[00:00:00] Nathan Wrigley: Welcome. So the WP Builds podcast, bringing you the latest news from the WordPress community. Welcome your hosts, David Waumsley, and Nathan Wrigley.
Hello there. And welcome once again to the WP Builds podcast, you've reached episode number 274. You've encountered. Creating a brand. It was published on Thursday, the 21st of April, 2020. My name's Nathan Wrigley and I'll be joined in just a few short moments by my good friend, David Walmsley, so that we can chat about this particular subject.
It's one of our WordPress business bootcamp series. We're going through six series in total, and this is series two episode number four, but more about that in a few moments, because first of all, a few bits of house. If you like what we're doing at WP Builds head over to our website. WP Builds.com.
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Okay. That's all I've got in terms of housekeeping. So we're onto today's episode. Today's episode is number four in series two, and it's called creating a brand. And on the podcast today, we chunk this into various different sections. The problem really is that we are the first on the scene for our new client, miss a who is a.
And we've got to figure out what it is that we need to do in terms of branding. So it's jumped up into various different sections, like researching the target audience, picking a focus on a personality, choosing a business name, writing a slogan, choosing the look and feel of the brand that might be fonts.
And so on. What about a logo? Do we need that? And then trying to apply all of that across the brand and the business. It's a big subject. Don't forget that there are some accompanying show notes [email protected]. And if you search for this episode, which is episode number 275, you'll be able to find them all the links and everything are contained over there.
A strange thing occurred during the recording of this episode. Something that I can't track down on, I can't figure out why it happened, but on my audio, there was some sort of clicking noise. I really have no idea how it crept in. It's completely listed. It's almost as if I was tapping on the desk or fiddling with a pen or something like that.
Like I say, it's totally this Annabelle and I hope it won't spoil your enjoyment.
[00:04:02] David Waumsley: Welcome to another in the business bootcamp series, where we relearn everything we know about building WordPress sites and running our web design business from start to finish where on the season. To where we're looking at the design process.
And today we are discussing how to create a brand. So Nathan and I are taking, contrasting approaches, getting our new business running on our first client site built. She's a new lawyer with no previous site she's called miss a and they said, shall we just recap?
[00:04:33] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. If you've not been paying attention to this series, then probably it might be good to go right back to the beginning series one episode one, but essentially.
David. And I are in contrast in camps. I'm going with the traditional, what might be described as waterfall business model in which I do everything in a traditional fixed way. So that is I knock up a proposal after talking to the clients and then issue a contract and basically get everything set up in advance.
And then once they've signed the contract, I disappear for a bit, do the work, come back and hopefully complete it by the deadline and get paid.
[00:05:12] David Waumsley: And I'll go in agile where there's a fixed fee for sprints of work. And our proposal is nothing formal. We're really planning to get out a minimal viable website and over time iteratively improve it.
So taking the kind of data that we might get feedback and improve it. So there's no end deadline to this. So it's much kind of loose.
[00:05:35] Nathan Wrigley: Build. Yeah. And today we are talking you can introduce it.
[00:05:40] David Waumsley: Yeah. Creating a brand, which is something which we are not really qualified to talk about, but as we've decided that our lawyer had no branding, we really are going to be the first folks who may be.
Defining what this business is going to have to live with for some time.
[00:05:57] Nathan Wrigley: So yeah, the problem with this is it really is a industry, all its own, isn't it, creating logos and all of the different bits that were going around. But as always, David's throwing together some pretty comprehensive show notes.
And so we're going to block this up into, I think it was seven, wasn't it? Yes. Distinct topics and I'll just list them out at the beginning if that's all right. Can I do that, David? Yeah. And then we'll take them one at a time. So the first one is researching the target audience and the competitors.
That's 0.1, number two, pick picking your focus and personality. Point three, choosing a name for your business. Number four, writing out a slow. Number five, choose the look and feel of your brand. So that could be colors or fonts. Number six, design your brand logo and number seven, apply your branding across your business.
And whilst David's put together these show notes, you have. Scouring the internet for thoughts and come up with Shopify, by the way for this.
[00:06:59] David Waumsley: Yeah, that's it. It's, that's how they say to build a Brandon. There's quite a good article by them actually on that. So we're using that as our basis.
Aren't we? So there's a lot of overlap with the stuff that we're talking about. So our next episode, we'll be talking about UX, where in a way we'll be coming up some of the same stuff. And previously we talked about the first point. The target audience and competitors with keyword research and looking at what other websites do.
So there's a lot of overlap, but that's where people do branding would start as well. Wouldn't they would, they've researched, trying to find out that, but we should define shouldn't we actually, before we move any further. Brandon is. And I found a quote for that from the American marketing association.
