189 – Colors, Fonts and Graphics. How to Create Your Visual Brand with Sal Frances

You're listening to gift biz unwrapped episode 189 about what people

fell. It's about what people think and also what people remember

the brand Attention gifters,

bakers, crafters and makers pursuing your dream can be fun whether

you have an established business or looking to start one now

you are in the right place.

This is gift to biz on rapt helping you turn your

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Join us for an episode packed full of invaluable guidance,

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Here is your host gift biz gal Sue Mon Heights.

Hi there,

it's Sue and Thrilled that you're joining me here today.

Right off the bat I need to say if you are

not already part of the gift biz breeze Facebook group,

Oh my gosh,

what are you waiting for?

We have something super special happening right now in that group

for the holidays for you and I want you to be

a part of it,

to get all the details and to know what I'm talking

about. However you need to go over and join the breeze.

Joining is super easy.

Just go on to Facebook,

search for gift biz breeze and asked to join with it

being the holiday season and all.

I also have another thing to share.

I want to make sure you know about my newly released

free masterclass.

It's called how to turn your hobby into a business.

How do you know if this is for you?

Well, if you're starting a business right now,

you've gotten that dream but you're just not sure what steps

you should be taking.

This masterclass is for you if you're already in business,

but something just isn't clicking,

it's not bringing in the sales or it's just not performing

the way you think it should.

This masterclass is also for you to check it out.

Just go over to gift biz,

unwrapped.com forward slash masterclass I look forward to seeing you over

there and for now let's get into the show Today.

It is my pleasure to introduce you to Sal Coombs.

Sail is a branding and social media content specialist.

Wait, let me back that up.

Sal is my branding and social media content specialist.

I've told her before that I want to keep her all

to myself,

but that's not nice,

nor would that serve all of you.

Plus you've asked for direction in this area,

so I'm bringing you the best.

Salle doesn't call herself a graphic designer though because branding is

Oh so much more.

sell digital products,

so eBooks and courses.

Well, never thought she'd be designing brands and social media graphics

for clients.

This came about completely unintentionally simply by sharing her work with

her coaching group.

To her surprise,

everyone said,

I want that.

Can you do that for me?

Sail found her place in the social media space organically by

learning what she's best at and what people need.

Today. Sale has a content batching service and does custom brand

work for clients,

which is what she's doing for me.

In fact,

she's the genius behind the branding of my signature program makers,

MBA, as well as most of what you see online with

gift biz on wrapped.

It is my honor and pleasure to introduce you to Sal

coms. Sal,

welcome to the gift biz on wrapped podcast.

Hello from Australia.

You didn't mention that line.

I didn't.

You mentioned that and I guess I should have,

so it's actually early morning for you and mid to late

afternoon for me.

Right. I know.

Isn't that crazy or like,

yeah, we're on different days actually Different days,

but it's so mind boggling how we can talk and we're

so far away from each other.

Where are you in Australia?

I mean Tasmania actually a city called Hobart,

so Tasmania is the little Island,

a little triangular Island at the bottom of Australia that is

still part of Australia.

It's just happens to be a small Island.

Got it.

And because I was in Australia visiting before you and I

even connected unfortunately,

but I know that there really are such things as Tasmanian

devils. There really are.

Yeah. I saw one in real life.

We don't have kangaroos hopping around the street,

but I do actually have an a kid.

Not in my backyard here.

Sorry. No kidding.

Yeah, That's crazy.

All right,

well we are going to dive into the content here because

I know everyone is just biting at the bit waiting to

learn all about branding and graphics and how that all could

possibly fit in and help them to present their brand better.

But before we do,

you know,

I like to start this a little bit differently and that

is by having you describe yourself through a motivational candle.

So if you were to tell us what color and what

quote would be on a candle that speaks all you,

Sal, what would it be?

Okay, so this was actually a really hard question for me

because the shades of pink that I love and there are

shades of pink that I do not love.

There's shades of yellow I love and shades of yellow I

hate. So you know,

for me to say one color is really difficult.

So here's what I came up with.

My color would be a lilac and that reflects me because

I have trouble deciding on one thing.

I get bored with one thing very easily.

So I Laila,

it's like a happy medium between a pink and a purple.

I'm not a crazy pink person.

I'm not a crazy powerful person.

So my lack is halfway kind of in.

So that's the color.

And the quote is never underestimate your strength,

never overestimate your weakness.

