Episode 196: What to include in a brand brief for a designer
Clarity equals confidence. In today's episode, Fiona talks about what to include in a brand brief for a designer. She also shares the different elements of a brand brief, and tips on working with a designer. Tune in!
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
Parts of a brand
What is a brand brief?
Elements of a brand brief
Tips when working with a designer
Conclusion
Get in touch with My Daily Business Coach
Resources and Recommendations mentioned in this episode:
Holly
Annette O'Brien
So you'll need a brand brief, which is basically a PDF document that you can share with your designer and give them as much insight and information as possible about your business. And there is a difference between a business and a brand, but especially if you're starting out, you've got a business. And what you wanna do is turn that into a brand. And that is something that will happen over time.
Hello and welcome to episode 196 of the My Daily Business Coach podcast. If you are listening to this in real-time, it is Thursday, the 21st of April, and we are closing the doors on the next nine-week course and coaching program for Marketing for Your Small Business. That is nine weeks of live coaching with myself and other small business owners, as well as working through the signature course Marketing for Your Small Business. If you're interested in that check out marketingforyoursmallbusiness.com, or you can also go to mydailybusinesscoach.com/marketing and get onto that because we are closing the doors at the end of this week, and we start next Tuesday, the 26th of April. All right.
So today you're listening to a coaching episode and before we get stuck into that, I just want to acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians on this beautiful land in which I live and work and play and raise my kids and record this podcast. The Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. And I pay my respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging, and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded. All right, let's get into today's coaching episode.
All right. So I'm gonna work through something today, which I work on with clients all the time, but I have to give a shout out to HollyDay Travel. And that is Holly from HollyDay Travel who contacted me on Instagram and regularly sends me DMS, which is always so nice. And she was telling me about her partner, who is starting a business. And she had asked, “Does any of your episodes deal with creating a brand brief?” And I was like, no, they don't, but thank you for that. for the content tip because I work on this all the time with clients, and it's definitely something that I'm happy to share. And she was like, oh my goodness, that would be so amazing because she just sort of said, we are really trying to get everything in order to present to a graphic designer.
And we need to know kind of a hundred percent on what we want the brand to feel and look like and help the graphic designer as much as possible. And I was like, do you mind if I make that into a podcast? And she was like, totally fine. So again, massive shoutout to HollyDay Travel for messaging me this question. And also just a reminder, if you have any questions like that, feel free to send me a DM I'm @mydailybusinesscoach on Instagram, or you can email us at hello@mydailybusinesscoach.com and we'll do our best to address it either in a podcast or an email back to you or a voice note. I love using voice notes. So Holly had contacted me and asked me about brand briefs. Now, just for some context, I have worked in the branding space and marketing and content for 20 plus years, and creating a brand brief is something I've literally done a hundred plus times in my own work-life before I started my business, as well as in my business with many clients now.
So often people confuse branding with the visual things that you see. So the customer-facing logo, or perhaps the typography that you see, or the color palette. And yet they're not thinking about all the other parts. Like if you think about it, as I often talk about like a Redwood tree that has really deep roots, the deep roots are all the other parts of the brand that are not always visible to the audience on first glance. However, as you build up brand loyalty and you really, savor that relationship that you have and the connections that you have with your audience, then those roots start to become a lot more visible. So in addition to the visual components of the brand, which is, what we'll be talking about kind of today when we're talking about a brand brief, there are also so many other parts to the brand.
So you've got your mission, your vision, your values. You've got what the actual business does. So like the function you've got your personality, what's your tone of voice. I mean, you could have two stationary brands that basically sell exactly the same thing, but their tone of voice and their personality are very different. And so personality is a huge one identity, which is what we'll talk about, which is not just the visual identity, but your tone of voice, your language, your communication styles, the channels that you choose, and then things like your positioning, are you high-end luxe? Are you a mainstream low price kind of thing? I was gonna say a low fire, but all of these things together create sort of the brand. And what we'll talk about today is a brand brief because that's actually what Holly had contacted me about, but I wanted to give that context that yes, you might working with an agency or working with a designer.
And particularly for the first time, many times when people are starting outta business, they will make their own graphics. And sometimes that works. Sometimes it is horrible, but, sometimes working with a designer can be an expensive thing, especially working with an agency. I often get quotes for design for my clients. So I'll often, sort of think about what sort of range they have or talk about it. And then I will go out to people that I really like their work and have worked with them before. And there's always a range. There's always a range from the kind of cheapest to the middle, to the high end and according to what the, what the budget is as well. I don't go out to get something that I know that the client is not gonna spend that money on, but you can have branding.
I mean, you can find people that would do a logo for $15. I'm sure on Fiverr, that is not at all what I suggest to my clients, but I know that people have done that. Or you could just go into Canva and find logos that are already done and kind of create your own, or you can go right the way through, I think the most expensive logo just for the logo itself, not the other stuff came in at I $67,000 plus GST, which I thought was a lot. However, let's look at Nike or other things like that. The logo is huge and it becomes an iconic thing. However, it also is the brand around it. Nike could have just used an N or something else. And maybe I know that might be very controversial. It may have just become the tick mark.