So a brand is a name term design symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller's goods or services as distinct from those of other sellers. So with Brandon, we are trying to distinguish ourselves from our competitors. Yeah. So that's probably something to keep in mind while we're talking about this.
Okay. Research
[00:08:05] Nathan Wrigley: research in the target audience and competitors. I think all of us are probably rarely able to do certain types of research, really straightforwardly keyword research and all of that is really straightforward. And competitor analysis for me usually involve me just browsing the web, usually inspired by.
Putting in searches for something similar. So in our case, if it was Madam a as the lawyer, I'd be typing in lawyers. And in my case, in Yorkshire, perhaps something like that and taking it from there, but the target audience, I never really got a handle on that. I always assumed. My, my gut instinct was what needed to be done or that the business owner themselves knew what that target audience did.
So I'm coming up dry on this one. I'm not really very able to give any insight.
[00:09:00] David Waumsley: No. And I, I don't think I, Shopify article comes up with anything more than that. Google search and asking questions of the, the business itself. And you feel during the Brandon, you're going to need to know from the client aren't you, who they are aiming out before we can really get further.
And I think that's all it's starting from that point. There is another point. And when we go on to UX later, which would be. Audience, you might come at it from a different angle and that might be included in this way. You're already trying to find out things that users. Let's think about this company as well, they might give you some insights to this and how they're different from competitors as well.
But yeah, I don't think there isn't a format is that you was, you had the situation where you've had to do what your classes, the branding for a business before.
[00:09:53] Nathan Wrigley: Yes, I have had to do that and it, but in my case it's always been very straightforward. That is to say their requirements were not very complicated.
And I usually handed it off to one of two or three different graphic designers, because I felt that their insights would be better. In some cases, there would be a conversation between the graphic designer and the client. But in many cases, I was the conduit of that information. So I would be the sort of go between my graphic designer would ask me a series of things they wished to know.
And then I would relay those questions and then respond, but it always worked better when the client chatted directly to the graphic designer. Cause I, I felt that there were probably things in that conversation that would be more useful. So yes I have, but in my cases, not very frequently, did I Suttle myself with the job?
And when I did it was because I knew that the budget was very modest and also I knew that their expectations. Focus groups of people. It was just, can you just give us a logo whatever works. We'll go with that. Yeah.
[00:11:01] David Waumsley: Yeah, not so much. A lot of the earlier work was done with my colleague who would have done the branding side of it anyway.
But recently I've had to do effectively that I've had to start with the logo cause they needed this for their premises first. And that. But how little I know about this. Cause there's probably an oversight on my part. Cause I did the logos. We pick the colors and everything can, one of the last things before the site went live that I got from them was their proper address.
So I could Google it and look at the type of neighborhood and it made me realize that. What I've been used to is thinking totally online. And what's going to work there in terms of branding, where suddenly I realized that there's signage is going to go upon us on the street level. And that, if so in the example where we were discussing last time about a lawyer, whether we would go with a wacky kind of idea for them, Distinguish it from the other more stayed and expected lawyer thing, you would need to think about that.
If you suddenly realize that the lawyers got an office, that's got to be on an really up-market high street or something, this kind of Brandon that might have to go on their signs. Change their office deco their vehicles, everything, could have a real impact. So it's made me really appreciative.
And certainly I think it was an oversight on my part to start helping somebody with a logo and picking colors for that without really understanding the offline context for it. Yeah.
[00:12:31] Nathan Wrigley: And there will be for a lawyer and enormous offline context. So probably not on the back of vehicles and things like that, but the usual arrangement of leaflets and letterheads. And recently actually, funnily enough, I was looking, I was parked in a car park. I was dropping my daughter off or something. And I noticed that there was a local laws and they had a huge brass plaque outside their offices. It was about, I don't know, four feet wide and it had their logo on it.
And it was fairly modest. That is to say simply. So they could attach it into the copper, but if you did go for something really complicated, that would have been really difficult to pull off. Presumably, lawyers, maybe you're one of the few businesses that would actually go for the copper logo outside their office.
But nevertheless, all of that needs to be thought of. So putting it as number one in the list here. Really important, but it's got to be born in mind. What orientation is it? Is it going to be letterbox? Are you going for square or wide or aware? Are they going to be posting things on social media?
And all of these things come into effect. And like you say, even though the website can modify that logo on a whim, once the business cards. And the leaflets have created in the paper as being letter headed that you'll fix there for probably years and years to come.
[00:13:58] David Waumsley: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think, cause I'm always seeing things from the online perspective, what's going to get traffic, what's going to get conversions and I'm thinking about that and setting them again.
Competitors, which of course is what you're supposed to do with branding distinguish yourself. But yeah, suddenly, you would realize you'd need to have a good conversation about the plans really where you, where that client thinks they're going to get the majority of their leads. So would you mind, if you decided that it needed to be a bit more wacky online, might you go that direction because you've got.
