesn’t induce a grimace.

(I had analysis paralysis so i used Logology to help me find what is now the INM font many moons ago. I’m now in the process of choosing a better one 4 years later. 🙂)

3. Book a 1-hr shoot with a great photographer for photos that match the ✨ vibe ✨ 

Take photos in 1-3 outfits you love that have “your” color in it and be yourself.

Exhibit A: Tamara Ceman just did hers and…look at them!!

Here’s 11 of my favorite poses that work really well for social in lots of contexts:

1. waving

2. surprised

3. delighted

4. angry

5. confused

6. jumping for joy

7. horrified

8. carrying something heavy

9. unapolagetic grin

10. deep work on laptop

11. drinking coffee from a cute (or funny) mug

12. sheepishly eating a dessert

If you have a team, have them go through this shot list too!

Yes, this works for “boring” industries or teammates that are camera-averse.

Exhibit B: I did the website (and ✨ Misty ✨ did the photos) for my local mechanic and they came out joyous and trustworthy just like them:

(if you’re in the DMV area, i can’t recommend Misty Saves the Day enough, she’s the reason my bounce comes through in photos!)

But whether you have a gorgeous brand, a basic beginner skin, or something in between..

Your brand needs to be organized and consistent.

Because an inconsistent brand subconsciously says “i can’t be trusted”.

Which is why a brand kit is a marketing foundation.

A full brand kit has both:

• visual brand: the way you look (logos, fonts, design elements)

• brand personality: the way you sound and feel (tone of voice, perspective, personality) sometimes also called a Copywriting Guide depending on how in depth you get on the way your write

Next week we’ll cover brand personality, which is the reason that 5 brands can have the same shade of blue but be wildly different to interact with.

There are a lot of templates and generators for brand kits.

• Canva Pro has one (and that’s the one we use at INM most often)

• Coolors can be used for this too (their “Save Palette” feature has lots of great goodies!)

• Hubspot has one (ofc they do)

But like so much in life, access is everything.

Choose a way to store your brand colors, your font files, and those fun headshots that is :

1. Easy to access

2. Intuitive to use

3. Can be built into your SOP’s (aka you can add it to magic color scheme for Canva Designs)

Or it will collect virtual dust.

And your designs will still retain a crayons-melted-in-the-backseat quality 🖍️ (there’s a crayon emoji?)

Now what does that mean for all those other foundations we just covered since January?

I’m glad you asked! Here’s how branding that works transforms everything else you do.

Visual branding - the colors etc - applies mainly to emails and the website.

Brand personality - that applies to ALL the foundations. (stay tuned for more here!)

We’re taking the next two weeks off for our Agency-wide Spring Break 🏖️ 🌙 .

Then we’re coming back with two issues that cover

1. How to create your brand personality

2. How to use and scale it as you grow

AKA how to create a brand that feels like a real authentic human - and still feels true to you as a founder.

At the end, it will be super clear how the visuals + messaging flow together to create a brand that’s Impossible to Ignore. ✨

I’ll see you in your inbox in April. Cheers!

Sophia ⚡👩🏽‍💻 with help from Aelia 🪄🧕🏽

Powered by that new thrifted clothes feeling 🛍️ and the joy of some arts and crafts 🎨