susan: welcome! welcome, everyone, toour webinar, “building a strong brand for your organization.†i’m susan hopebard, the training and education manager here at techsoup, and it’s my pleasure to hostthis event today. before we actually get started bringing you the event, i’d like to talk alittle bit about the platform that we’re using. we do use the readytalk platform. so as you’reeither logging in now, or you logged in earlier, you might have heard music coming fromyour computer speakers. most of the time you will be hearing music comefrom your computer speakers. you can chat to ask us any questionsyou might have. in the left-hand column, there’s a chat box. you will see us chattingdifferent things out to you; it could be a link
to events or to some websites that we’ll bereferencing. you don’t need to raise your hand; you can simply chat into the chat box. all of the lines are muted. if you’re havingany difficulty seeing or hearing the event, please chat into the chat box, and wewill help you on the tech side of things. if you lose your internet connection, youcan reconnect using the link that was emailed to you. if you lose your phone connection,if you’ve called in, you can just redial the phone number and rejoin. the callin number for this event is 888-299-7210, and the code that you will use is 537889. beckywill be chatting that out to everyone as well. again, you don’t need to raise your hand;you can simply chat into the chat box.
as i mentioned, we are recording this event.we will post this event in about a week on our archives. we will also beputting this event in our course, design for nondesigners 101 inour learning management system, and we’ll talk about that a little later. youwill receive an email with this presentation along with the recording and anylinks we mention in a few days. you can find out about upcoming andpast webinars on the techsoup website at www.techsoup.org/community/events-webinars.you can also tweet us @techsoup or using hashtag #tswebinars. andagain, the call in number for this event, if you’re not hearing the sound come throughyour computer speakers, that is the default,
you can call in at 888-299-7210with the code 537889. let me talk a little bit about our amazingspeaker today, gopika, who is the owner and creative director at elefintdesigns. she started elefint as a way to bring thoughtful design toworld-changing brands. in addition to leading a multi-disciplinary team and avariety of print and interactive pieces, gopika also teaches design at the universityof san francisco. she curates events and leads workshops focused on design forsocial impact. so for folks just like you. her work has been featured infast company, good wired italy, and design like you give a damn. she isan active member of the design community
and has given talks at facebook’swomen in design and net impact. also, gopika has worked with us very closelyto develop a course for you, for nonprofits and libraries, and it’s our free course, designfor nondesigners 101. i will be navigating through that a little later ontoday after gopika’s presentation. as i mentioned, i’m susan hope bard,the training and education manager here at techsoup. we also, on the back end, wehave abigail maravalli, from elefint designs. she’s going to be helping withchat as you chat in your questions. and becky wiegand is also on the back endfrom techsoup. she is going to help you with any tech problems you have. again,throughout the event, you should feel free
to chat all of your questions in. you don’tneed to wait for the opportunity for q&a. we’ll simply queue those up for gopikato address during brief q&a sessions. also, if at any point and time, ifyou have any issues hearing or seeing, just chat us in the chat box. the objectives of today- we want you to understand the basic elements of brand design guidelines. we also wantyou to understand the importance and value of branding your organization. gopikawill also help identify core elements of your brand guidelines to help yournonprofit or library create a strong brand. we will also have an opportunityfor a q&a session. as i mentioned,
we’ll be queueing up your questions throughoutthis event. we will also be following up with an email that will have a linkto the recording, the presentation, and any links that we discuss during the day.to get us started i’m going to talk a little bit about techsoup. techsoup is locatedhere in san francisco, california. while i’m telling you about techsoup, go aheadand chat in where you are joining us from. so go ahead and chat in the city and the stateor the country that you’re joining us from. techsoup is a 501(c)(3) nonprofitjust like many of you joining us today. and we work to empower organizations around theworld to help you get the latest tools, skills, and resources to help you achieve yourmission. and you can see from our map here,
we serve almost every country in theworld. we have about 62 partner ngos all around the world. oh wow. we’ve got folksjoining us from – this chat box is going crazy now. wisconsin, massachusetts, ohio, georgia,san diego, maryland. that’s my home state, same as gopika. gopika and i are bothfrom baltimore, maryland originally. so thank you for joining us. very happy thateveryone is here. i am going to get us started. oh! some folks from the u.k.! i know it’slike nine hours later there, so thank you for joining us at night. as people that arechatting in, you will only be able to see chat that comes from the presenters. but don’tworry. we’ll share everything with you. if someone chats in a tip, we can sharethat out with you during the event.
so now we’re going to have a short poll.the question is: what is your experience with brand guidelines? are you, what arebrand guidelines? you’re not really sure. do you know what they are,but you don’t use them? does your organization haveformal brand guidelines? or are you really a master, and youcould rock this webinar yourself? go ahead and just click on the radiobutton that best represents you. if you can’t click on the radio button,you can go ahead and chat into the chat box. i’m going to give us a few more seconds toanswer this question. we have about 450 people in the event itself, so that’s a lot of folks.so i want to give you the opportunity to answer.