Most of the leads online or is it going to be the offline? So I think that research, those kind of early questions are really important. I've neglected
[00:14:39] Nathan Wrigley: it for sure. The interesting thing is I've done quite a few lawyers websites and in no cases, did I need to address the problem of the logo at all?
It was simply a dumb already. And the expectation was that I would use that. And because they don't, they'd got. Publishing these leaflets and so on, but yeah, in terms of target audience, I think for me, it really would be a Google search. Nothing, much more complicated than that. And obviously one would hope that Madame a, in this case has some insight into who they are.
And I think her business is pretty straightforward really, as we're going to explore in this episode, we feel like we've landed on our feet here because the constraints are pretty tight around lawyering. I think so. There's, we're not gonna be doing anything wacky, no. I think if you got a lawyer client, this part of the puzzle is pretty easy to put into the jigsaw.
[00:15:34] David Waumsley: Yeah, I think so. Should we move on to 0.2, which is pick your focus and personality. So yeah, there's, as the article were referencing mentions, there were quite a lot of tools out there, so you can try and get and find that personality types of questions that you can ask. Have you done any of this kind of stuff?
[00:15:54] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. Yeah. And if yes, basically, and it was always, I felt awkward and it was like a waste of time that, that, forgive me. It really did feel like I was clutching at straws here. So typically what I would do in my own book. Yeah, form, which was trying to get some sort of information. Once they decided that I was for them, they wanted me to do their website.
I would, I can't remember the wording on the question, but it was something along the lines of how do you want your brands to feel? And I think there were like four or five choices, calm and comfortable, something like, wacky and new reliable and trustworthy, those kind of choices.
But the thing is, I, it didn't really get me anywhere. All I knew is that they were, that they'd associate themselves with a few words, but that didn't really then tell me an awful lot. That is to say, I probably could have figured it out, but in the conversation that I was having with them. So yes, I've tried to do.
But I didn't go into the hole, personifying it. I didn't try to link it to an actual human being. This user persona. I didn't really get into that level, but I understand people do. And it seems to bear fruit. What about you? Yeah.
[00:17:13] David Waumsley: I've tried it. I mentioned before that. Question that was, if your brand was a famous personality, who would they be as a way of trying to get to it?
And then you could from that say, okay I see that person is Tom Hanks is dependent. Paul, he's straight-laced is these things, is that you there is a, on the Shopify article, there is something is your, if your brand was a person choose three to five, That would describe him or her.
And then this, these three columns with must be a total of about 75 words must be there or something, and I just think like you, I maybe started with these ideas cause it sounded clever, but suddenly I felt like I was a primary school teacher asking somebody to do this. So I'd rather have the conversation and have it in the back of my mind that.
A few of these descriptive words, and then I would probably present it to them for my chart. This is what I think you would, these words would probably signify your brand. Is that kind of right? That seemed an easier way to do it. Yeah. So I try and bring it in now as much as I can, but in a less corny way, yeah.
[00:18:21] Nathan Wrigley: So the other thing to say here is I grew to believe that this question was a bit superfluous because it wasn't something I could learn that I couldn't learn elsewhere, but also. I felt like that the question's just wrong in that, which, which of your clients are really armed to answer that thoughtfully?
I imagine there's probably different questions that I could have asked. So for example, I think there might be a better question and that would be look here's 20 different websites that I've collated pick your favorite three, and then we'll have a discussion about what you like about them and whether it would fit around your.
Something like that I think would deliver me more results than which famous actor do you want your website to be? Like? Because honestly, if you asked me that question, in fact, David, what, tell me on which famous actor would you like your business to be like?
[00:19:20] David Waumsley: Oh,
[00:19:21] Nathan Wrigley: exactly. Exactly. It makes you feel like queasy and weird.
It's that's what. I'm just going to say, I dunno, Clint Eastwood,
but there we go. So I think the question probably needs reframing to make me feel happier about. But also for our lawyer is going to be like what? It's a weird question. Why do you want to know that
[00:19:49] David Waumsley: that is actually probably more valuable in this section from the Albertson thing is what's your position statement, which is they give us kind of format for that.
We offer blank product service for blank, target audience to blank value proposition, and to fill those kinds of things that I think they're probably quite important. Even if you don't ask them to fill that in to get that and format it that way, because I noticed that as well, when it came to something which we'll cover later with a recent client, is that I asked them a similar question, gave me which approach that they might take to a certain business.
Cause there were two ways. One, you could look at it as a kind of medical, you help people, or you could look at it as a service that is offered to improve people's lives. And they were things. And they seem to switch on me when we were talking about other branding things. So having this, I think having this kind of positioning statement is really handy
[00:20:46] Nathan Wrigley: so I can get that.