Anyway, let's come back to the brand brief what you wanna do, whether you are just starting out for the first time with a solo graphic designer or whether you are really trying to grow the business. And potentially maybe you've been in business for a long time, and you're going into an agency setting with maybe a really deluxe agency, either way, you'll need a brand brief and a brand brief is basically it's a PDF. You can, I guess you could do it in word or other things, but I like to be visual. And I think that because you're working with visual people, the graphic designer or the agency, then I think it's good to deliver it visually. And actually, I should say, just side note, if you're a graphic designer and listening to this, the amount of times I've seen quotes come back in a word document, and I'm always like, you guys are designers like, come on at least have like, I don't know, a single page PDF with an image on the side.
I just always find that fascinating that years and years of getting quotes from people, I'm always surprised sometimes they're absolutely beautiful, but quite often they're not. And I think this is a chance to sell your work. So just a side note, if you are working in that space, have a look at how you present your quotes anyway. So you'll need a brand brief, which is basically a PDF document that you can share with your designer and give them as much insight and information as possible about your business. There is a difference between a business and a brand, but especially if you're starting out, you've got a business. And what you wanna do is turn that into a brand. And that is something that will happen over time. But part of that is the visuals, which is the identity part of the kind of brand equation that I talked about before.
And so I get people that I'm working with to kind of fill in a questionnaire and then we sort of work through it together. And it might take a couple of sessions for some people it might take just them doing their homework and getting it done because they've done it heaps of times before. Other times it's much longer because it is a hard thing to get your head around, especially if you're new to it because it's not just, I like circles and I like pink. Can I have a pink circle logo? And you could do that. But I don't think that that actually helps you create a brand that is just a logo mark. So when you're creating the brand brief, the first thing that you wanna understand is do you know the elements of your brand? So outside of, I want this color palette, I like this typography.
If we go back to that kind of brand equation, you've got your mission. What is your current state? What are you trying to do? You've got your vision, which is where do we want to be? Like, where are we trying to get to? What's our big picture, crazy out there, vision for the company. So if you think about it, let's say Nike because I mentioned them before now, I don't know if this is in the mission, but I'm just making an example. So their mission might be, we create incredible apparel and footwear that helps people exercise. Let's just say, I mean, that's really boring mission, but, and then their vision might be, we believe everyone is an athlete. And so that vision is much greater than what they literally, which is the apparel and the footwear and say accessories and all sorts of other things.
But the vision is everyone. Everyone can be an athlete. And so there's that inspirational element to that. And that's what you want with your vision as well. Then you've got your values. And if you have not worked through your values, we have a free values checklist. You can go to mydailybusinesscoach.com/freestuff, and you can download it there. You can also find a bunch of other things there. And so you wanna understand your values so that you can really be clear to the designer and you don't know what is in the designer's head. That's why they're designers. They're just incredible creative people. I know I'm married to a graphic designer and one of my best friends is also a designer. And I'm just actually surrounded by graphic designers. So many graphic designers in my life, and they can come up with just magic just by knowing a couple of words or a couple of things that you can give them.
So the more that you can give them, the more you are allowing them to really dive into who are you as a business, and how can I bring that to life visually? And so say, for instance, one of your values is let's say one of my values is freedom. And so if you are sharing that with them, there may just be something in that word that then they go and they create this incredible graphic, which you're like, where did that come from? And they were like because I was thinking about freedom. And I was thinking about, I don't know, birds and flight. And, and so I put this feather in or, or something else like that. And it's like, that makes so much sense. So let's say actually in my business for real, I, for real for rules, I worked with a graphic designer a few years ago and we're actually in the middle of rebranding at the moment.
And so I worked with her a while ago and I talked through my business. I gave her the same sort of brand brief. And I'm about through with you. And she came up with this element of steps and I would never have thought of that. And I was like, steps, like explain this to me. And she was like steps because you're a business coach and you are teaching people steps, and you're also helping them scale certain things. And you're also helping them with mindset issues. When maybe they're coming down the steps, not always going up the steps, but either way there is growth and there is change and there is a movement happening. And I was like, I love that. And I was like, I would never have come up with stairs as a part of my logo or as part of my branding.
And it's a very subtle thing. And if you've ever seen any presentations from me, you'll see little steps, very slightly in red and blue on the bottom of different presentation documents. So really interesting what can come out of these conversations. So you wanna know your values. And like I said, if you haven't done that before, check out the values checklist that we've got at mydailybusinesscoach.com/freestuff, you can also find it in the Passion Purpose Profit Book if you happen to have my book. So you wanna understand that part, you also wanna let them know what do you actually do? And that can be something that we just almost forget to tell people. So obviously my business name trading as which is My Daily Business Coach obviously people are like, you do business coaching. And it's like, but we also sell courses.
