Tips & Talk 30 – First Steps to Creating Your Brand

Hi there.

It's Sue.

And thanks for joining me for tips and talk day.

These are bite-sized topics that I pull from community questions and

things that I'm observing in the world of handmade small business.

If you'd like to submit a topic,

DME over on Instagram at gift biz unwrapped,.

My name is Holly,

and I'm doing a lot of serious thinking about turning a

hobby into a small business.

I know how important branding and presentation can be.

I am in process of getting a logo and I have

an idea of how I want things to look.

My question is,

should I try to create things myself,

stickers, business cards,

tags, or should I pay to have them pre printed?

I know that,

like I said,

presentation is everything,

but this could be an expense that I wouldn't necessarily need,

but I also don't want to add another to-do to my

already huge list.

I've recently discovered your podcasts and am trying to catch up

on several years worth of listening and a morning a lot,

but I haven't seen where a production of branding materials is

covered. Please let me know your thoughts on this.

Thank you,

Holly. Thank you so much for calling in with the question

you're brand new business,

lots of places where you could be putting your money what's

in your best interest in terms of the investment.

And clearly branding is one of them because branding is something

that gives the first impression.

So you want it to be on point,

but you want to balance that with all the other things

that you need to do as you're starting your business.

The first thing I just want to make mention of is

that branding is a whole lot more than the visual part,

right? So branding is everything that you do with your customer

that gives them a feeling and develops a reputation for your

business. It's how you interact with customers.

It's the journey that they go through from initially being introduced

to you,

to how you work them through some type of sales process,

to when they receive an order.

And then clearly also of course,

all the visuals and that's really what we're going to narrow

in on today is just the visual portion of your branding.

The good news is that when you're starting out,

you don't need to take a whole lot of time with

the visuals.

You just want to target in,

get a few things in place,

and then you can build on those later,

the things that you do want to lock into place,

right? When you get started your logo,

your brand colors,

and the font that you're going to use.

These three things are something that are going to be symbols,

that people,

when they see them,

they'll think of you and they'll recognize you.

It's important that they're consistent so that they go throughout everything

that you're doing.

And we'll talk about that again in a minute too first

off with regard to your colors and your fonts.

Holly, I do have a great episode for you on this

it's gift biz on wrapped podcast,

episode number two 18 with Lindsay,

from Verity and co,

it was such a fun podcast to do because I had

no idea when we started talking that we were going to

go so deep into how to develop all of your branding.

So go back and listen to that.

And what you'll come away with then are your three or

four hex colors.

These are six digit codes that associate a special hue of

any color.

So it's not just pink,

it's a specific shade of pink.

And then you'll also have a predominant font that you use

and then possibly a secondary font.

And these are more specialty fonts.

If you will,

versus some of the standard fonts like Helvetica or comic Sans,

you know,

all the different types of fonts that you've seen before.

If you're listening to this and you're an established business,

and you've never really determined what your two hex colors are.

You've always just used Navy blue or Aqua or teal,

but never zeroed into a specific color.

It's in your best interest to go ahead and do that

too. And then what happens is you'll be able to use

those forever more until such time you decide that you might

want to go through rebranding,

but of course,

that's then down the road.

Now let's move on to your logo.

And if you're just starting out,

the world is your oyster with what is the visual,

what's your logo going to look like to start with?

What's the emotion that your company is trying to evoke.

Okay? Cause this will then fall into helping direct you in

terms of what the illustration should look like,

whether you're going to use for color or whether you're going

to do a line drawing,

whatever it is.

So are you going after something that happy,

uplifting, light and airy,

or you going with something that's more bold and direct?

So what are the adjectives that you want people to think

about with your business?

This also might play off of the colors that you've created.

My colors are a yellow,

kind of a sagey green,

not bright orange,

but kind of a subtle orange and a pink,

but they're all,

not quite citrusy that provokes a whole different feeling than if

I had all bright yellow neon,

orange, neon pink.

You see what I mean by the colors?

So what are you trying to provoke and how does it

relate to the product that you offer?

So the first thing to do then,

like I said,

is to define the adjectives from there.

As you're looking at your logo,

then you consider graphically what you want your logo to look

like three different things that you can consider.

Maybe you have just an image.

You think of the Nike swish.

Maybe you have an image with the company name,

or maybe you just have the company name.

If your company name is two different words,

maybe you have one word in one font and one word

in another font,

things to think about as you're going through and thinking about

what your logo specifically is going to look like from a

graphic standpoint,

let's talk about if you're going to use a graphic.

So it's not just going to be the font because it's

just the font.

You don't need anybody to create an image for you,

but if there's a graphic associated,

how are you going to get that graphic made?

The one thing I will stress,

oh, it's my pet peeve.

I cannot barely handle it.

I see this happening,

please, please,

please do not just use standard clip art for your logo.

So don't take an emoji and call that your logo or

an image that we know is clip art or a stock

image, a four-color stock image and call that your logo.

I want you to make something that is graphically and specifically

only yours.

This is your company after all,

going back to the graphics of your clip art and how

do you create this?