Maybe that's just. The way that we're, that you and I have been brought up or something, but that the whole decide what person your personality of your website is much more difficult for me to get into than the way that you just described it in terms of Amazon, what, can you repeat that sentence?
What was it again? Nope. I can't rewind the podcast about a minute and half. Sentence. It just felt better. It felt more natural for me because all I was doing was filling in the blanks. And as a business owner, I can probably identify what those blinks were pretty quickly. And I'd probably come up with three or four words that had fit and probably have to settle on the best one.
So that just works better. I
[00:21:30] David Waumsley: think, I think a lot of these kinds of there are a lot of these exercises to try and get this kind of personality or focus and stuff like that. I do think that perhaps they've just been created by as branded people. Yes. Yes. It was fun time out for the clients that we've got, yeah. Do you want to play this game with us?
[00:21:49] Nathan Wrigley: So much money, let's play some games. Anyway, that's our picking focus and personality UI people. And did, web designers are probably going to shoot us down for that comment, but that's just the way we feel. So once we answer three now, one
[00:22:06] David Waumsley: to three, choose your business name.
[00:22:09] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Honestly, I feel that with our lawyer client we've hit a home. Because that's going to be pretty straightforward. I would imagine what I mean by that is I did a quick search a couple of days ago just to see where this would land and all the lawyers in my area are branded by their own name and if not their own name, their surname.
And then another surname of the partners who probably set the business up. So I don't know, Smith and Johnson, something like that. So it's pretty straightforward. And we're in that kind of industry where people want dependable want reliable. So it's going to be pretty straightforward to get that name. I would imagine, however, if we're selling, I don't know, a new range of cool t-shirts or trainers sneakers.
It could be completely different. So you might want to go for something wild. And I think of all the things we're talking about today, you wrote in the show notes. Number three, this is huge. I think this is the biggest one. You get this wrong. You're really going to be in trouble. Yeah. Yeah,
[00:23:20] David Waumsley: it's really interesting.
The article we're looking at actually contains a link to a business name generator, which is quite good, fun. You stick your key word. Nice. And it generates, some of them are really bizarre. They'll just make you laugh. So it's a bit fun, but yeah it also talks about other approaches for coming up with names, make it up.
Pepsi or reframing unrelated word, like apple for computers and various other suggestions. There is one other thing though that I often think about with the, with online and how successful personal branding can be. If you're doing content making, whether that is effective now to be thinking that's your choice.
Do you come up with this business name or do you personally brand. Yeah. It's
[00:24:10] Nathan Wrigley: It's difficult though. Isn't it? So are you saying, do you have I understood your question correctly? Are you saying go, do you go for a typical ordinary name? That's easy to identify what you do or do you code co-opt a word out of the.
Out of your vocabulary and adopt that and hope, or even make up a word and hope that over time, people will associate you with that thing. So a good example, perfect. One apple is now computers. Amazon is now online delivery of stuff. And so on, but it, but you know that the word Amazon is a river. The word apple is a fruit, but everybody gets it now.
Is that what you meant?
[00:24:52] David Waumsley: That's another concern I was just thinking about, whether, if you're talking to them online and you thought let's say this is unlikely, but our client we'll call her Mary Appleton shit. We would call them miss a we'll give her an apple to, let's say she might just want to go for Mary appleton.co.uk or whatever.
And the law site beyond that, because she'll go round doing the YouTube channel, talking about law and all of that. And she'll be known for her name and they know she's the law person. Yeah. That's an approach. I think it's unlikely in this case, but in some ways, as you said, with the lawyer, they tend to be the same format.
It would be Appleton and Bingley and all those, you might not have a Bingley. She might have a dog called that so she can, yeah, I
guess
[00:25:33] Nathan Wrigley: the strategy of a lawyer over time is to grow a business and take on other partners and those partners, at some point we'll have the expectation that their names will be thrown into the mix as well.
Yeah. So that might be important. It feels like such a shore and steady thing to say Appleton law, because at some point in the future that can be expanded to Appleton and Smith or whatever law. Yeah. If you're reaching out to do something new, like a good example is I guess sticker mule is quite a good one.
It says what it is. They do stickers, but also they've thrown the Mulan because of the logo. And it's a bit wacky. A bit funky and it's also cartoonish, which is exactly what they want. I think you've got to really think carefully about this, but for the lawyer, I think it's a slam dunk.
You just go with your name. But
[00:26:26] David Waumsley: I'm also quite keen, for the keyword and it's that they get a key word in that might be useful, particularly we've got a new site, and there is some advantage to having one of your keywords in your domain name. Could she be Appleton lawyer?