We also do speaking. I also have a book, we do workshops, and I do seminar sessions. I do master classes in other people's mastermind groups. So there's a lot of other stuff going on outside of just one on one business coaching. There's also group coaching. There are all these other things. So I'm gonna really be clear. What does the business do? What is our function? What are we, and what are we trying to get out there? And also it's important that if you're working with a designer and this isn't something that you do all the time, so it's probably something you're doing, maybe I don't know, once every couple of years you wanna tell them about anything that's coming up as well. So even if you haven't launched that, say you are, I don't know, gonna do retreats, or you are going to maybe put a book out or maybe you're gonna out doing heaps more videos, or you're gonna have an education hub.
You wanna tell them about that? Or maybe you're in product and you're gonna start having subscription boxes. And so it's like, I wanna tell you everything that I'm doing so that not to overwhelm them, it can just be bullet points. But so that they're really clear because again, people have very different ideas of what people do inside their business and you wanna be as, as possible. And also it comes they might be like, awesome. If you're doing subscription boxes, have you thought about these types of stickers or have you thought about this sort of wrapping sticky tape, or have you thought about when people open the box that there's some sort of logo or there's some sort of tight mark or there's a hashtag or whatever. So they'll have ideas there as well, but then you've got the actual identity, which we'll talk about a bit more, which is your visual identity and kind of, how do you wanna be perceived?
You've got positioning. So where are you in the market? And if you haven't listened to it, I did do a quick tip episode back earlier this year. So Episode 181, which talks about the brand axis, which is a great way of looking at your positioning. So the brand axis is really looking at different sorts of opposites. So are we bold or are we reserved? Are we classic? Are we crazy modern? Are we quiet? Are we loud? Are we brash? Are we wallflower all these different sorts of opposites and you map out the matrix to where you are and actually quite a few graphic designers when they are working with you, they will actually have a brand axis or they'll have sort of a whole bunch of list of opposite words. And they'll ask you to mark where you are in between those two words.
And so it's a similar sort of thing. So if you wanna check that out, it's Episode 181 and we'll link it in the show notes, but to kind of go back to the kind of brand elements, you've got your mission, your vision, your values, you've got what you actually do. You've got your identity, you've got positioning, you've got the personality, which is also quite important. Are we a funny brand? Are we a serious brand? Are we really high-end? Are we a very stylish brand? Think of your personality, just like you would as a person. If your brand was a person which celebrity would they be or often people will say, what animal would your brand be or anything I really think about? You could go all out. If you wanna, like, what plant would your brand be?
I mean, it could be anything. What film would you be if your brand was a sound, what would be the number one song, like all these sorts of things? So really try and give it as much personality as you can. And so all of those parts create the brand equation, which is really important to kind of knuckle down and sort out before you do your brand brief, of course, you can just do a basic brand brief, but if you work with me, that lots of things and not basic, and that we go through kind of the building blocks so that you can then like, cause everyone that works with me, yes, I've worked with people for years. Some clients who are just absolutely adored, but definitely my aim is to teach clients how to do this for themselves as well.
And so I want them to know how to create a brand brief again and again. And if they create a new business or a subpart of the business, or if they sell their business and do something else, they will know how to create this stuff. So that's a lot of talk about the kind of foundations that you sort of wanna get, right? Not sort of you do wanna get right, and have a really clear understanding of cuz otherwise, especially if you're working with an agency that is going to charge you every time you have a meeting, you'll be up for a lot of money to just work this stuff out with them. So the more work that you can do at the start yourself and get clear on more, the two things, the less amount of money that you're gonna have to pay because you're not spending as much time going through this stuff with them because you've kind of clear on it yourself.
But also, and I've seen this happen a few times is that you are less likely to be swayed by an agency. So it can be very intimidating to go into a graphic design agency or a creative agency. Often people who work in those agencies are inter style and they are all beautiful, beautifully dressed. And that's part of their, they kind of have to be in that world and it can be intimidating to come into this beautifully branded company and sit down with people. And before you know it, if you are not clear on what you want as the business owner, sometimes not all the time, for sure, not all the time, but you can get swayed into, maybe you came in and you kind of were like, I really like sort of pales and pals. And then they're like, I think it should be all black.
And everyone's like around the table. Yeah, it should totally be all black. And then suddenly you're like, yeah, maybe it should be all black, even though I kind of wanted this pastel pink rainbow color. And so there's no problem with debate and going through this. And of course, anyone that you work with should sort of challenge you in ways, but the clearer that you can be, the less likely that you're going to get swayed completely into an area that you are not necessarily happy to go down. Now, it sounds like I don't like agencies. I love the agencies that I definitely recommend my clients work with. I think they're brilliant, so if you are one of them listening, Hello, I know that you do not do that, but I definitely do that. Know that it works in some places, people have a particular way that they want to go.
They want their clients to look and they want their brand to look as an agency. And so they will walk you down that path, whether you wanted to go down that path or not. So being as clear as you can at the start, it's just gonna help everybody. All right. So onto the brand brief, now I usually just build these in Canva. And I know here I am talking about design and I know that graphic designers tend to not love Canva, but I think Canva is an amazing tool. I use it every single day. I swear they should pay me because I've been using it since 2015. And I just recommend it at least twice a week to somebody. So the first thing that you wanna do is kind of come up with a way of tracking all the work that you've done in your brand.