And that really kind of brings home to me because I

have found that it is so important to just focus on

what you're good at and not get bogged down with what

you're not so good at,

Which is kind of what you talk about in your bio

too. You know that you found your place because you found

what you were good at and then that people also needed

it. So it merged together beautifully.

Exactly. Yeah.

So I hope you liked that one.

I love it.

I love it.

Okay, so,

and I've always felt that way also about you because you're

so just authentically you and gift as listeners.

This is the first time that Sal and I are actually

talking via phone or Skype as the case might be because

we've been going through emails so much.

But it was really interesting,

Sal, that we bonded so quickly.

Like you really got my brand right from the beginning,

you know,

except for just a few tweaks we had to make and

I felt so comfortable with you right off the bat.

So I think by you being uniquely who you are and

me doing the same,

that's when you really find good connections and the right people

to work with for your business.

Absolutely. I agree.

Your strength can be another experts weakness,

well, not so much weakness,

but just,

you know,

not their specialty area.

So yeah,

it is all about complementing each other's strengths and weaknesses.

Right. Perfect.

Okay, so talk to us a little bit about your backstory

and how you got into liking graphics and branding and all

that. Yeah,

sure. So I've been working for myself for about a year

now. I come from the corporate background,

which I think is a common theme actually amongst your audience.

And what were you doing in corporate?

What was your expertise there?

I've always been in an old rounder kind of position,

like a digital strategy online marketing,

which has always been very broad.

So when I was out,

came out on my own,

I kind of really struggled to find where my specialty was

going to be because these days it's not like social media

is a niche that you really have to find your sweet

spot. So at the beginning I was very much focused on

strategy and what I wanted to do was to sell an

ebook, teaching businesses how to do social media.

But what happened was that I designed that ebook and I

shared it with my coaching group I never on was like,

Oh my gosh,

you know,

you're really good at the design stuff.

I want that.

Can you do this for me?

I mean they are a little bit interested in the April,

there were more so interested in the design side of it

and it all just happened organically from there.

And I was getting,

you know,

private messages saying,

can you put together a quote for this,

for this?

And it all just fell into place.

And so now today,

my focus is on both media,

content creation and brand design.

But as I said at the beginning,

I don't refer to myself as a graphic designer because I

think branding is so much more,

there's definitely a heap of strategy involved.

There is,

and I have to say before you and I started talking,

you know,

I mean,

yeah, I had a logo for my first business,

the ribbon print company.

I have a logo for the podcast,

but I never really had any type of imagery or branding

apart from colors.

You know,

I pretty much claimed my colors,

but I really didn't have,

I mean I felt like I had a brand because I

had a name,

I had a font I was using and I had a

color, but I was nowhere compared to where we are now.

So talk a little bit about what branding encompasses and when

you're saying branding,

what that really means.

Yeah, sure.

Well, branding is so much more than a logo and encompasses

the words you use,

the colors,

the fonts,

the imagery,

and photography,

icons, patterns.

It's everything.

So it's not just about what people see,

it's about what people fell.

It's about what people think and also what people remember of

a brand.

So when I was working with you,

we started with at the beginning of what we are actually

trying to achieve.

That was to reflect the strategy and what you teach in

your course.

The maker's MBA,

right. We actually started backwards I guess because we started with

maker's MBA and then I'm like,

okay, if this is the case,

then what do we do with the rest of the brand?

So we I think started backwards,

but that's okay.

We're all good now.

Thanks to you.

Well, reverse engineering is definitely a strategy and you wanted to

reflect like the phases that you teach in your course,

which is plant.

You're going to have to refresh my memory here.

Plant, grow,

bloom and blossom.

Exactly. Yeah.

And mind you,

and I think this might be important for the conversation.

I had already changed the graphics on that program twice.

Nothing. I just wasn't landing.

What really felt good to me and what I really felt

proud to present out to the market.

Right. Okay.

I don't know why,

but I didn't.

So anyway,

so carry on.

Okay, so we're talking about branding and why it's important,

but it's just not,

you have font,

you have colors,

you have images,

you have photos because many people have all of those,

but they still really don't have a cohesive brand.

Yes. And that's a very important word,

cohesive. So what you want to achieve with your burning is

that if you could show someone five pieces of your branding

without even having your name attached to it,

they would be able to recognize that it belongs to you.

So that happens to me all of the time when I

do posts and maybe I don't have my name on it,

I get people saying,

Oh, I can already tell that you design that because my

style. So that is definitely one thing that you want to

achieve with cohesiveness in your branding.