it looks like a lot of folks are in thetop two categories where they’re not sure what brand guidelines are. or they knowwhat they are, but they don’t use them. so you’re definitely in the right place today.i’m going to give us five seconds. 5-4-3-2-1. and i’m going to show you the results. itlooks like about 83% of us really are new to this concept of brand guidelines, oryou may have them in your organization, but you don’t really use them. so youare definitely in the right place today. i am going to turn the presentationover to gopika from elefint, and she is going to share with youtoday all about building a strong brand. gopika, it’s all yours.
gopika: ok. great! thank you so muchfor that lovely introduction, susan. and thanks, everyone, for joining todayfor this webinar. my name is gopika, and i am the founder and creative directorat elefint. and like susan mentioned, i set out to start elefint as a way to bringreally high-quality design to social causes. we’re also based here in san francisco.it’s lovely to have techsoup as our neighbor. and since we started out, we’ve worked withmore than 300 nonprofits around the world. some of our specialties include brandingand web design and pretty much everything in between. so we’re a full servicestudio. we recently launched our very first online design curriculum with techsoupwhich was so much fun to create.
and hopefully, it looks like a lotof you are interested in learning about what brand guidelines are. sothat free course walks you through that. it gives you some stepsto building out your own. over the next hour or so, i’ll be discussingwhat makes a strong brand and walking you through some examples of brands that i love.some of the examples are from our own clients, elefint clients, while others are pulled frommy library of inspiration. so every designer will have a source or pool of inspiration,so i’m going to share some of that with you. definitely post some questions to the chatgroup throughout as we go, and as time allows, i’ll pause and answer yourquestions. ok. so let’s get started.
alright. so we all want a strong, memorablebrand. it’s one of our favorite types of projects at elefint because it relies on a deepunderstanding of who you are as an organization and how you want to express yourselfto the world. branding projects require a lot of teamwork, collaboration,intuition, and creativity. this may sound like a lot, but the fact that you’re in this webinar is areally great start. i’m hoping to cover the basics with you and get some of your creativejuices flowing on how you can tackle your organization’sbranding. so, what is a brand? we typically think of our website andprint materials, you know, all the things that you can see as our branding. butit’s really much, much more than that.
a brand is your personality, and itextends well beyond the printed page. when done right, people understand whoyou are. they can recognize your cause, and they remember you. whenever we work on a branding projectat elefint, we start off by personifying an organization. we ask our clients certainquestions that give us a better sense of its personality. questions include: whatkind of music does this brand listen to? where does it go for fun? what’syour brand’s favorite outfit? these questions, however silly they may seem,allow our clients to think outside the box and begin to see their brand as more than justa logo. so this is a really fun part for us
because we get into the abstract, theaspirations. maybe there’s a certain outfit the brand wears today, but there’s a certainoutfit that the brand wants to wear in a year from now. and understanding that andthinking about the brand in terms of a person and those unique, sort of, interestsand preferences, helps me as a designer get into certain decisions. and i’ll walkyou through some of that thought process later on in this presentation. in essence,your brand is a combination of soul, heart, and mind. the more youunderstand about each of these aspects of your organization, the stronger yourbrand will be. so let’s take a look at each of these levels in more detail.
your true north is the soul of your organization.it’s defined by your values and purpose on this planet. and sometimes it’s alittle difficult to sum up in words. most founders and executive directors willhave unique anecdotes and ways of thinking about the organization. strong brands willbe able to integrate these powerful insights into every touchpoint of your brand. andwhat i mean by touchpoint is any point where another person is interacting withyour brand. so it could be a physical thing. it could be a storefront. it could be a projector a program you’re running on the ground; interacting with a staff member, or visitingyour website; getting your press kit; getting your business card. all ofthese are considered touchpoints.