So that could be a Google Document. It could be whatever way that you wanna do it. It could be a notepad, but having together all those elements. So what are my values? What's my mission. What's my vision. Do I have a tagline? Who's my audience. Like, how am I positioning myself? What's my personality. All those sorts of things. And ideally, you will have already had a look around at brands. You love brands, you don't, why do you like them? Why you don't like them? I love just having a play around on Pinterest and am often telling all my clients, to have a play around on Pinterest and start just gathering things that speak to you. They may be completely opposite in terms of branding. Like when somebody looks at them, they might be like, that typography, the type that you've chosen is very different.
However, there might be a common threat, maybe it's fat type. Maybe it's got cursives, maybe there's an element to it. That's kind of old-fashioned or French provincial or something like that. And so once you pull those together, you'll have more of an understanding of what the common theme is. So the first thing is to have all that kind of brand work mapped out somewhere so that you can call on that when you're creating your brand brief. So then you've kind of got your cover page or whatever you wanna have. Maybe it's an image of your product. Maybe it's an image of you. Maybe it's not, maybe it's just the word of your name, whatever it is. And then the kind of first thing that I like people to start with is just giving me an understanding of your business, which is really your about page.
If you have a website, you could just sort of taking it off that if you're happy with your, About Us kind of information, if you've never done this before. One thing that I suggest to people is to go to a magazine or publication that you really like and look at the kind of questions that they ask, to small business owners or just to the people that they interview and then answer those questions yourself. And again, if you really are worried about doing that or you find it very hard to do that, especially in like written form, just ask somebody in your life to interview you and record yourself, record it so that you can hear it back the audio and listen to the words that you use. And again, if you wanted to, you could even just record it into the Notes App, using the microphone, which would put it into text format.
So that is a long way of saying that the first page is really you're about like, how did the business start? Why did it start? What's different about it? What are you trying to achieve? Like give me as much information as possible but in a succinct format. So all of these shouldn't be more than two or three paragraphs. Like it shouldn't be like pages and pages. You don't wanna overwhelm people. You wanna keep it sort of short and sharp, but give them enough information that they have somewhere to go with this. Then you've got about the person. So you might have the business itself. And then you wanna have a little bit about the figurehead. So I always like to humanize marketing, humanize your brand. And so it could be, you're bringing in some photos, maybe you are a parent.
Maybe you have photos with you and your kids if that's relevant to your business, or if you wanna put that in, you might have just a beautiful photo that you love that you're using on LinkedIn or something else, put that in so that people get an understanding. It could even be, say, for instance, if I put a photo in of myself, I would say that majority of photos that I have that I'm thinking about now, I'm in some sort bold kind of outfit. So not crazy bold, but, I like prints. I like color. I love big earrings. And so just putting that image in may even give a designer. They're like, okay, I see that. And I've seen it on your Instagram. So this is what we're thinking for your brand. So again, just putting in as much information as you can about the founder or founders, if you have it, then you wanna move into what do you actually do?
So this is sort of your business function. Like what do we create? And you can just have a bullet list. You could have links to certain pages on your website. If the brand already exists, you might have multiple images in here. It might go for a few pages of your different product types or categories. Try again to give us a lot of information. And again, if you are yet to launch, put it in, even if you don't have the images yet, just put them in, we are hoping to launch it this time. This is what we hope to launch with our first collection will feature blah, blah, blah. Our second collection hopefully will go into blah, blah, blah, blah. Again, if you know where the business is going and you have some ideas, put them in, you can always ask people to sign an NDA before you get started, which is a nondisclosure agreement so that everything that you're presenting to them will not be shared outside.
So don't be too worried if you're like, I don't wanna tell them what we're doing in case they steal our idea. There's abundance in the world of people. But also if you are really scared about that, you can always get people to sign NDA. I've seen that quite often when people are creating a brand or rebranding. So yeah, you've got your kind of creations page or your offerings or your services or whatever it is you wanna make that really clear from the start. And again, put as much detail as you want. So if you wanna say, we do yoga mats. And actually, currently, we have a wrap-around kind of sleeve that goes on them, but we are looking to change that to stickers or a stamp that is actually stamped onto the yoga mat permanently, just put in as much information as you can so that people are clear that there's no sort of, okay.
We thought we were gonna do a sleeve. And you're like, no, didn't I tell you just be really clear, so you've kind of got that page or those pages then you wanna put in your audience. And again, this is something that I work on with clients all the time. So your audience you'll often have three. I know everyone's like just have one person that's fine. But I often think there are three and it could be one is your brand awareness person. One is your sales, like direct sales come from this person. So one might be like the aspirational market that wants to own your stuff, and that is sharing it and loving you and all of that. And then you might have the market that actually buys your stuff. And sometimes they're very different. And then you might have a third, which is kind of like say the media.