Especially when you're on a limited budget.

I want you absolutely to create your own individual unique art

that is only yours.

Good news is there's a lot of ways that you can

do this sometimes even for free.

For example,

at the local high school,

is there a junior or a senior who's looking at going

to college is in the graphics art department and would be

interested in creating a logo for you that then in exchange,

you write a letter that they could attach to their college

applications, local community college.

Also, there are many students that would love to be the

one who's designed their logo so that you could possibly even

do for free.

If you're out networking or just ask friends,

does anybody know anybody who's artistic who would be able to

put together a logo for me,

you may even see again,

young students or maybe even members of the chamber who are

graphic artists.

And that would be more as a paid type of a

project. And then third,

you could even go online.

There's a company called Fiverr,

F I V E R R.

Okay. Fiverr,

where you can purchase what are called gigs,

where you could have a logo created for five,

10, maybe $15.

You know,

they give you a couple of examples.

You choose which ones you like.

Maybe they do one revision and then you have the logo,

no matter which way you might do this.

With my examples,

getting someone from the high school,

finding someone in your community to do it for you or

doing it on Fiverr.

Make sure when you're done,

you have some type of an agreement.

Even if it's just through an email that this is exclusively

yours and you own full rights to the logo,

then you have a logo that is yours,

that you can combine with the wording,

your company name,

however you're going to go.

And you can move forward with that.

Once you have your logo,

go into a graphic design app like Canva and play around

with your colors.

You've now created your hex colors.

So you could put like a black and white logo,

let's say over a background of one of your hex colors.

You can do some fun shading of colors.

Oh my gosh.

You can have so much fun with that.

And you can do all of that right?

In Canva.

If you'd like to see a link to all the resources

that I recommend,

especially if you're just starting your business,

jump over to gift biz on and go ahead and take

a look at all the resources that I have there.

Some of them are free.

Some of them are paid,

but different things that could be useful for you and your

business. Okay?

So now you've got your branded colors.

You've got one specialty font or two that you're going to

be using and associated with your business.

And you've got your logo created now,

where are you going to place these?

A lot of this depends on where you're going initially to

attract customers for handmade product businesses.

I specifically always am driving into you want that face to

face interaction.

So you want to be going out to craft shows if

that's possible for you.

And at those shows,

you'll want business cards,

some type of signage behind your booth.

So however,

you're going to do your booth set up.

You may or may not need stickers or any type of

other packaging where you need to apply your logo right now.

But if you're only online selling,

then you would need that.

So consider where you're going and how you're approaching your community

and delivering your product,

and then determine what you need now versus what you can

add on later.

But the fact is you have the logo,

you have the colors,

so you're ready to go.

I would just go ahead and get the things that you

need as a necessity right now.

The other place you'll put your logo is online.

So your websites and your social media platforms you have,

and that of course doesn't cost anything.

Just to add those on,

if you have a website already in place,

if you're just now setting up your social media site,

that doesn't cost anything to establish account.

And then you'll just load your logo in as a graphic

onto those platforms.

And I was just mentioning that as you're starting out,

you don't have to have all the things right away,

have the necessities first,

and then you can add on later.

But the one thing just like I say,

don't take stock photos or stock emojis or whatever,

and use those as your logos.

Also don't print business cards or anything like that off of

your home printer,

get them professionally printed so that they look nice.

You don't have to print a ton of them.

My gosh,

you can get like 250 business cards at Vista print for

under $20,

easy, inexpensive,

but good quality printing.

The most important thing here is you don't need to be

spending a ton of money on this type of thing.

I would much prefer you spending your money,

getting your product out in front of an audience and validating

that there are people there who are interested in exchanging money

for your product,

that when you're starting out is the most important thing to

do. I'm going to even say almost before even branding your

business, confirming that you have people who are interested in spending

money for the product that you make.

And I talk about this way more in my program,

start with confidence in terms of validating a product before you

start moving forward and investing too much time and money,

because sometimes you just need to tweak a product a little

bit for it to be a game changer and for people

to buy.

But you're not going to know that until you're out in

front of people watching and observing what they're doing,

talking with them,

getting feedback,

et cetera.

So that's the most important thing branding comes.

Second. There you go.

We've talked about how to define your colors,

how to pick a font,

and then also what you can do very inexpensively to make

your own original graphic.

And all of this is for the visual part of your

branding, understanding that that's a subset of branding overall.

So Holly,

great question done,

right? It's going to build strong recognition for you.

And when you come across as being professional,

it enhances trust with people,

which of course then increases your opportunity to attract more people

and make sales.

If you'd like to ask me a question,

just like Holly did.

So it's on audio.

Just go over to the website,

gift biz on rapt,

scroll down and you'll see a pink button that says record

a question for Sue.

It's a really fun way for me to hear your voice.

You can share a little bit more than just a written

question for me.

And your question might just show up here in the next

edition of tips and talk bye for now.

That's a wrap.

I'm a get to the point kind of girl.

And this is what you can expect from these quick midweek

sessions. Now it's your turn go out and fulfill that dream

of yours.

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