later in the presentation, i’ll walkyou through how companies like patagonia have done this very well. the spirit ofyour organization, or your true north, can also be found in your mission andvision statement and should definitely live somewhere on your website. sometimes weforget to include this, but after this webinar, maybe do a quick check and makesure this exists on your website. whether you’re developing a brand fromscratch or looking to enhance an existing one, here are a few exercises that canhelp you articulate your true north. we recently worked with a nonprofit whowas struggling to articulate what they did in a clear and concise way. to helpthem out, we hosted a full-day workshop
where their core team worked togetherto develop a brand personality. five people across departments indifferent leadership positions spent the day brainstorming with us. sometimes gettingto a point of clarity around your mission or your vision requires nonlinear thinking. inorder for us to get to their true north statement, we first looked to clearly define whothe organization was and what they did. it seems simple enough. right? you cantypically say what you do in a sentence. but what was interesting is that everybodyon the team had a different way of explaining what the organization did in a simple sentence.so finding that right language and tone can be challenging. and doing it witha diverse team among your organization,
getting the executive director to sit with thecommunications person, to sit with an intern or someone who receives yourprogramming, can be really helpful to get to that “what†statement. oncewe developed a clear “what†statement for this organization, we then asked “why.†whydo we exist? why does this organization exist? a simple keyword exercise helped usto further define the organization. so we had the very straightforward,what the organization did. and some of these words came easily.it was through our conversations around their brand personality that wediscovered that their brand was also confident yet humble, excited and ready for thefuture. so there were these little surprises;
things that the team hadn’t yet thoughtabout, or words that they hadn’t yet identified as being really integral to their brand and trueto their brand. by identifying these five keywords, we were able to lay the foundation for a clearand strong brand for this particular nonprofit. a series of exercises led us to this pointof defining guiding principles for the brand. now that they know that every touchpointof their brand should be personal, warm, and exciting – i’ll just point to here – theseare the three main principles that we identified after a series of conversations. and whythat was important was, moving forward, outside of the engagement with elefint,when their team is going to create a new post on instagram or select brand colors or maketheir next hire, they can use these principles
to ensure that they stay on point. in essence,guiding principles provide you with a concrete, unwavering framework that ensuresevery decision you make is well informed and tells an authentic story. and that’ssuper important in establishing a strong brand, sometimes overlooked, and we wantto get straight into visual design. but i’m sure a lot of us have stared ata computer and looked at all of the colors and all of the fonts possible andthen sort of stuck where you start. so these preliminary conversations canreally help you start to make decisions and narrow down options. thishigh-level and philosophical thinking can also help you tap into something muchbigger and identify, at the end of the day,
the goal of the brand. the second level of your brand is yourvisual identity. with a clear understanding of your values, guiding principles, andpersonality, you can start to create materials that reflect the spirit of your organization.if you determine, for example, that your values are playful, warm, and delightful, then youcould choose brighter, more vibrant colors. if your brand is professional andgrounded in excellence, then a serif font and limited color palette could bea better reflection of your values. and of course, this is all hypothetical. i’mnot saying that if you’re a perfectionist, you want to come across as professional,use a limited color palette.
there’s countless examples that would breakthat. this is just to give you a sense of, if you start off the process by identifyingcertain characteristics and adjectives that are very unique to yourorganization, you can then start to hone in on certain visual elementsthat speaks to those words. let’s take a look at how this played outfor one of our clients this past year. so, let’s see here. new door venturesis a nonprofit in san francisco, and they provide job trainingand entrepreneurship skills to youth in the mission neighborhood.upon redesigning their website, we went to their headquarters, which wasso exciting. it was really inspiring to see.
and the first floor was a youth community center.it had lots of vibrant colors, a pool table, an area for workshopping. and the topfloor was a little bit more subdued, and it was dedicated to their c-leveloffices, so it seemed appropriate. but they also were able tointersperse some really fun elements. so for example, they had this brightorange spiral staircase in the middle of an otherwise sort of regular officespace. they also had bright green columns and then some wood paneling with handlettering on it. so it added so much character to an otherwise, you know,somewhat regular, corporate space. visiting their actual office space helpedus to immediately get a better understanding
of who new door was as an organization. itwasn’t coming across in their old website, and we actually just launched the newwebsite, so i’m unable to show you a comparison at the moment. but when we startedthe process, it was clear that the org was deeply dedicated to serving itsyouth. they had a super strong track record and really well established partnershipsthat helped them achieve their mission. and the interesting thing for us wasthat their personality, the friendliness, the way that they accommodate their youth,was not coming across in their materials. there was a lighthearted and playful elementthat we really wanted to be able to capture and integrate into the website and thisparticular touchpoint of their brand.
as i said, new door had gone throughthis redesign of their interior space, and they had identified certainvalues that helped them do that. this is an example of a mood board.just a hodge-podge of example images they pulled for inspiration and somekeywords like youth friendly, welcoming, safe, dynamic, vibrant. and these samekeywords helped inform our design decisions when it came to the website. we started ourprocess off with a series of our own boards. for those of you who aren’t familiar withthem, mood boards easily translate emotions and ideas of feeling into visuals.so this is a light example of that. they also act as inspiration and canhelp facilitate really great conversations
between you and your team. pinterestis a great tool you can use to build out your own mood boards. i’m sure some ofus have used it before to plan a party or search for that perfect cupcake design.but we also use invision most of the time to create our mood boards. so let’stake a look at some examples here. like i said, mood boards help youand your team get on the same page and establish a mutually agreed upondirection for your brand. in this example, it was important for us to createa bold, vibrant community feel, and without even saying much. if you look atthis, the colors we chose, the font choices, the way things are arranged shouldbring out those sort of feelings for you.
there’s probably more. there’s probablythings that you agree with or things that you don’t agree with orimages that resonate with you and images that you’re like, oh i don’t reallylike that. and that’s the point of a mood board. it’s not to have every single elementon the page be exactly what you want. it’s basically to spark conversation. and literally,you can print this out, and with a sharpie, cross off images that just aren’t working.our earlier conversations with the client around their brand voice and personalityhelped us identify keywords and pull together an assortment of images that spoke to thosequalities. it’s a little bit small, probably, on your screen, but over here on the left-handcolumn, we pulled out some of the keywords
related to their tone and then offered a littlebit more context. they’re in san francisco; we had the ability to meet with them inperson and have plenty of conversations around the images that work forthem. but if you’re emailing them out, if you want to get the input from yourfriends, your family, your colleagues that are in other offices, definitely includingsome sort of insight around the image selection will be really helpful. we put together a series of boardsfocused on unique aspects of their brand, starting with imagery. for imagery, itwas really important that we captured both the individuality of a person aswell as the community aspect of the org.