Maybe you do a lot of columns for different publications. Maybe you're an interior designer and that's sort of a large part. Your brand also needs to appeal to them. Or maybe you have your supply chain or your manufacturers, or maybe you do heaps of collaborations on products. And so you also wanna have like another designer in there as an example of your audience. So put in again, what you can, don't go overboard. You don't need to put in like 50-page buyer personas, but just put in an image that you think represents that ideal audience put in, what do they value? You can put their pains, their pleasures, their desires. You can put whatever you like in that, but try and be really clear at this is our audience. Because again, that is a big thing that branding agencies and creative agencies will ask, like, who's your audience?
Who is this for? How are they going to perceive your brand? How are they gonna see it? Where are they gonna see it? And so you've got your audience and then you will have kind of your values. So again, I've sort of talked about different ways that you can find your values, but again, try and limit these to like four or five key values. And you wanna just really get across, like, what is most important to you? So maybe you of values really shouldn't be in any kind of hierarchy, but sometimes they are sometimes you're like, this one is the number one. And so that is something that you really wanna stress to them, that this is the most important thing that we wanna get across in our values. Then it comes to the more kind of, I mean, all of those things are fun, but then you come to your mood boarding, which is really where I think Pinterest is like the go-to for this.
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I know there are other tools that you can use, but I just think Pinterest is incredible. I love Pinterest as a business channel for marketing and brand and also just for massive amounts of inspiration. So I often get people to think about like the overall mood for the business, what is the overall mood? And so you might have particular mood boards for different collections or particular mood boards for, you know, other things that will get into in a second, like your typography, your logo, your color palette, but the overall mood, is it dark and kind of moody? Is it super bright and fun and confetti, or is it somewhere in the middle? Is it, is it kind of hipster? Is it very laid back in earthy tones? Like mother earth? For instance in Australia, you have, I'm laughing because I'm thinking of the Netflix show Byron Baes, but you've got your Byron kind of aesthetic and then you've got your gold coast aesthetic and then you've got kind of Tasmania sort of like lush and wild and kind of a bit moody with a mist and you know, like we've all got, and then that's a major generalization, by the way, I'm sure I'm gonna get some DM from someone in gold coast saying we are not all wearing gold bikinis and doing the little, what do they do?
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Forgive me people on the gold coast, but just like, LA and New York, very different Sydney, Melbourne, very different. So you wanna be thinking about kind of what's the overall mood of this brand. And again, I think a great place to start is just to open a new board on Pinterest. You can make it a secret board and just start hint things like what appeals to you and what, what do you want people to take away from your brand? So, I think, My Daily Business Coach brand, I always want it to be approachable. I don't ever want it to look pretentious or that people can't approach it. There's an element of fun to it. There's an element of color to it because there's also an element of color to me. I mean, I sometimes wear black, but I will always wear crazy earrings with it.
I often wear black, actually. I shouldn't just say sometimes, but, or I wear all denim, but usually massive green earrings or purple earrings or red earrings or multicolor earrings. And so there's always color. I love color. I'm drawn to color. And so that me, and I'm a huge part of my brand. That's another question that comes up. Sometimes people will be like, well, how much is my brand me? This is it, a whole other episode that I could do, I should do, but it really depends. It depends if you've got an exit strategy and you wanna sell, is it depending on if you are the face of your brand, there are so many elements to that, but I think first start with this Pinterest Board and just what, what feels right for you. So again, I might be super into bold colors, but I'm also super inspired by nature.
And I'm literally saying this as I'm looking out towering gum trees, that I'm lucky enough to live within. We have a log cabin that we live in. I just love nature. I love it. This is why we chose to move here like seven years ago. I just love it, a huge inspiration to me. And so that, that might come into it as well. Pictures of nature, pictures of particularly Australian nature, because that's what I'm surrounded by. And so I can have that plus the bold and so sort of pushing as many things in as really represent the brand. And it could also be like the type of business coaching you do. Maybe you do, maybe if you're a business coach like me, you might do face to face. Whereas I do it on Zoom. Maybe you are a towel company and you are really about like the inner city pools rather than kind of the ocean, regional areas.
And so you wanna be putting all of this stuff in as much as possible into what's the overarching mood and it doesn't have to be specific to whatever it is that you sell. So I may have just confused people with what I've just said about the business coaching in the pools. Maybe your overarching theme is understated and clean and minimal. And so you might have like beautiful photos of architecture or beautiful photos of just like a minimal, a beach with no one on it with just like this clear line between the ocean and the sand you might have just like a perfect cup that represents clean and simple and minimal to you. And so don't get too swayed into, I need to have like flowers there because I'm a florist. Yes, you could. But you could also have other things that kind of, maybe you're a very minimal florist.