So you represent a unique visual out to the market so

you don't look like just like everybody else.

Right? Yes.

But everything that you do put out to the market should

be consistent.

You know,

once we figured out the branding,

we've gone as far as making sure that the Facebook pages,

Instagram, everything looks similar.

So everything used that word again,

cohesive. Yeah.

Everything kind of matches throughout.

It doesn't mean it doesn't change and get tweaked and look

a little different.

And certainly sizing is different,

but the imagery and all of that is the same.

Yes. That's exactly what you,

what you want to achieve.

So it's a seamless experience from one platform to another.

Okay. And I think that's really important too.

You know,

I've heard somewhere,

and we've talked about this a little bit before on this

show, that if you look totally different in different places,

you confuse your customer first off.

But then there's also an unconscious question about trust.

Because if you're expecting imagery in a certain feel,

if you're expecting one site and you see something and you

kinda feel good about it and you want to know more

about them and you go to another site and it looks

completely different,

then there's that doubt of like,

wait a minute,

what's this all about?

Are they even professional?

Who are they?

Are they this one imagery and feel or are they the

second imagery and feel so it starts to bring up doubt

when you're cohesive with your branding and your colors and everything

you're developing and solidifying trust with your customer even on a

subconscious level.

Yeah, definitely.

You want to avoid that feeling of disconnect.

Disconnect. Yeah.

That being said,

you don't have to be really straight because for example,

you asked me the other day that you wanted to tweak

some of your posts to reflect autumn.

Now just because awesome isn't in your brand colors.

That doesn't mean that you can't use awesome colors.

It's a fine balance between portraying your brand and portraying the

mood and message of what you're putting out there.

So if your brand happens to be pink and green,

that doesn't mean that if you want to do something that's

awesome themes that you can't bring orange in,

that's totally fine.

And that's not what we're talking about by disconnect.

Right. But we still had some of the same elements that

are consistent throughout my brand,

even with the orange colors there.

Yes, exactly.

Yeah. Okay.

So let's back this up then.

So this is kind of an umbrella picture of what a

brand is about and the importance of a brand.

Would you add anything else before we start diving in deeper

about how you would start figuring out your brand?

So anything other on the top line that you think we

should talk about?

I just want to emphasize the importance rather than asking what

do I want my audience to see?

You want to ask,

what do I want my audience to fail?

What do I want my audience to think and what do

I want my to remember?

So there are three very important questions that you should prioritize

over what do I want them to see?

Okay, so think,

feel and remember.

Yes, exactly.

So I'm thinking what you would do is start with that,

define what that should be,

and then you get into starting to build a brand.

So let's say we have someone who's brand new here listening.

They're just starting their company.

They've done all the preliminary things that I tell them to

do before you start building your brain,

because there's a lot of other things to do first,

but how does one start?

What's the first step for building a brand?

You've got your company name,

let's say,

but what about colors?

Is that the first thing you start with this?

Figuring out your colors?

Yes. I often start with colors and I've often start with

the question,

what are five words that reflect your brand's personality?

And also there's three questions that I just mentioned,

the deal,

think and remember,

that's what I would also start with.

Okay, so you write those down and you have all of

that figured out.

Then how do you figure out what colors you would use

to match this?

Now, obviously if you have a very light feminine brand,

let's say you're not going to be using dark Brown or

something. I mean that's pretty obvious,

but how about with all the colors that you have?

Do you start choosing colors?

You just like yourself?

Kendall absolutely does a lot of experimentation involved and I would

often start with gathering some inspiration.

So gathering other graphics and branding that you love and then

using that as inspiration,

not imitation of course.

And yeah,

so the initial phase is really just about experimenting that it

has to be a fine balance between,

okay, what reflects my personality and what I like as the

brand owner combined with what's actually going to appeal to your

target audience.

So just because my favorite color may be pink,

that may not appeal to my target audience if I'm targeting

men. That being said,

I've seen plenty of men use a hot pink burn color

to appeal to a women.

So it works both ways.

Right? But I would say based on just my experience,

what we talked about just a short time ago is you

still have to really like the colors that you're gonna be

using because you're going to see them a lot and they

have to resonate with you in some way.

Yeah, absolutely.

You've got to love your brand.

Like if you're going to do something creative and put it

on show,

you've got to own it and you've got to be proud

of it and love it.

Otherwise, the energy for it is just going to fizzle out.