so these were two things that werereally emphasized and were coming from the organization. so this is whereall of that preliminary conversation around what’s really important toyou as an organization is important. there’s so many different ways of understandingcommunity or individuality for that matter. and my goal in putting together theseimages was to give, you know, a nice variety that met the client’s criteria for whatcommunity is and what individuality is. this opened up conversations. wehad a little bit of a design critique and some really great discussions that servedas a valuable next step in the design process. in this particular example, the clientreally liked the image over here.
they particularly liked this because ofthe different color hands and the motion and the liveliness of it. they loved all thedifferent colors, and their previous brand was stripped of color. i think theywere just using black, white, and green. so there was a certain dynamism to this imagethat actually opened up a lot of conversation. at the same time, they really gravitatedtowards this image. so it was a combination of an individual person, a photo,and fun illustration. and you can see that there’s a pretty large contrastbetween this sort of style and this style. so even that was great, from adesign perspective, to discuss that. what is it about this particular imageor collage that really spoke to them
and spoke to their brand? by selecting and ruling out certain imagery, wewere able to conclude that original photography of their target audiences- in that case it was youth between the ages of, i think it was like 16 to 24- would be crucial in establishing an authentic brand. so stock photos or generic images of any groups orindividuals just wouldn’t work for them. by identifying this visual design criteriaearly on, they could then plan next steps like scheduling a photoshoot oridentifying images they already had that met their new-found criteria. moving on to the next board in the series.this board was dedicated to typography
and needed to reflect a bold, professional, andclean look. the client really valued accessibility, and their brand values dictated the same.so when we pulled font examples together, we went for written text that was easyto read and that would translate well across print and web. while there is a scienceto typography and choosing the right font, a lot of this is subjective. there’salso thousands of fonts to choose from. so mood boards that narrow downthe options are extremely helpful before entering the process ofactually selecting a font. these boards included mostly sans serif fonts.and what i mean by sans serif font is you can see that they’re super clean;they don’t have what’s called arms and legs.
this font that’s used for the headline up here forworkbook, i know might be a little tiny for you, that’s an example of a serif font. so thisclient was definitely gravitating towards the sans serif font and liked alittle, just a splash, of character. you can see here with the “kâ€, while thetypeface is really simple, more or less, there were these unique little qualities builtinto the font that the client really loved. when you know where on the spectrum yourbrand falls in terms of simple to ornate, you can then start to narrow downand identify the right fonts for you. the last mood board in the series, andthen i’ll maybe pause for questions, is dedicated to illustration style.there may be some elements on the board
that really stand out and resonate with youand your team, while other images or elements, not so much. being able to articulate what’sworking for you and how a particular element relates to your brand and brandvalues will help keep you on track and ensure the visual directionfor your brand is on point. what typically happens when we show moodboards to a client is there’s some things that people agree upon, and thenthere’s definitely points of disagreement around a particular image or style. youwant to take these points of disagreement as an opportunity to [indistinct] and understandwhy we disagree. so don’t try and convince the other person that this is the way weshould go. right? that could be another stage
in the process. really use themood board as a conversation opener. you want to be an observer, a listener. youwant to understand the rationale of others on your team. and why that’s helpfulis, if you’re wearing the designer hat, and you’re ultimately creating assetsor materials for your organization, you want as much buy-in from othersas possible. you want people to use the brand book that you create. you want peopleto love the brochure that you’re designing. and the more people feel part of theprocess and that they’re listened to, the more they’re going to respectyour work and your point of view. with this illustration board, what happenedwas there was part of the team that really loved
this style. line-based illustration withjust a splash of color. very simplistic. and then there were some people that really likedthis style. now, you might think it’s similar, but this actually opened up a lot ofconversation around the type of character and the form of the character. if youlook at this illustration in the top area, you can see that the illustrations are alittle bit more abstract, different colors, definitely not realistic, and it had a youthfulfeel, same with here, a very youthful feel. and it was important for this brand thatthey didn’t come across as too young. they wanted to seem professional andauthoritative but also acceptable. so we had these really greatconversations around why this form
actually spoke to some people, and it turnedout that everybody was on the same page; it was just that the visual spoke to eachperson in a different way. so that’s why i say it’s really important to not shoot someonedown or say, “no. no. no. we’ll never go in that direction,†because often we’resaying the same thing, and we’re just speaking a different language. so the more youcan understand the language of the people on your team, the better off you’ll be. i’ve definitely come to really enjoy disagreement,and it’s these moments that make me pause, and i can play devil’s advocate and pushpeople to articulate their thoughts and ideas. it’s really the disagreement that let’s me as adesigner achieve clarity and ultimately help me
deliver visuals that are very much in linewith my client’s goals and those of the brand. so much of what we’re discussing is subjective.mood boards help you dissect the nuance and ambiguity around these ideas andpersonal preferences. i’ve found them useful in pretty much every design projectwhether it’s a logo or a website or even a themed impact report. another tip i should mention is that there’sa certain vocabulary you can start to develop by reading design articles or publications.you can check out communication arts or behance and even dribble. behanceand dribble are both online communities. communication arts also has an onlinecomponent, but i think you have to have
a subscription to read all of the articles.but the more you read and the more you learn in terms of design vocabulary, the more you’regoing to be able to speak about your work and your brand and your design decisions. andpeople will just inherently have more confidence in what you’re doing and creating.that’s a little bit of a tangent. it’s more about design leadership and owningyour decisions. you wouldn’t, for example, want to put together mood boards,and someone asks you a question, and you’re not able to back up your ideas.it’s definitely helpful, like i said. include some notes and just provide contextso people understand your line of thinking in the event you’re notpresenting them in person.