Cause she'd be or her area. Lawyers, even though her bit, a business same. So a domain name could be an entirely separate name.
[00:26:50] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. That's a good point. Yeah. Yeah. So there's a lot there. Yeah. There'll be a link in the show notes about how to build a brand name from that Shopify website, but yeah, really important to get this right.
The whole tenor of it can matter get it wrong and you just sound foolish get it right. And it sounds cool. And funky mind you, I suppose something. Cool and funky this year go out of favor next year. But anyway, yeah, there we go. I do like the idea though of co-opting a word and trying to see if you can make that work.
I think if you're really going to hit the Heights, it is cool to just use a word that everybody else already is using and just make it your own.
[00:27:36] David Waumsley: Yeah, lawyer pants. That's
[00:27:41] Nathan Wrigley: that's the least
[00:27:42] David Waumsley: acceptable
[00:27:43] Nathan Wrigley: variation on what I was thinking. That's genius. Oh, okay. That's what we've settled on. Lawyer pants, stock.
Okay. Next slogan. Very much related to writing a business name.
[00:28:01] David Waumsley: Yeah, this is one that I've got because of it's interested in my recent client came up with a slogan after talking to some of our colleagues on that business and she did this thing, which I often show clients too. And I showed her to where the store outside.
StoryBrand. The book that the guy, the author, Donald Miller has these little five minute videos. And they're really useful to show someone about getting clarity for your website and the ridicules. This thing done by branding experts, where it says. Picture hero section showing mountains or something, and it says your journey starts here.
And then it's got these three words on direct Artism inivative solutions. And he just says, anyone landed on, this has no idea what this is about. And then gone, and I think that's the problem. Often my association with slogans, I dread it when I hear clients might come up with them because they love doing this kind of.
Do you
[00:29:04] Nathan Wrigley: subscribe to the, so we have this company in the UK called hammer, and hammer rights, make up paint that you use on outdoors. So you use it on wrought iron fences and things, and their slogan is, it does what it says on the tin, which is really, it's brutal.
It's just read the 10 and then you'll know what it does, but it's. It's become this slogan of theirs. It does what it says on the tin has become the phrase, certainly in the UK version of English, it's become the phrase of just do the obvious thing. If you want it to work, the obvious thing.
If you're selling shoes, Say that you're selling shoes. Don't try to dress it up in flowery language. If you're selling cars, say that you're selling cars, do the thing that it says on the tin. And I respond so much better to those slogan. Then the ones which are trying to be, as you said, the one here Artism innovative solutions.
It doesn't tell me what it's there's not nothing about what's on the 10 there. I just know that you've got pretentions to be an artist, to do new things and to provide solutions, but to what? So I really the, does what it says on the tenant. Before we click record that I mentioned, we were talking about supermarkets who seem to drill down on this.
One of them in the UK is called Sainsbury's. And I think they've got the best slogan for a supermarket. And it's where good food costs less because literally they are the two things that I care about when I go into a super. There might be other anciliary things, like the environmental impact of the packaging and all that, but primarily I want it to be as affordable as possible.
And I want to think that it's good. The quality of the food is good. So they've hit the nail on the head with it, does what it says on the 10. And I liked that.
[00:30:56] David Waumsley: Yeah, the article, the Shopify one actually gives you some ideas. You can state your claim, which I think is what we like. So death wish coffee is the world's strongest coffee.
So it's clear what you're getting or make a metaphor. Red bull gives you wings. Adopt your customer's attitude with Nike, just do it, that kind of thing. And so there are different ways and I think some suit the web of better don't they obviously this kind of state your claim or describe it literally, which is also something we like,
[00:31:27] Nathan Wrigley: I think that they've got to be fairly pithy. That is to say fairly short, but you had a brilliant example. One that was long, but obviously over decades has stood the test of time. And I don't know if they're still using it. You had a rolls Royce on, have you still got that ready? Yeah, it's
[00:31:45] David Waumsley: a really famous one by David Ogilvy who is the real leader on copy for advertising.
And I can't remember it exactly, but I think it is the only sound you will hear at 60 miles an hour in a rolls Royce is the sound of the clock. Oh, Sunday, it's something along those lines. And it's really held up as this wonderful piece of advertising with words, cause it puts you in the scene and tells you about the quality of the product.
But you put it out. How well would that work today? I feel that's
[00:32:19] Nathan Wrigley: like a good strap line, so it'd be the kind of, it would work really well as the kind of tail end of a COVID. But nowadays, I feel that everybody would just condense that to silent driving or something like that. Just something short and pithy and maybe that's our attention span or, we're used to collapsing things into a mobile interface where you can get two or three words at most, but I don't see slogans of that length anymore, but boy, if that one, I love it.