Maybe you only do like monochromatic flower colors, which would be very interesting, but maybe people are out there that just do like white roses. And like, I don't know if you can get black roses, but like very simple and stark, whereas someone else might be like crazy colors and like every of the rainbow and crazy different types of flowers. And then there might be another florist who's all into like a desert and like succulents only. And so those things can come into play. So think about the overarching theme and mood that you wanna convey and then have a play around on Pinterest. And I hope I haven't just confused everyone with that section, but I think I have so much fun with this type of work. Sometimes I wish I had been a graphic designer because I actually find pulling these images together so fun and I hope that you do too.
So that's the kind of first thing, your main mood board, and then you may have different mood boards according to the different collections that you have. So there might be certain things that you need to portray, but everyone, even if you're just a service, but if you're a service-based business like me, you'll have an overarching mood board. The other thing that you might wanna add-in at this stage is also what I do not want to be. So I know that when I started my business and I was doing a photoshoot for the first time I put in a whole lot of pictures that I did not wanna be. I wanted to be really clear to the photographer that I was working with. Who's a lovely Annette O'Brien that I did not want to come across in this way.
And I had a whole mood board of what I did not like. So you could also put that in. Don't be afraid of putting that in you again, the whole point of this is clarity. You want clarity equals confidence. I am always talking about that. Clarity equals confidence. The clearer you can be with a graphic designer or with an agency, the more confident you can be that you're all on the same page. So do not feel bad about putting in a page. That is what I do not want this brand to look like. Or you might have fears around others are just gonna look the same, or you might have a page about your competitors. These are my competitors, like brands. I do not wanna look like them, or maybe you do, who knows. And so you'll have your main mood board.
And then if you wish you could have collection mood boards, and then if you wish as well, you could have what I do not want to come across. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I think clarity equals confidence. So after that, you've put in the mood boards of kind of the overall. And again, like if you're listening and thinking, well, what do you mean if there's a different collection, a different mood board, let's say you sell clothing, right. And you put in your overarching mood water. Maybe it's like very kind of like Josh wood tree inspired, sort of Southwest kind of vibes from the US. And so you're kind of putting it in and maybe it's loungewear, that's sort of like minimal and cool and like natural earthy colors, but maybe you are about to pull out a kid's line as well.
But the kids' line is gonna be a bit colorful, a bit bolder. Maybe it's got prints and patterns. Maybe it's got like cacti and other stuff on it. And so that might have a slightly different mood board because it's going to be a slightly different part of the brand. And maybe it's a subbrand, maybe it's just your name plus kids, whatever it is, but you might have two different kinds of overarching mood boards. I hope that makes sense. And then after that, you are going to have your visual brand requirements. So what are we actually doing? And so often to say to people, we're just put in a page, that's saying here's our brand, here's the stage we're at. We are seeking a designer or a design studio to work with us to create our visual brand identity.
We've gone through a process and we understand what our brand's about. We understand what we'll represent, because again if you've done that foundational work, put it in here because otherwise quite often I will see quotes that come back with like multiple workshops to figure that stuff out. And yes, if you've got the time and the money for sure go through it, you can be incredible. But if you've worked through that stuff, whether with a business coach or by yourself or with a group or whatever it is, you can bypass a chunk of money that is going to be spent on that kind of like let's get the questions really clear B as clear as you can upfront. And it's going to save you time and money. However, I will preface that by saying, if you've never done this work for sure, and you've got the money, spend it to go through that stuff.
It is so important. But if you have done it, just make it really clear in your brand brief. We have gone through, we know who our audience is, what our values are, and the products we make. Then we're now looking for someone to help bring this to life in a visual format, including logo, typography, color palette, and a range of print and digital assets. And so you would go through those in a second. And then I often say to people, we would imagine, and every designer will work slightly differently, but overall you should roughly you'll present this to them. And they will come back with a quote, which is usually two or three concepts, just the concept upfront. And usually, that's just like a mood board, sometimes a couple of pages sometimes not. And so it'll be like, here's our initial concepts.
And then once you go through the process of choosing which of those you like, then they go through kind of putting that into a fleshed out more detail. So a style guide, which includes print and digital assets, sometimes templated, and then you'll go back and forth. And, and they'll usually say there's like one round of changes or there are two rounds of changes. Do note that if you have multiple rounds of changes, that he is going to cost because they're doing their work and it's their time. And so they're not just there endlessly to do multiple changes for you. And then after that, they will then usually deliver the final round. You'll say, yes, I like it. Or no, I need these tweaks. And then they will then create that in a platform. Usually, it's InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator, in other ways it's also Canva, more and more clients are expecting it to be in Canva.
So graphic designers are having to create it in Canva, or you can get it from a graphic designer InDesign and all of that, and then pay somebody to convert it into Canva. However, I always think it's good to work with a designer on that so that nothing is missed in the kind of trends between those two platforms. But that is the kind of, you want a page in there that says, this is our visual requirements, and this is where we're at. So where's the company at, why are we doing this? What do we want from you? And what do we need you to quote on? Which I've just talked about is like, so an example might be, we envisage receiving from you a quote of two or three initial concepts followed by a star guide, outlining print and digital assets. And finally, the templates for these are delivered InDesign and Canva.