i’m just going to pause for a momentand see if anyone has some questions. susan: we do. we have got about 20 questions inthe queue, so i think we’ll take a few right now and definitely save 10 minutes atthe end for some more questions. margie asks – or marjorie – sorry – asks,“once an organization has identified its brand, does it ever change? does the organization’sstrategic plan have any connection with its brand?†gopika: that’s a really great question. theshort answer is yes. i think that a brand that sticks with what was – i mean, we workedwith a lot of organizations that were founded 15, 30 years ago, and there’s certainprinciples that remain true today.
but then there’s so many new programs orservices or offerings that your organization now offers, and your brand doesn’t reallyencompass the full suite or that full spectrum of what you’re doing. so every once in a while– and that timeframe – it’s hard for me say, “ok. after a year, you want to do this.after five years, you want to do this.†typically, at the end of the year, it is a pointof reflection. right? individually we kind of look at our life and say, this is what has worked,and these are my resolutions for the future. i think the same is true for an organization.it’s almost like a gut check where at the end of the year you can say, “yeah. we’re movingin the direction that we want to be moving in, and because of whatever has happened inthe past six months, we’re now changing
our strategic plan.†that doesn’t necessarilymean that you need to change your logo and your website and your brand froma visual standpoint; it could mean looking at your content and lookingat how you’re talking about your brand. that’s kind of a shorthand version of it. buti’d say that what we’ve seen with our clients is probably every three to five yearsthere’s a larger gut check that happens where they do want to revisit their logo orbranding, and it could be a slight modification or a complete overhaul. and that’sreally dependent on the direction that the organization is taking. susan: thank you. that’s a super helpfulexplanation. the next question comes
from [indistinct], and i hope i’m not butcheringthis person’s first name. so my apologies. they wonder: how do people workingon defining brand guidelines address generationaldifferences in their community? gopika: that’s a really good question. that’ssomething that’s true for every single brand. right? you’re designing and creatingsomething for a wide range of people. there are a lot of exercises that canhelp you identify your target audiences and be really clear on who that is. whileaspirationally, we want to serve everyone under the sun, realistically, youcould probably group your main audiences into one to three types of people. there’spersonas that can help you develop language
or aspects of your brand that speakto a specific demographic or age group or type of subset within your audiences.there’s also what’s called archetype. say there’s a hundred different typesof people that you’re trying to serve. if you really analyze those people, youcan group them based on their interests. that’s what i mean by an archetype. maybethere’s a group of people that it doesn’t matter what age they are; they’re all curious in learning.there’s a hypothetical for a nonexistent brand right now. but this whole group is interestedin learning. so what does that mean for you as an organization? how do you provide aplatform or a portal for learning on your website or in your materials? while theremight be gaps in generations,
a learning curve to a certain technology,there are ways for you to start to group your key audiences and develop personalities forthem. personas is one exercise that’s really fun. we can send, as a follow up, some helpfulresources to develop those for yourself. then i guess the other part to thatis, if specifically your question is, there’s this gap in generations andmaybe a learning curve because of that that needs to happen internally. then themore you’re stepping in the shoes of the people you’re designing for or creating for, themore you’re going to understand them as people, not as an age group or as an archetype per sebut as an actually living, breathing human being that you can relate to. if you can do that asa person, then you can translate those insights
into your design. susan: thank you. i think one more for thisbreak, and then we’re going to transition to the rest of your presentation. veryquickly, a lot of folks have chatted in: what tool did you use to create these moodboards? and perhaps, define mood boards one more time. i know there are three that youcovered: typography, imagery, and illustration. so if you could just talk about how youdid that, what tools you recommend they use to do one of their own. gopika: sure. mood boards – i use indesignbecause it lets you crop images really well. you can also use pinterest as a tool where itmight not look exactly like what you see here,
but definitely gives you a nice compilationof imagery, and then you can make comments and have it be very collaborative.what a mood board is, is they basically translate emotions, ideas,and feelings, all of the intangible aspects of your brand, into visuals. and they alsohelp you facilitate conversation between you and your team. you can look at thesepulled, found examples. so just to clarify, on this mood board here for illustration, i didn’tcreate any of these illustrations from scratch; they were all pulled from siteslike behance and the internet and different design inspiration sourcesthat i have, and i use them as talking points throughout the process. the way youbreak down your mood board can change.