It's so true.

Absolutely. You have to love it Because I think it comes

across in the way you speak,

the way you represent your brand,

everything. If you don't love it,

so, okay,

so how many colors should you have?

What's too little and what's too many?

Okay. I love this question and I have a annoying for

you. Don't you hide out when someone says those?

No right or wrong answer here.

However, I am going to give you a guideline.

So they're really,

I recommend choosing one or two primary colors and then a

handful that may be three or four secondary colors that you

can mix in with your primary colors.

So one or two primary and then three or four secondary

colors. Okay,

but this does not mean that you put all these in

your logo.

This means that you're using them for graphics throughout all your

sites, right?

Yes, exactly.

It's very rare that you probably just use one color alone

Unless you're black and white,

I guess.

Yeah, and another step that you want to take when designing

your brine is to list all of the brand touch points

where you're going to be having your brand on show.

So are your business cards,

your website,

your social media platforms,

any merchandise.

If you have a physical store,

the window signage,

everything you want to list all the brand touch points where

someone is going to see your brand,

Why is that important?

So you can design for it.

By sizing you mean Not so much background.

You want to know,

okay, well it's the logo or is the branding going to

be featured on a busy background or a white background.

All of those things matter.

What you need in your branding is flexibility and the versatility

because sometimes your logo and your branding may be on a

white background or it may be on a busy photo background,

so you need different formats and versions of your brand assets

to be able to work in with different backgrounds and various

environments in which your brand is placed.

Completely understand that and give biz listeners if you want,

you could go over to my Instagram account and see it

in play.

Gift biz on wrapped and sale.

Yours too.

Yeah, absolutely.

And since we're talking about that,

we're going to get back to all of your touch points

later in terms of where people can contact you,

but what's the name of your Instagram account?

South Francis sell Francis on Instagram.

So at sale Francis.

So go take a look at that.

And I think there is also where you're going to start

seeing when sales talking about how people can just look at

an image that she has and they know her tours.

I totally do Sal.

When I open up my phone and I'm starting to go

to Instagram,

I can always tell which ones are yours right away.

Yes. Back on the colors.

I just wanted to talk about there really no had strict

rules here because you can not a brand such as Coca

Cola or Cadbury chocolate or Starbucks,

they have,

you know,

you think of one color for them.

Coca-Cola's red,

Starbucks, green Cadbury is per home.

However you have other brands such as Google and eBay,

Brits, Instagram that have multiple colors combined into them and they

both work.

So I just wanted to emphasize that,

that there are no strict rules when it comes to color,

But I think there are strict rules.

Once you decide on colors,

you want to make sure that color is consistent everywhere it

goes, which gets to hex codes.

Yes, absolutely.

Okay. Share with everybody just in case people don't know.

I want to make sure we,

everyone gets to stay on the same page as we're going

through here.

What are hex codes?

How would you find your hex codes,

et cetera?

Okay. The non technical answer here is a hex code is

a six alpha numeric code that defines exactly what color it

is. There are 50,000

shades of paint.

There are 50,000

shades of yellow.

So what the hex code does,

it actually stands for red,

red, green,

green, blue,

blue, RGB,

which when you're designing for the internet,

we work in RGB.

As I said,

there's 50,000

shades of paint.

So a hex code is going to define exactly what shade

of pink So that when you are designing for one thing

and then you go to design for something else,

as long as your colors are the right hex code,

then you're going to get the same shade of pink.

Yes, exactly.

So I know that you can go online and you can

look on a monitor and choose hex codes,

but is that the best way to do it?

Yeah. So if you're at the beginning phase of designing your

brand and you kind of have an idea of what colors

you want to use,

I just say you want to use like a kind of

a mango type orange color.

What I would actually do is just Google mango,

Pantone hex codes,

and then you're going to come up with a heap of

images showing mango colors and they're going to have the hex

codes. That being said,

I wouldn't copy the hex code exactly.

What I would do is I would tweak it slightly so

that you've got that color mango that you're after,

but you've just tweaked it slightly.

Got it.

Okay, so you mentioned Pantone here and I know Pantone very

well because that in the printing field where I come out

of, could you then just go to let's say a paint

shop, get some paint chips and get a feel for kind

of the Pantone color that you like and then bring it

into the computer and then tweak it?

Yeah, absolutely.

You could do that.