We may also like the quote to include the cost for web design, not custom using a template in Shopify or Squarespace or Wix, or you could also web website design custom if you wish. And so that's kind of your one page to kind of tell them where you're at, what you want what you expect. So then you need to clearly outline what are the print assets and what are the digital assets? So print is really print anything that is physical. And then digital is the stuff that is not, that is digital. So I often just like to have like two columns and sort of say print we need, and it could be a packaging which might wraparounds. It could include stickers. It could include tissue paper. You might have sales sheets, information sheets, and line sheets. You might have flyers.
You might have lookbooks like physical lookbooks. You might have business cards. You might have, what else is there? Invoices with compliment slips, envelopes, whatever you're going to use sometimes people have no print assets. Sometimes they do. Maybe you've got things like tote bags. Maybe you're gonna do merchandise. Maybe you've got swing tags, you've got actual tags, like physical tags that go on the garments, all sorts of things. So you'll know, but put in as much detail again as possible, because this is gonna really help the designer when they're thinking about, okay, how does the logo, how's it gonna on this plus this, how's it gonna be consistency across all of these different communications, connection points between your audience and your brand. Then you've got digital. Often people forget things. So like email signatures, do you need that design?
Do you need actual email sequences designed? Do you need the website design? Do you need, an Instagram or media tiles mock-up? And so for that, you'll have your story tile. You might have a reels template. You might have the grid template. You might have the actual logo that's used on the BIO. You've got things like your Favicon, which is the little image that you see when you open a new tab. I mean, there are so many digital assets and you don't need to put in every single thing. If you put a website, often a designer will create a logo that can look good as Favicon as well. You've got invoices, you've got order forms. Anything else really? That's digital. So thinking about, okay, what are the key things that I would need to create digital thought? So you've got your print assets and your digital assets.
Then again, fun times with Pinterest. I feel like that should be a little jingle. Pinterest. If anyone from Pinterest is listening, feel free to get in touch about sponsorship. I would be happy to have you as an advertiser on this podcast anyway, back to fun stuff. So the next thing that you wanna put in is some ideas for your logo. And again, you are not trying to micromanage the designer. That is what they do. They design, they're creative, and you may be creative as well, but you are trying to show them what do I like? And again, the logos that you choose, and you can literally just start having a look on Pinterest, look up logos, or look up a creative logo or fat font logo, or whatever you liked. Maybe you look up some logos of like, maybe you really like acne their logo, or you like, I don't know a logo of a pizza shop that's near you.
And you could put that in and see if it comes up. And so, or maybe you really like, like 1990 surf logos. And so you're like, cool, I'm gonna put in 1990 surf logo and see what comes up and start sort of putting these together. And again, put them in a folder. And then usually what I do is just screen, grab that folder page. So as in open the board on Pinterest and then screen grabs and start having a look, so put in as much as you can and then remove, make it so that it's clear. So have the stuff that you love in there. Don't just put every single thing that maybe you like, maybe you and put in everything and then take away. So that what's left is the stuff that you really like. And they may be very different in terms of a typeface.
They may be very different in terms of style, but maybe some are retro. Maybe some are very modern, but maybe there's a common theme throughout them. So maybe they're all kind of minimal or they're all short names or maybe they've all got circles around them, who knows. And so put that in so that they can see. So you've got your kind of ideas for your logo and then similarly ideals for typography. And again, if you put into Pinterest typography, you'll often see matching typography. So you'll see complimentary typographies where they're like, this is the kind of header or heading. And then this is the kind of body font, or usually, you'll have like a heading then you'll have like a typeface and then you'll have a body and sometimes you'll have a body, in thin and then thick kind of bold and light.
So you'll put in the typography and then you come to your color palette again, another incredible thing that is really available on Pinterest. If you put in a color palette, you can either think about something that you love. So say for instance, if we go back to that florist that I talked about and say, one of them is all about like desert and succulents and cactus cacti. And so they might be putting in the sort of greens or the colors of the desert. And so they might just put in desert color palette and see what comes up and you can start seeing a whole bunch of different color palettes. The other thing that you can do is, especially if you are on a Mac, I don't know if this I'm sure there might be some sort of first of this on a PC, there is a free tool on a Mac called Digital Color Meter
So if you just type that into your applications, you'll see it come up. And what that allows you to do is actually find the RGB, which is the color kind of numbers for any image. So say you have an image on your Pinterest that you just love, you could find one of those colors using digital colored, and then just look up that color on Pinterest. So you could put in RGB and then color palette and see what comes up. The other thing that people have done that I've worked with is maybe like I've got one client and they had an image, like a postcard that had been on their kitchen and they just loved the colors in it. And so we just took a picture of that. And then I did this exact thing. I went digital color meter. I found one of the blues that was in there found different color palettes that kind of go with that and put them in.
And it's been amazing to watch every time I create a brand brief with clients and then we send it off and the design comes back and it's just incredible what they can create from this, but you're giving them a place to start. And often just going through your color palette, like just all the color palettes that you see on Pinterest. So many times maybe you've put in like a rose pink or like a dusty pink. And so, and then it will come up with all the kinds of complementary colors to that. And you're like, oh wow. I didn't realize green goes really well with that. And you're like, maybe now I want green in my kind of color palette and in my branding. And so it's such a good place to start, especially if you are not somebody that this comes really naturally to the other thing is to just look in nature.