for this particular client i chose todo imagery, typography, and illustration. you could have a mood board just on color.you could have a mood board on pattern. it really depends on your organization and whoyou’re working with and what the brand requires. susan: thanks so much. gopika: ok. i think we’ll just jump into the restof the presentation. the last layer of your brand is your action. just as your true north and visualidentity tell a story about your organization, so do the people and policies behind yourbrand. this is often an overlooked element of the branding process. i’m not going to spenda terrible amount of time talking about it, but it’s definitely a veryimportant aspect to consider.
say, for example, you’re anenvironmentally conscious company, but your office uses styrofoam cups.if part of your mission is to bring more compostable materials into theworld, but your own office hasn’t changed their purchasing policies, then there’s anobvious disconnect that dilutes your brand, and it’s not a very authentic story. at elefintwe value excellence, care, and playfulness. these are three of the values we hold as ourtrue north, as a studio. so when we’re hiring, we look for these qualities in a candidate.so you might be an amazing designer, but you don’t really care about the work thatyou’re doing or the clients that you’re serving, and you don’t bring a sense of humor to theoffice. that type of person is going to affect
our studio culture, and it’s going todilute how people feel about elefint when interacting with us in person. that’sjust one example of how your brand, the people, policies are all coexisting to tell your story.i’m just going to flip to a few other examples. here is a shoe company called allbirdsthat uses zq-certified merino wool. this means that they meet really high standardsof sustainable farming and animal welfare, and at the same time, they care aboutyour comfort. i don’t work for allbirds, nor do i have an understanding of theirinternal policies, so these insights are pulled primarily from myexperience as a potential consumer. so i’m looking at it from the outside. i’d liketo highlight, basically, how their brand ambassador
has successfully – and in very little time.the company launched, i think, maybe a year ago or so. in that amount of time, theseambassadors have shaped a very powerful and authentic story for them.these are images that i pulled from their instagram account. without readinganything or talking to any of their employees, i got this immediate feeling of whatthey’re about and what they value. they’re fun; they care about the environment;they value comfort and excellence in design; they want you to be you in their shoes.whether you’re on their instagram account or show up at one of their popup locations,there’s a seamless and uniform brand story. the product is minimalist. they onlyoffer a certain number of colors.
but the personality comes out inthese unique stories behind the photos, behind the packaging, behind their people.we’re not official allbirds ambassadors, but yes, this picture in the middle with theelephant is definitely one of our favorites. the reason i first heard about allbirdsis actually from my colleague abigail who stumbled upon their shoes in a popupin san francisco. she told me she would have never remembered anything about this companyif it weren’t for their memorable brand. how many organizations can you list asmemorable, not because of what you read or what they do, but because of howyou felt when you interacted with it? at the end of the day, that’s the goal.
a thoughtful brand – and for someonewho’s worked with brands every day, i’ve put a lot of thoughtinto what makes a strong brand. for us, a thoughtful brand isauthentic; it’s memorable; it’s reliable. and we often associate great branding with onlythe biggest and sexiest companies like apple or nike or gatorade. we truly believethat the same guiding principles that make big brands memorable canalso be applied to your organization, to this for-good space. so i’m just going tolook at a few examples within this nonprofit space that has strong branding and thereforhave highlighted their cause to millions. i love this panda. for me it doesn’tjust represent the world wildlife fund;
it’s also a symbol for animal rightsand has been in use for about 50 years. most of us recognize the panda. there area number of design notes i could discuss right now, but i’ll save that for anotherday. the one thing i’ll note is that the reason the panda is so memorable isbecause they stepped out of the norm, choosing not to use an image ofthe world, a tree or holding hands; logos we see a lot in the nonprofit space.while it’s extremely difficult to create such an iconic mark as this, our goalwith any brand is to create something that’s just as memorable and authentic.one thing to note, and something that you would want to include in yourbrand guides, is the rules and constraints
around your mark. the reason why thismark is so memorable is because the panda never changes. you never see it incolor. you never see it stretch or flip. it never sits alongside other illustrations andanimals. there are certain rules and guidelines that inform how this logo is used.and it’s important with any brand to have strict guidelines on logousage. this ensures consistency across all of your touchpoints. and ifyou want a little bit more information on how to construct a brand book or what goesinto it, then remember to check out our level 2 course, because it goes into all the steps andelements in creating your own brand guidelines. it can definitely be tricky to stand out from allthe noise. there are thousands of organizations,
for example, that are working to bring cleandrinking water to remote regions of the world. yet charity: water is one of the mostwidely known from a brand perspective. when someone mentions charity:water, i immediately think yellow, plastic water containers. they’ve successfully turned their physicalproduct into an icon and universal symbol for water quality. again, one that iswidely known and recognized across the globe. i’m just going to go back to that slide. andi think we’re going to pause and go to a poll. susan: yes! great! we’re going to check andsee. we’ve got lots of questions in our chat box as well, but just a quick poll questionto see, everybody that’s been listening:
what is a true statement about a thoughtfulbrand according to what gopika just shared? a thoughtful brand is authentic.a thoughtful brand is memorable. a thoughtful brand is relatable. and youshould be able to choose as many as you want. i think a lot of the chat questions thathave come in, too, are a lot about logos and copyrights, gopika. if you do have a chanceto talk about that, that would be awesome. gopika: sure. are there questions about logos?the use of logos, or how to create a logo? susan: it’s about the use of a logoand copyrighting. if you could cover some copyrighting issues with designinglogos and some of the challenges folks may have in nonprofits.