What I would actually do is I would take a photo

of it,

take a photo of the sample,

and then there is a tool called color dealer that is

a browser extension and allows you to kind of hold the

Joppa. Yeah,

the dropper and it brings the code.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, and it's called color Zilla.

Z. I.

L. L.

A. Yes,

that's right.

Color's Ella and I'll put that you guys in the show

notes for you.

Okay, so now we have a business name.

We've gotten our colors,

a couple of the colors we're going to be using for

a logo,

and then we've got our three to five secondary colors.

I don't know what we're going to do with those yet

because we haven't gotten there,

but we've got all our colors and we have our hex

codes, so we know specifically what tones and we like how

they all fit together.

I mean,

I think that's important too,

because you don't want to have light lime light,

lemon light orange and deep,

deep purple grape.

I'm thinking you want them to kind of all work together.

Yeah, exactly.

That really just does take experimentation And I guess you could

ask opinions from other people,

but let's say,

okay, we've gotten to the point where we've got all the

colors. Then what do you do next in terms of making

it a real brand?

Okay. I would next probably look at funds and I would

choose probably two or three funds that are going to work.

Again, you want to achieve this versatility and flexibility so that

you have a set of funds that you can rely on

for your wording and language that you use and what you

want to achieve is a font hierarchy so that for when

you're using bold,

strong words that you want to stand out.

Do you use this font when you're doing a softer quote,

you use this font and what you want to do is

kind of try and match your funds with the mood of

your message,

so if you're doing a cheeky little quote posts,

then you're going to want a font that kind of portrays

that cheekiness as well.

Got it.

And then you always stick with those fonts?

Yes. Again,

say for the most part as a rule with exceptions.

Yes, exactly.

Yes. You definitely want to have a set of fonts that

you use consistently that achieved that hierarchy of,

right. This is the font we use for bold and strong

words. This is the font that we use for body texts,

like smaller details and this is the font that we use

for quotes.

Okay, perfect.

Now with me,

the next thing that we did was we started figuring out

what imagery,

I don't know,

do you call my flower or an icon or a brand

symbol? I don't know if you know what the word would

be. Icon or symbol?

Yes, I would use that.

Probably an icon.

Okay. Does everybody need something like that?

No, not necessarily.

Not necessarily.

It comes down to what we were trying to achieve and

we were trying to reflect the plant phases that you teach

in maker's MBA,

but at the same time we didn't want to make brand

look like a gardening business or a flower shop,

so it was important to kind of bring the flower in

as a representation of those phases,

but not too strong.

Yeah, and that's the problem I had with my prior two

rounds of branding is they just look too like I was

selling garden flowers or something.

Yes, exactly.

Yeah. Versus phases like it looks like now.

Yeah. Okay.

So I think for the sake of conversation,

so you might have an icon that you would continue to

use or you might not.

Yes, it kind of depends and I would guess also it

will depend on your logo.

If you have a busy logo that already has a graphic

attached to it,

you don't need to add more to the puzzle.

Yeah, exactly.

Some logos are just texts,

so it might be a name in a particular font.

Some logos have a graphic or an icon.

Those cases.

Some logos may just be a graphic.

There's all kinds of scenarios,

but again it comes down to,

you know,

what are you trying to reflect?

A question comes up to me that I really never thought

of until we've been talking about this.

One of the things that I didn't like when I continued

to try and brand gift biz on wrapped is what I

kept hearing and seeing in terms of samples coming back to

me, not from UCL but from other people were like bows

and a gift or like that type of thing.

And that wasn't what I was trying to do because it's

the gifting industry,

but I'm not talking about necessarily a gift.

So now the flower does have grounding because it's part of

my signature program and we agreed that on the gift biz

unwrapped portion,

we're not going to show everything the plant grow bloom like

all of the icons because people wouldn't even understand that.

So we just pulled one icon that's the one that represents

gift biz,

but it's a flower,

which in a little bit disconnects from gift biz.

But I'm getting to the point where people really do know

those images are mine,

just like you're talking about before.

So is it okay to have an image that's separate really

from your name like we're doing?

Absolutely. Most definitely.

In fact,

I would actually recommend that because what you want to achieve

is to have something that is memorable so that when your

audience sees a yellow flower as they're going about their day,

they may not even be on social media.

They're going to think immediately of you.

So that is a strategy to be top of mind,

you know,

get in your audience's head.

I know that if I was at a market and I

saw beautiful yellow flowers,

I would probably take a photo of them and then tag

you. Oh,

yay. I like that.

