TechArts is going to make a song, and share how they did it.
Technology and the Arts, my longest running podcast with the multi-talented Brian Kelley, is trying something different. We are making a song together, and sharing the process as we go. We are not sure what kind of song it will be, or what it will sound like. But we just recently locked down the tempo, agreeing on 80 BPM. We have also decided on Audiotool, the amazing cloud based EDM workstation. Some other details are revealed in the first two episodes of this season. all about making a song, collaboratively, remotely, and electronically.
Please watch below and subscribe on YouTube (links in the descriptions)!
“Streamed live on Sep 14, 2015 John LeMasney and Brian Kelley return for another season of Technology and the Arts – this time, they’ll take you behind the scenes of the creative process as they plan to collaborate on a music project.” found in Technology and the Arts – Ep. 75 (9.14.2015) – YouTube at https://goo.gl/92IdeF
“Streamed live on Sep 23, 2015 John LeMasney and Brian Kelley return for another episode of Technology and the Arts, as they continue to take you behind the scenes of the creative process of a collaborative music project.” found in Technology and the Arts – Ep. 76 (9.23.2015) – YouTube at https://goo.gl/v16Fwn
Of particular interest in episode 76 is a very brief overview of Audiotool, Audacity, and Drumbit, the tools we will be using to make our song.
Brand is not a logo by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
Brand is not a logo by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
Today, I had the pleasure of a return visit to Rossmoor, a gated community near Monroe, NJ. In the past I’ve talked about the Chromebook, Social Media, and graphic design at this 55 plus Computer Users Group, but today I talked about something more akin to Psychology or Business meetups than computer groups: Organizational and personal branding. I was a bit worried about how it would be received because I have only given the talk to more brand minded groups, but figured that if I really believe that brand is universal, which I do, that the talk would be appropriate.
It was received very well. The people there talked about their communication methods, their platforms, their keywords, and discovered their brand. We discussed abstraction and concretia in branding, such as the idea of loving as a keyword versus technology as a keyword. We talked about how everyday meetups and conversations are opportunities for branding, and that even though not everyone is familiar with their brand, that everyone has one and that it is beneficial to become familiar with it, shape it, and strengthen it.
Thanks very much to Rossmoor, Paul, and Gano for the kind reception, patient ear, and engaged responses.
Location: Princeton Public Library Technology Center
Interested in creating your own blog? In this two-part course, social media and technology expert, John LeMasney will teach how to start and manage a blog for free through WordPress. Prior web design experience is not needed. Session 2 will be held on Tuesday, May 21.
Have you seen those beautiful posters that visualize and demonstrate statistics in fun and elegant ways? Those are called infographics, and you can make them with some time, practice, and free design tools. In this two-hour session, John LeMasney shows you how to make interesting, sharable graphics that help you make your point. We’ll look at some examples of great infographics, recreate one or two, and then use what you learned to make an original personal infographic that might be the next viral hit on Pinterest, Facebook, and everywhere else. Skill Level: Intermediate No registration necessary”
So, I just finished a project with a longtime friend and his wife who just launched a business. I saw their announcement of the new business, congratulated them, and quietly asked them about their visual branding, which seemed a bit… rushed.
He responded that they just needed to start advertising, and that they would work out the logo later. I asked him if I could create his visual branding as a way of showing my support, and he and his wife agreed. I decided to share the process here as a way of showing you what that typically looks like.
The first thing I did was ask them to fill out the design brief (on the navigation menu above) because it asks some key important questions about what their brand is in a highly structured way that works to begin the thought process about branding. The result was the following brand profile:
The Design Brief and a visual brand profile.
Paradise Productions and More sees their key audience as being most attracted to the following descriptors: feminine, masculine, colorful, playful, sporty, and adventurous. Their key deliverable product is personalized specialty objects, like printed mugs, t-shirts, and phone cases. They wanted to see these products as part of the logo and wanted to emphasize their t-shirt personalization. They liked green and purple for colors. They wanted to use the logo in advertising, on product samples, on business cards and in the media. They indicated that since they were just getting started they were creating rather than modifying their branding, and that any individual may be a potential customer, as opposed to it being a gender-specific product, for example. When asked what set their work apart from competitors, they responded that they “give more personal care to each and every item that [they] make”.
Getting started
So after discussing and confirming these results, I got to work in choosing fonts, symbols, and colors to match their wants. I sent them the following for review and confirmation.
Paradise Productions brand study, revision 0, by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
Refining choices.