gopika: sure. obviously, you want to do agood amount of research in terms of what logos and marks are out there and being used.taking time is definitely worth it to print those examples out and just makesure that you’re not creating anything that’s already been in use. there’s definitelyoutside consultants and design studios that help facilitate this process andmake sure that anything that you’re making isn’t already trademarked orused widely in circulation. in terms of logo, and really differentiatingyour brand, i think one of the biggest things is making sure that you’re alsonot using the same or similar colors than similar organizations in the space.even putting together like a swatch board
of the common used colors that are forclean drinking water or animal rights or ocean conservation can help you adda little bit of an element of surprise, to use something slightly different.it’s hard. i don’t know if i know enough about content writing and trademarking, butthere’s definitely, especially if you’re engaging an outside service, there are specialists inthis. i wouldn’t try and tackle that all in-house. susan: great. thank you. if you choseany one of these, you would be correct. and i love the fact that peoplethought a thoughtful brand is memorable. gopika: yeah. that’s great! definitely, thoughtfulbrands are authentic, memorable, relatable, all of those things. a thoughtful brandspeaks to who you are and who you’re not.
a thoughtful brand is well executed.it will legitimize your cause. and it will tell an authentic story.we don’t have a terrible amount of time, so i just want to flip through afew of the remaining slides here. but just to leave you as a takeaway, here issome of the core elements to a strong brand. we talked about having a clear mission andvision statement. having a visual identity that speaks to your values; that means yourlogo, color palette, font choices, image style. creating a brand book that outlines some ofthe rules and guidelines around these elements. making sure to share your brandbook widely across the company. it’s helpful to inspire people andget people excited about working.
it’s a fantastic training tool for newhires to get them on board, and in turn, creates brand ambassadors, people within theorganization that feel so connected to the cause that they actively promote and advocatefor your organization on their own time. i think we have maybe a few minutes,and i’ll walk you through one more common or big brand, one that i love, which ispatagonia. we all probably recognize this logo or know the name. i started to – i’ve been a bigfan of patagonia since i was in middle school. it was because my friend shoppedthere, and growing up on the east coast, it was the perfect sleeve. they gave methe perfect sleeve for east coast winters. the more i learned about the company, themore committed i was to buying from them
over other outdoor companies. this isbecause i read, before starting elefint, i read yvon chouinard’s book, let my peoplego surfing, and i realized there was so much more to this product than just the jackets andamazing outdoor photos in every, single catalog. i started to pay more attention to theirbranding and quickly recognized how authentic their story was from itsfounding. patagonia is a b corp. they actively counter consumerism, but theysell products that use natural resources. it seems counter intuitive,but they’re exactly on brand. because they have such a deep understandingof their values, they can put out controversial ad campaigns that change behavior whiledirectly promoting their organizational values.
the point here is, basically, the more youknow yourself, yourself being the organization, the more you’re able to create authenticmessaging and make your mark on the world. here is an example of how they’re doingthis online. one part of their website - and this goes back to the questionaround copyrighting and content - but here, one part of their websiteis dedicated to showing consumers the environmental footprint of the clothingthey sell. this dress is partially made up of recycled polyester and partiallyspandex. they state why they aren’t able to trace the source of their spandex.they’re super transparent about it. i think it’s important to note that strongbrands aren’t necessarily aiming for perfection;
they’re aiming for authenticity. i feel likei have a little bit more in my presentation, but i’d love to leave some time nowfor any last, remaining questions, and if there’s time to go throughanother example, i can do that. susan: great! thanks so much. wedo. we have quite a lot of questions. rhonda asks- she has heard that modern design is “flat with no use of embossing and shadows.†is that true, or isthat just a statement somebody made about their particular brand? gopika: no. definitely, we’re seeing a big trend,especially in product design and web design, towards what’s called flatdesign. google released something
that’s called material design. they have areally great website where you can actually walk through and understand that better.but it is stripped of a lot of shadows and things that make an icon or a logofeel realistic. and that shift was a trend, and it’s still going, and that’s not to saythat every, single brand needs to follow that. i would actually recommend – this is whereunderstanding your values is really important, because you don’t want your brandto not withstand the test of time. and that’s why that panda for the worldwildlife fund is so powerful for me. because this form, it actually was alittle bit different 20, 30 years ago. it was a little bit more realistic, and thenthey cleaned it up to have these clean edges
but still a very defined panda. so whileyour brand might shift and change over time – even if you look, historically, at ourelephant in our mark, when we started out it was a little bit crazy looking, and thenin the past year or two we cleaned it up to make it flatter and scale better. i wouldn’tjust go with a trend or read one article and say, “ok. we need to follow suit.†i wouldreally understand your own values and then make decisions accordingly. susan: great. thanks so much. wealso have a question about rebranding. if you have an organization that hasshifted, and perhaps it’s too [indistinct], and you want to make it appeal to a youngerdemographic, is rebranding a good idea?