It's brilliant. But imagine trying to get that slogan, like if that was the red bull slogan, I'd want of equal length, they'd have to go right. Round the tin can a couple of times to get it.
[00:32:57] David Waumsley: Yeah, I know there was a really another famous one. I, is it, I forget what chocolate is. It might be a Skittle, something like that, something that's sugar coated chocolate.
And they said melts in your mouth rather than your hands. And again, it's another one which is short, but it puts you in the scene straight away. It tells you what you're getting. So
[00:33:20] Nathan Wrigley: there's a lot of art to this isn't there. And I feel that I would never. Be sure that I'd arrived at the best one.
I think I'd always be thinking, oh, there's another one around the corner. And we find it really hard to settle on this, but I guess for the lawyer, do they ever need a slogan? We always win. We always win.
[00:33:45] David Waumsley: I understand. That would
[00:33:47] Nathan Wrigley: be perfect. Of course it's unlikely to be true, but it feels. You're not really in the game. But having slogans, it's not that kind of a product as it is. Sure. And steady. And it's not trying to trick you into anything. I don't know. Maybe lawyers do have sort of slogans, but it's, I don't think this would be the top of mind for me building the Madam A's website.
I wouldn't be like, okay, we must get a little.
[00:34:12] David Waumsley: We are so much of our culture though, with the UK where lawyers have this gravitas and, it would be gentlemen that you to behave in a certain way. That's right. Whereas I think in other parts of the world, lawyers will promote themselves in entirely different ways.
So yeah. Slogan might seem a little bit beneath them where they, most
[00:34:31] Nathan Wrigley: it, point depending on where you live in the world, it might be a far more kind of. Yeah, what's the word that there may be more in terms of advertising than we have here because the advertising around lawyers here is very decades old.
Isn't it? It doesn't really change that much. Okay. So that's the slogan. We know we need one potentially, but not going to be too important on the, in the case of a lawyer in the UK, number five, choose the look of your brand colors and fonts. Yeah. You could talk about
[00:35:03] David Waumsley: this phages, but we'd better hold it because we're going to have an episode where we're talking about aesthetics and stuff like that.
So we'll get into a bit more of that later, but there may be just some things that we won't cover there. Which is something I've come up against is picking up. I, I've done work for people who they've done that online, so that offline Brandon is really advanced.
They've got designers who do that and they use really expensive fonts. And then they, they're going to cost a bomb to use those fonts on the web. So these kind of issues come up that have come up for me before about picking the font that you can use online as well as offline. Yes. And also there's another thing, which again, because I don't have a background in print, I overlook the often I attracted to wonderful colors that look great on the screen and print terribly.
Yes. Have you
[00:35:59] Nathan Wrigley: ever explored the buying a monitor, which replicates the colors of the fonts in printers?
[00:36:08] David Waumsley: Yeah in the early days I thought this is really important. I should learn this and that we were doing some print ad. This was a cartridge shop where we actually did some printing at home.
So I did try and do that, calibrate the monitor to simulate it. But yeah, I forget to do that of course, these days, but also you never really quite got. Some really it'd be very, I'm attracted to these very bright, vibrant colors, which you can get from the screen, which then get very dull when they go to print.
Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And so yeah, that's the only thing on choosing our brands and fonts that we ought to talk about here. Cause we will cover a lot later, but that is something I've I don't think I have a system for,
[00:36:50] Nathan Wrigley: I don't, I never had a system for this. It was basically what the client likes the little.
So it was a question of looking through a collection of funds and keep, trying to keep it on the cheap. It was mostly the. That's the thing is you pick
[00:37:05] David Waumsley: a font and the client, generally, most clients are going to go with it. They just don't. They may, but it's really going to be subconscious now of the difference between fonts.
They're just not going to be able to articulate it in most cases. No.
[00:37:19] Nathan Wrigley: I literally cannot think of a time where a client was very fussy about the font, the UI people out there, and UX people are going to shoot us down for that, but it never was anything which caused great concern for the stuff I was building.
[00:37:36] David Waumsley: Yeah. It's interesting. Cause I did a, this logo for somebody and I sent it off on it. It's not what I'm skilled on. We'll talk about this in a minute, but they changed the font at the printers there and I still haven't worked out whether it's just that my choice of fonts were bad for this kind of thing.
[00:37:53] Nathan Wrigley: It's upsetting though. So what you gave them it with the fonts included and they.
We
[00:38:01] David Waumsley: don't like that form. We've never had this conversation yet because that my client said that, oh, I think it's my fault. Cause I had to change in the name of the thing that she wanted and the position and that, and I think what she showed me was actually only that first tape to show positioning and they may be didn't intend to change the font, but anyway, presently it's changed.