They responded that they liked the first and last fonts, as well as the baseball-style font in the middle. They liked the palette I chose, and the general look and feel of the symbols. As a result, and with confirmation by voice and an explanation that I’d be starting work on flow and layout of characters, I created and sent this response.
Paradise Productions brand study, revision 1, by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
Refining further
I decided to move towards a monogram for their main symbol with the option to use specific symbols later, because the urge to use a repeated P as a monogram was just too hard to resist. They liked it, and we decided to continue to refine the work. With this set, they said that they preferred the stacked P monogram in the upper left, the wordmark in the middle right, and so I responded quickly with this to confirm, while we were on the phone.
Paradise Productions brand study, revision 2, by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
Final revision.
And they said that they liked everything but the light green background. I quickly made another iteration that we are very likely to move forward with, below.
Paradise Productions brand study, revision 3, by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
I wanted to give them a square option, a horizontal option, and a vertical option as a starting point to get most social media and other advertising needs taken care of. I am also planning to share the SVG files with them, with all fonts as paths, so that if they wish to take this work to another designer to continue, or to work on it themselves in Inkscape or Illustrator, they can. This job took about 4 hours, including design time and confirmation/consultation. Some jobs move quicker, and some move slower, but very often they follow this pattern where the main product is a logo for visual branding. Congratulations to my friends and their launch of their new business, and thanks very much for letting me be a part of that process.
Brand is not a Logo by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
Often when I first work with a new client, especially in a design consult, I have no idea what or who they are, organizationally speaking. The thing that often surprises me though, is that they don’t either. We might know their industry (e.g. education), their product (e.g. books), and their intent (e.g. sell more books to educational institutions). None of this, however, speaks to brand.
I like to think of brands as flavors. Licorice has a very distinct taste. To some, it is repulsive, while others consider it their favorite flavor. Many foods and flavors are described in this way. Cilantro comes to mind. At any rate, you should have some idea of what your flavor is, so that you can begin to speak to the audience that finds your flavor irresistible.
Very often, organizations think of their logo as the entirety of their branding, not thinking of their logo as just a visual representation of their overall brand. Brand is extended to include so many other elements of your business, as you’ll see below.
The design work for your branding should reflect and not define your brand. If and when you know your brand, making a visual representation of it is so much easier, because we can use fonts, colors, shapes, symbols and other graphic elements that show, underscore, and represent you better.
Five easy questions to find your brand:
What 5 words best represent your organization? If I was to answer this, I would say design, technology, open source, nutrition, and creativity. These are the core ideas that I try to impart about my organization when I post, speak, share, converse, or interact in any way with others about my work.
If I was to ask a customer what 5 words best represented your organization, would they be able to match your 5 words? This is an important question. You can believe that your organization is a certain way, and it may even be true, but if your clients and customers are coming up with a different impression, it forces us to reassess our brand, work, and communication to either match or redefine customer impressions.
In what ways do the sensory elements (sights, sounds, feeling, taste, and smell) of the place where we do our work reinforce our brand? What art is on the walls of your workplace? What color is the rug? Is it clean? Is it a silent place, where people value quiet above music or conversation? Maybe you work electronically, and most people meet you in a neutral space, or only online. In those situations, these questions still apply, because even an email can have a culture to it: spelling, attachments, grammar, frequency, and tone come to the forefront as elements of your brand. Do you offer refreshments? How do the refreshments show your brand? Do you smell nothing? Trash? Baking bread? A meadow? Exhaust?
If your organization was a person, who would it be? How would you describe that person? I’d like to think of my brand as Gandhi. I like to think that my work is kind, empowering, wise, and reserved. Maybe your brand is Jimmy Stewart? Ronald Reagan? Justin Bieber? Tom Hanks? Einstein? When you think about the differences between these people, you are understanding brand.
If working with or using your organization was a meal, what would the courses, flavors, and hosts be like? Are you a fast food drive-thru? Are you a 3 Michelin Star world-class restaurant? Are you a New Jersey Diner? A New York City pizza joint? Do you use herbs from your roof garden in a whole foods feast? Do you deep fry everything? All of these metaphors are potentially valid, and should not be dismissed as a metaphor just because you may be averse to diners, for instance. Diners are casual spaces, with comfortable, easy, affordable food, informal conversations, and free refills of coffee. I’d like to think of my brand as a diner.
Hopefully after answering these questions, you have a better sense of your brand. With that in mind, what do you need to do to match your organization’s culture and sensory elements, visual branding, and service interactions to match your brand?
I can help you with that part. Email me at lemasney@gmail.com so that we can start that conversation.
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