gopika: yeah. because i don’t havethe details, i can’t necessarily say whether a complete brand overhaul isrequired, or if some aspect of your brand could be enhanced. there’s pros and consto both. if you’re looking at your brand, and you just want it to be fresher and livelierand just speak to the organization of today and the future, then perhaps a brandoverhaul is important. we’ve definitely worked with organizations to not only tackle theirbrand but also their name. so they want a new name that speaks to where they’re heading in thenext 10 years. those are really good questions and conversations to start asking and having.again, it’s hard to definitively say in this webinar whether that’s the right approach for you.but if you’re finding that there’s a huge part
of your audience that isn’t being spoken to,and something is very dated about your content or your look, then some sort ofrefresh or rebranding might be needed. susan: great! thanks. one more or maybetwo more questions. also letting folks know that these questions will be shared withthe presenters for them to respond to and to get back to you. some of youhave some very specific questions about your particular nonprofit. gopika andabigail can certainly respond to some of those questions individually. one questionthat came up is, is there a difference between experience with developing a brand fora public library? are there different challenges that you could see for a librarybranding than for a nonprofit?
gopika: you know, for us it wouldn’t necessarilymatter that you’re a library versus a nonprofit, because ultimately you’re there to serve acertain demographic. you have key audiences just like a nonprofit does, just like ab corp would or just like for profit does. so instead of comparing yourself to othernonprofits, you have to ask yourself, what are your goals? what are the goals ofthe library? what are you trying to achieve? what are the goals of your audiences,and where are there points of intersection between the goals of you, the library,and those of your target audiences. then you can start to think aboutwhat sort of decisions you can make and whether that means puttingsome more attention on your brand
or how you’re giving people access tobooks or periodicals or information. ultimately, you are providing a space wherepeople can learn, so learning environment. i would kind of step out of this. ok.is it important for me as a library versus a nonprofit and start to ask the question,what do we want to do in this amount of time that we have and how dowe go about doing that? susan: great. thank you. we stilldo have a lot of questions in queue, but we have run out of time. as i mentioned, wewill be forwarding these questions on to gopika and abigail to answer and get backwith you. they’ve agreed to do that. and some of these more specificquestions about your nonprofit,
they may want to channel those right backto you to ask some additional question, or if you’re interested in workingwith elefint as a design team. thank you so much for this. obviously, folks arefascinated with the information you’ve shared, and we could probably do three orfour of these webinars about design. really quickly, can everyone just chatone thing in that they learned today? i know it’s probably difficult to identify one thing,but just chat one thing in that you learned today or you may try to implement. and keep inmind that we will share a list of resources, particularly around logos, branding,mood boards, how to develop those and some best practices, in addition to tryingto address some of the more general questions,
in our follow-up email whichyou will receive in about a week. we do have a free course thatgopika has developed that will answer many of the questions that you hadin the chat box, and you can find that on https://techsoup.course.tc/catalog. it isdesign for nondesigners 101. it is a free course. we really encourage you to go there. you willactually begin to build your, it’s like a starter kit for brand guidelines, and she’s done an amazingjob of building videos, powerpoint presentations, and exercises to help you think through someof these processes that she’s described today. also coming up, check out our webinars.we’ve got lots and lots of webinars in the month of march. easy for me to say.join us for any of our quickbooks desktop
for either new nonprofit users or existingnonprofit users. those of you here joining us from libraries, how to protect patron privacyin public libraries coming up next week. and also a techsoup tour about technologydonations coming up at the end of the month. i am so sorry. we have run a little bitover time. i do want to remind everyone, there is a survey we want you to takethat will pop up as soon as you x out or as soon as you leave this event. please dotell us the things that you liked about this, things that we can do better,and suggestions for other topics. i want to really – a most sincere andheartfelt thank-you to gopika and abigail. they have worked very hard to create thefree course, design for nondesigners 101,
and we will also come out with a follow-upcourse, design for nondesigners 201, in a few weeks. that will also beavailable on our techsoup courses. they are amazing resources, and i do hope thatfolks do follow up with them to find out more. and i know that abigail will chat out their emailand website and perhaps their twitter handle. also, a huge thank-you, on the back end, tobecky for handling all the chat questions, tech challenges, and also,re-chatting out some of your comments. and a huge thank-you to all of you for hangingin there. sorry we went a little over time. we know your most valuable asset is your time,so we appreciate the hour and four minutes you spent with us today. thank you somuch. and thanks to readytalk, our sponsor.
so have a great rest ofyour day, everybody. bye-bye.