So interesting but certainly I've become aware of the fact that, while we're doing the Brandon, we have to think of the offline and I'm not very good on that. Myself.
[00:38:31] Nathan Wrigley: I had a curious thing where I had a client and for years, and we actually use, I think it was a boon to they, they went for that, which is a really it's very circular font.
And they really enjoyed that. And then when I stopped working with them, cause they changed some personnel over. I did notice within a couple of days, they'd strip that up onto font out and they'd replaced it with I can't remember actually what it was, but the look and the feel of the website really changed dramatically.
And it was curious to me that conversation had never been had, but obviously somewhere somebody was thinking, I don't like that. I don't want that on our website. And as soon as they got the new person, the the font or change, maybe it was the new web developer that donut, or maybe it was somebody in the company.
I don't really know, but it happened very quickly. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Fonts. So we'll come back to that on another episode, colors and filters, and look at that in a lot more. Yeah,
[00:39:27] David Waumsley: I think so. So we move on to what I was just talking about. Logo. You keep me away from logos, please. Yeah.
[00:39:33] Nathan Wrigley: Essentially this is honestly if you just walk through the aisle of a supermarket and there are logos, absolutely everywhere.
In fact, just look around you where you're sitting right now. There'll be probably 50 logos within. There's probably logos for all of the icons for the apps on your phone or on your computer, and then logos for books and publishing houses and computers, and who knows what? And they all look like they're so easy to make.
Look at the apple logo. It's
[00:40:08] David Waumsley: so easy.
[00:40:10] Nathan Wrigley: Honestly, it doesn't matter how hard I try. I can never pull a logo off. It always looks inferior. My skill set is not logo creation. So this was, for me, it was always a case of giving it to a graphic designer. If the logo was needed more often than not though for me, the logo was already in.
[00:40:36] David Waumsley: You did the WP built like I
[00:40:39] Nathan Wrigley: did. Yeah, but it's not particularly fabulous, but it stands out.
[00:40:45] David Waumsley: It now you recognize
[00:40:46] Nathan Wrigley: it. So it's. Yeah, but it may be over time. It's become like bludgeoned into you, but it's basically a hexagon with a spanner in it, or a wrench, as they say, in different parts of the world.
But you're right. Yeah. Maybe, but it's not terribly inspiring. I wouldn't say. But anyway, what about you? Are you, do you feel this is an area of strength for you? No
[00:41:09] David Waumsley: Tebow had that kind of stuff. Just, I don't know, I had to do it on the recent one. I made the logo and I said, from the bitch, they asked, could I do that?
And I said, it's not my strength, but as I wanted to, as it's a new build and a new business, I wanted to have the discussion about. How you might come up with the kind of Brandon and our plan and stuff. I said, let's have a try and we'll do it, but we might need to get somebody else to do with it just so we can go through that process.
Yeah. Yeah. I
[00:41:37] Nathan Wrigley: think that's a perfectly reasonable statement though. I can go to websites online and I can steal ideas from. Logos that I've seen online or go to those different websites where you can actually just create logos. I can do all of that and I can change the colors and that sort of stuff.
But if it wants to be unique and memorable and really different and done properly, my advice would be always get a pro in. Cause it's just sure. Can cheese, cos you can go like that. Pro routes, which is I say semi-pro maybe they are pros on the other end, but the sort of more affordable route of places like.
To get this kind of stuff done as well.
[00:42:17] David Waumsley: I think that, in an ideal world, I would. Yeah actually it depends because we were saying with our lawyer, they probably don't need, it would probably just be a font that would say their names and it might be a Sarah font and that would be done and that's all that's needed for their branding.
But if it was something like where we needed to create something like Starbucks have managed where it's clearly hand crafted then I'd definitely want to send that over to somebody else to do that. But if it was me, because I'm quite keen to. Agile approach, keep, constantly improving the site.
I want to be part of that marketing strategy. So I'd want to give them a brief about some of the basic ideas we had for the branded to give it to somebody, to come up with a logo. So that would be done for them to do it where I wouldn't want the client to say go off to five row where they will basically show you a whole bunch of radically different designs and the clients then left to pick up.
Without any context or reference to the overall message. And yeah, so that's but yeah, again, that's the bottom. If you don't send them off with a brief, we have the same issue we talked about before with the copywriters, because the people who do these brand logos logo, branding people, aren't they, and they will go through the whole branding and marketing strategy exercises for them.
And it will cost a lot of money,
[00:43:36] Nathan Wrigley: I guess the other thing as well, Yeah, there's a lot of work in it, not just in terms of creating something, which is innovative and new and unique and requires actual design skills. That is to say you can design something, but also you can use the technology like Photoshop or whatever, and really change things on a whim.