I mean, so much of nature is just, I mean, I just think it's beautiful. And like right now I'm looking out at this beautiful big gum tree that has kind of grays and beige and kind of golden tones going through it. And I mean, that is a color palette in itself. And I just think there's so much out there to be inspired by. And when it comes to color palettes, it could be also like a dress that you absolutely love wearing. It could be a shirt that you love wearing and sort of look at the colors, like, why do you love wearing it? What about those colors excite you? So put things in, put your ideas for a color palette with the color palette. While I've said before that the logos can be kind of different with the color palette. You don't wanna be all over the shop.
Even if there are slight variations, you wanna be in, it's these types of colors or this type of color palette or it's very sort of natural colors or it's very crazy colors, or maybe you're inspired by the ocean. And you could literally definitely put in an ocean color palette and you'll see a million come up. Maybe you're inspired by the kind of colorful houses. I don't know, stuff that you would imagine seeing in like Cuba. And so you'd be putting in Havana colorful houses and then see what comes up and then put in color palette and sort of see those things as well. There's so much out there, but with your color palette page, in your brand brief, you wanna be kind of clearer rather than a bit of this, a bit of that, a bit of everything, cuz that's gonna be very confusing and again, we want clarity equals confidence.
So then it kind of comes to the end of it. And you wanna really, again, be super clear. And so your last sort of page is please provide a quote for, and then this includes logo, typography, color palette, a range of print and digital assets as outlined on page, blah, blah, blah. And then we would like your quote to include your costs for two to three initial designs or brand concepts. One-time full brand identity as above includes logo, typography, color palette assets, and a digital guide, outlining the look and feel templates delivered in InDesign and Canva. If you want a design guide. So a design guide often that'll be an extra charge. So that is really looking at things like your photoshoots. If you're gonna do photoshoots, what sort of the art direction that's gonna go with this brand, then you might have things like your website and e-commerce store design, and you at e-commerce build.
Sometimes these agencies will also have a web developer that they work with or they may do it all themselves as well. And then you just wanna be really clear, please submit your quote, no later than give them a time, give them a day, give them a date, give them a year. And then email address, be really clear because you just like everyone else, these people are busy and if you don't set a deadline, it can easily be like, well I didn't know when you wanted that. I didn't know how quickly you needed it. And then they may even lose out on the job because they didn't get back to you in time. So you wanna be really clear. I can't say that more, more throughout this episode. Clarity. So I'll just run through those things again. You've got your cover page.
You've got your About Us about the brand. Then you've got the, about the figurehead and the person that founded it. Then you've got, what does the business actually do? Then you've got your audience. Then you've got your values. Then you've got your main mood board feel. And again, you may have subcategories of this and you may like kids and you might also have a mood board of what you not wanna come across. Like then you've got your clear visual brand requirements. What do we require? Where are we at? Have we done the brand work prior to this or do we need help with that? Then you've got a clear outline of one of the print assets. What are the digital assets? You've got your ideas for your logo. You've got your ideas for typography. You've got ideas for the color palette. Please provide a quote for all of the stuff that you need.
Again, just again you need to be super clear. So that is it. I really hope that has helped you Holly and your partner with your businesses. But I also hope it's helped so many other people out there. So if it has helped you and you've found this really useful, I would love to hear from you. So please don't be a stranger. You can send me a DM @mydailybusinesscoach or you can email us at hello@mydailybusinesscoach.com. As I said, we will be putting out a course later this year on branding. If you would like to be on the waitlist for that, please just email us at hello@mydailybusinesscoach.com and let us know. And we'll make sure that you are the first to know when we launch that. But branding is something that I've worked on for years and years and years, decades. And I really would love to share more of this information with everyone out there.
So let us know if you're interested in that. And of course, if you are interested in learning about brand and marketing, you can do that at the Marketing for Your Small Business course, which kicks off next week. The coaching component of that, you can do the course anytime, you can just go to marketingforyoursmallbusiness.com and buy it. But if you wanted to do it with myself and other people and kind of have that accountability and get through it in nine weeks and have your marketing strategy and plan ready to go for the next financial year, especially here in Australia, you can sign up to the next intake, which starts next week on the 26th of April at marketingforyoursmallbusiness.com. All right, if you wanted to go through this in text format, you can find that over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/196, as this is episode 196. If you found this useful, I would love it so much. If you could leave a quick review, you can do that on Spotify now, as well as Apple, it just means so much for us. And it just helps us get found by other small business owners and hopefully, this sort of stuff will help them as well. Thank you so much for listening. I'll see you next time. Bye.
Thanks for listening to the My Daily Business Coach podcast. If you wanna get in touch, you can do that at mydailybusinesscoach.com or hit me up on Instagram @mydailybusinesscoach.