You can do that anytime you want.

Yes. But when it comes to the imagery,

if you guys look and see my flower,

it's still very simple,

right? Well,

it's got some shading there,

but in terms of the image,

it's actually very simple.

Okay. Is that intentional?

Yes. You always want to have clean,

uncluttered imagery.

And also let's talk about consistency.

Again, it's not just a white or black flower.

We incorporated both colors so that the white,

yellow and black all tie in together and we kind of

keep that style consistent through across all of your touch points

and then we can play off that flower too.

Like sometimes it's lighter yellow.

Exactly. Yes.

You know,

coming in like from the background as if it's like shaded

out or something.

Yes. Different angles.

Yeah. Sometimes we use it once,

sometimes we create a cluster of flowers.

So it really has that versatility,

but it's still consistent.

Wonderful. Okay.

So then as our listeners are building up their brand,

so then they can decide,

am I going to have a symbol or icon,

am I not?

And so they make that selection,

so now they've got,

I'm thinking all the elements that they need and they understand

that you need to have a similar presence across different platforms.

Now what do you do with all of this?

What do you even post on social media and how does

all that work?

Sure. In a professional way,

not haphazard like most of us have done for so,

so long.

Okay. So one thing we haven't touched on yet is actually

what tool or platform you would use to design your brand

and create all your graphics and some of your audience may

find it interesting,

but I am actually team CAMBA.

I'm sure most people know what Canberra is.

That Canberra is like the most simplest version of Photoshop that

you can possibly use.

Yes, it does have some limitations,

but I think the simplicity of it far outweighs those limitations.

So I do all of my branding,

all of my graphics,

everything in Canberra.

So I would create my color palette,

create my front set,

the icons,

the logo,

everything is all set up in Canberra And what you did,

and I didn't know you could do this now I'm a

big Photoshop girl because I was doing graphics way before Canva

was even around and I didn't really gravitate to it fully

until you and I started working together.

But everything that you've made for me is now in Canva

and I absolutely love the platform.

So what you did is you separated out like all my

brand colors are sitting there,

right? And you've separated out templates that are right there for

me to access anytime or my virtual assistant or whoever we

have working in the account can go in there and grab

whatever they need.

It's all sitting in one place.

Yes, you just said a key word there.

So, and that is templates.

So once you do have all your brand elements together,

the next step would be creating templates,

incorporating those elements.

And we come back to that point of in the beginning

listing out all your brand touchpoints.

So now you can create templates for all of those touch

points. So you want templates for your blog post templates for

your social media banners,

templates for your social media posts,

templates for your website.

So yes,

templates are definitely the next step after you have your brand

elements all together.

Perfect. And all of the templates then are stored there.

And the great thing about Canva too is that you don't

have to go figure out what size those templates should be.

They already have everything sized right inside the Canva app.

That is correct,

yes. I don't think I Googled in like the last year

or so.

What is the size for a Facebook cover or,

yeah, it's all sitting there for you.

Beautiful. And I think it's worth mentioning here that a Facebook

post sizing is different than Instagram is different than Pinterest,

et cetera.

Even if you're looking at putting the same message and virtually

the same imagery,

you still want to have it sized for each platform onto

itself. Oh yes,

definitely. And that's the additional bonus of Canberra is that you

can do that with the press of a button.

You do need to have the CAMBA for business version to

be able to duplicate and resize your graphics.

It's a small price to pay for such a huge time

saving benefit of having that flexibility.

Absolutely. Yeah,

for sure.

Okay, so,

Oh, the other thing I just want to make mention to

people who have not been familiar with Canva,

and you're hearing this for the first time.

It is available on mobile and desktop also,

so you've got both play no matter where you want to

go. So it really is the perfect solution.

I'm loving it more and more and I'm being really bad

because I can just spend a whole lot of time there

when I should be doing something a little more challenging because

just I want to go in there and play around,

you know,

I just showed and I need to be doing some other

things. It is a lot of fun and I encourage all

of you to go in and look at it.

It's really,

really well worth it.

And they've got ready-made templates too that you can use.

Yeah, absolutely.

What do you think of those?

They're ready.

My templates are a great start.

However, I've seen a couple of clients struggle with adapting the

templates to what their message is.

Oh, you can sway away from your branding.

That I think is what you're saying if you're not careful.

Yeah, exactly.

But I think that would all be lost without the templates.

They are a great start,

but my biggest recommendation with Canva is to just practice and

experiment. Any tool that you use in your business,

it takes a little bit of time to get used to.

So yeah,

just setting aside a couple of hours for yourself to just

play in CAMBA,

you know,

without any pressure of having to have a graphic out in

10 minutes,

just have fun and play with it.

I'm sure they have tutorial videos if not on YouTube.

I'm sure there are tutorials of how to use canvas.

Yeah, exactly.

So how many templates,

let's say for a starter business,

how many templates should they create just to get started to

have a presence online?

Okay. If we're talking about just online and digital platforms,

I would probably say around five to 10 so you want

templates for your social media posts,

you want templates for your social media cover banners,

and then any website graphics that you have.

Every business is different depending on those touch points.

But I think kind of five to 10 is a good

starting point.

Okay. And could some of the template versions be just changes

in the color changes in maybe a border or how do

we make the different templates look different yet stay within brand?

Yeah, so the templates can be different.

And again,

it comes down to thinking about,

okay, where is this graphic actually going to be placed?

Like what environment is it going to be placed?

Is it going to be on a white background?

Is it going to be in the feed where it's,

you know,

amongst a heap of photos.

And this is relevant through when we were designing your brand,

we had to consider that your logo and thumbnail was going

to be on the podcast,

on the Apple podcast feed.

Right. So we had to design for that,

which it already has a border around it.

When you upload your thumbnail to Apple iTunes,

it automatically places a faint border around it,

I believe.

So it wouldn't have made sense for us to have a

border on that graphic.

So you really need to see the big picture of where

each graphic is going to be placed and designed for that

environment. Perfect.

Wonderful. Wonderful.

Okay. So I want to just summarize where we are up

to this point because I think from start to finish,

this gets us to all of the elements of the brand.

You're going to,

correct me if I'm wrong.

Okay. This is a little test Sal,

so jump in any time if you need to.

The first thing is to just think from the audience's perspective

what vibe,

that's the word I like to use with connecting with a

brand. What vibe are you trying to portray?

So you want to think of five words that give your

brand personality and then you also want to say how will

this make your customer think,

feel and remember.

So that's number one.

Number two then is colors one to two primary colors,

three to five secondary colors.

Make sure to get your hex codes,

make sure they compliment each other.

I guess I would say they'll,

they'll end up going together.

So you do all that.

Then you also look at your fonts and your fonts are

going to be two to three styles and you'll use them

for bold words,

lighter words.

So whichever font you,

you keep them consistent when you're actually putting the verbiage down.

And I think I need to slip in a little bit

before that,

maybe at the very top,

what are all the touch points of where all of this

needs to land.

Then after you've got all of that,

then you do your five to 10 templates and you have

at least the visual aspect and all the elements of your

brand then ready to go.

Is that right?

How I do,

You did brilliantly.

One thing I will just touch on is that when you

are doing your templates and that your placing your text and

your fonts over your brand colors,

you want to make sure that there is a high contrast

between the font and the background.

Otherwise the text gets lost.

So for example,

sometimes white text on pale yellows can be very hard to

read. So as a general rule,

having dark fonts are going to stand out on light backgrounds

and of course light fonts are gonna stand out on dark

backgrounds. Perfect.

Okay, so moving on because we have to,

and I'm not going to let you go sell without talking

about this because I think it's so important.

Some of your genius is in the Holy Bible and that's

still available,

isn't it?

The Holy Bible is still out there.

The Holy Bible is still available,

however, that it has a different name.

So last year I released the social media Holy Bible that

was old donut themed and I ended up changing the name

because donuts just weren't resonating with me.

It was great in that people loved the donut graphic.

However, it just,

it wasn't me.

So that comes back to the point of,

you know,

if you're going to do something creative,

you have to own it and you have to love it

and feel really proud and comfortable with it.

So yes,

the resource is still available.

However, it has a different brand name now,

and that is the snackable content guide.

I didn't know that they were one in the same,

actually. I thought the Snapple guide was a second freebie,

but that makes sense.

And Oh my gosh,

you guys,

I've had a chance to see actually both of them.

And if you want to have some serious content delivered and

such valuable advice,

you absolutely have to go and grab the guide.

Tell us where they would go to get that since we're

talking about that right now.

So Yeah,

so they can find that on my website,

which is South francis.com

Could not be easier with that.

Okay. And what's in the guide?

Do a little pitch,

tell everybody why they want to go and they want to

get it immediately.

Yeah. Shaw.

Okay. So the snacker will contact guide has over 100 social

media post ideas with actual visual examples.

So I'm really focusing on this concept of snapper content,

which is you know,

those small quick,

easy to digest graphics that stand out on social media and

immediately trigger engagement.

So the guide runs you through kind of 10 categories of

these posts where you know,

a hundred specific post ideas of topics.

And I think the most valuable thing in the guide that

really helps is the visual examples.

So it's jam packed with visuals.

It is jam packed.

Jam packed for sure.

Love it.

Yes, absolutely.

If there is one freebie of all the podcasts we've done

that you absolutely want to be grabbing,

it's this one for sure.

Hands down.

You've done a fabulous job with Excel.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

So let's give a message from you to anyone who's just

starting out.

Just reinforcing why going through and doing all of this is

so important.

All the things that we've talked about with Browning I believe

are most important for staying top of mind with your audience.

So the consistency,

you want to be easily recognized when people are scrolling on

social media,

you kind of,

the goal is to get in their head all the time.

So when they see things as they're going about their day,

they're reminded of you because that's what your branding has achieved.

Perfect. I love the goal is to get in their head.

I'm writing that down.

That's perfect.

We may need to use that as a quote.

Just apply and you can attribute it to you.

How about that?

And I can create it for you.

I know.

I know.

So give his listeners,

you'll be seeing that on my Instagram page at some point

here. Oh my gosh,

Sal, I am so,

so happy that you agreed to come on and you have

given us such valuable information.

I know for sure just in talking to several of our

listeners here that this is exactly what they need at exactly

this time.

So it's so perfect and you've been so wonderful.

Now what I'd like to do is reverse this on you

and allow you to dare to dream.

I'd like to present you with a virtual gift.

It's a magical box containing unlimited possibilities for your future.

So this is your dream or your goal of almost unreachable

Heights that you would wish to obtain.

Please accept this gift and open it in our presence.

What is inside your box?

Okay. Tough question,

but a good question.

I don't know exactly what the business nodal would be,

but it would be something along the lines of learning and

creating at the same time.

So if I could spend my days achieving both of those

things, learning and creating,

that would be my ideal world.

So I have this kind of vision of perhaps my day

would be spent listening to inspiring influential business women talk about

their journey and how they got to where they are and

then me creating all those sound bites and golden nuggets into

visual graphics.

That would be my ideal out.

I love it.

Oh my gosh.

And that's exactly the business that you have morphed into,

right? Yeah.

Because you're saying that you just left corporate pretty much a

short time ago and thought you were going to do one

thing and now you've kind of changed the landscape based on

the reactions that you're getting.

I mean,

it's kind of brand new for you to be doing this,

but it's exactly what you just described.

I mean,

I just love this concept of taking soundbites and just one

sentence kind of lines from inspiring words and then turning them

into a visual graphic that then just instantly resonates with the

audience. Like,

you know when you just say a sentence or a quote

or a line and you just go,

ah, yes.

And that applies to so many different areas of your life,

your personal life,

your business and people just,

yeah, get it.

They're getting it,

they share it,

they comment on it and that's exactly what you want is

all that engagement.

Exactly, yes.

So you get to listen to everything and then also work

at the same time.

Yeah, that sounds pretty much the best of both worlds if

you ask me.

Learning and creating.

Wonderful. Yes.

Okay, so Sal francis.com

is the website.

You know there'll be a show notes page,

gift biz listeners,

so you'll be able to also see all the links to

Facebook, Instagram,

anywhere you want to see.

Sal, is there one place in particular besides your website,

Sal, that you would suggest they go just to see a

demonstration of the different templates and the different ways you can

make your font bold and not bold and the snackable and

all of that?

Where would you send them for that?

Yeah, absolutely.

I would love for people to come and visit me on

Instagram. My Instagram handle is South answers and come leave me

a little yellow flower or a yellow heart so that I

know that you came from Sue's podcast.

I was going to say,

leave me a yellow emoji,

but they're all yellow,

so leave me a yellow or yellow flower,

so I know.

Perfect. I love that.

I'm going to send you a bunch of hearts as I

always do.

Yes, I appreciate all the way across on the other side

of the world,

us being able to coordinate this and I know on behalf

of all my listeners,

we've gotten so much out of this.

Thank you Sal.

Thank you for having me and As an additional holiday gift

to you.

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That's a wrap wrap For today.

Thank you so much for joining me and I'll see you