If they want a certain different augmentation to something you can do that easily. I just don't have those skills in Photoshop or any piece of design software. But also, I guess you've got to think about the. The different layouts that might be required. Do you want this to be just on a piece of paper?
Is it just going to be top left of a website? In which case is it just going to be letterbox or are you intending to use this on social networks or where is it going to go and how might it look in different orientations and things like that? What kind of dimensions do you mean? You didn't know, and that
[00:44:26] David Waumsley: is exactly, it was a lot of work.
I hadn't done a logo for anyone for a long time. So I did this one and I cheated, I could take a vector that I found from somewhere else and just slightly change it with some texts. But then I realized I had to do all the things that we're aware of and I'm not even sure. If the people who might do design of logos or aware of this, all these different formats, the fact that it needs to work on black and white, you need to be able to print it out in black and white it's to stand out against a black and white background for, maybe you've got a dark footer and you want the logo to work in there against the light top, the different dimensions to just say all of these things.
It means that, and sometimes you're going to need it. So it's going to work in landscape and sometimes portrait. So you're going to need to move things around. So there's a lot of work isn't there to put together a kind of brand and logo in all those different formats.
[00:45:18] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. I typically would have asked for a, basically a landscape version is square version, which then would in a beat be inherited in the sort of portrait.
And then I would ask for a completely dark version. So usually that would be something like black and then a completely white version, both on a transparent background. So the black version of the landscape and the black version of the square, the white version of the landscape and the white version of the square.
And then if there was an obvious color palette, I would probably ask for it to be in all of those separate two or three colors. Just so that I had six or seven that I could deploy anywhere. So there is a lot going on. Yeah.
[00:45:59] David Waumsley: Yeah. I think we'd be shipping this software ever. We can. The only reason I did the most recent one and that's, I can't remember the last time I ever needed to create a logo.
I did it really, because I just thought let's start because of the fact that I wanted all of the things that I feel, someone who's doing, the brand logo should be asking. I wanted to know the answers to those questions. Yeah.
[00:46:22] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. That was number six. I run to final point, which is probably going to be really brief number seven, which was applying or apply your branding across your business.
[00:46:32] David Waumsley: For a term, which they like, which I'm going to use more often because it sounds nice for cohesive brand story focus is if brown
[00:46:41] Nathan Wrigley: story for a cohesive brand story. So are we talking about putting that branding on all of the different places? So the copper plate on your outside wall and the letterhead of your paper and your business cards and all of that is that where all of this is finally getting so.
Yeah, I think
[00:47:02] David Waumsley: I think just when you're creating a brand, which is what we're trying to do, you just need to appreciate that. It's going to have to be in multiple locations. Probably the stuff that we started off at the beginning, isn't it in different situations on an offline. And yeah, like I would say if you turn it into.
Breastplate,
[00:47:23] Nathan Wrigley: For this particular build, this matter may build, this is so straightforward to do you, you just need to know what the things are that the logo needs to go on. But imagine if you're a established business with hundreds, maybe thousands of employees imagine the headache that this presents, right?
Everybody, you've got a bin, all your business cards on the first day. When the new branding goes live, you've got to bend all the old leaflets. You've got to start using these new leaflets. All those letterheads need to go in the bin. You've got to change your email signature. There's another place. Change your email signatures.
You've got to start using this one in all of the presentations that you've ever made. You've got every time you dig out a presentation to put somewhere, you got to change the logo. It's gigantic. It could be such
[00:48:13] David Waumsley: a hard. I know, and I think you've got to get it. Joined, 25 years ago when I joined the government office that I did, it just had a rebranding exercise.
And the new logo customer million pounds, because of that process to get the kind of right. What they needed to communicate. And, but really, I would say for the next 10 years, I was still seeing the old logo on various documentation. Cause there was so much of it,
[00:48:41] Nathan Wrigley: yeah, some notable big rebrands that come to mind for me is when Coca-Cola spent an absolute ton and I've no idea what the amount is, but it was a gigantic amount of money because they felt that they wanted to rebrand the Coke, he whole brand, and they ended up spending all this money. And all that they did was out a bit more of a white line underneath the already existing gray line.
That was what they got from that. And then another one which comes to mind is the recent Google. Rebrand where they took their old serif font because obviously the brand is the word Google and they replaced it with a son Sarah font. And although really it basically stayed the same. Imagine the amount of places.
Cause noticed, I occasionally get letters through the post from Google. All of that did change overnight. Everything was suddenly done correctly. Just huge amount of work.
[00:49:38] David Waumsley: Do you know what there's a commission section. I feel in this whole thing about Brandon, which you've just reminded me of things like apple and Google when they've effectively kept the logos, but kept it the same.
So a lot of them, they were reflecting the time. So when a lot of them went out there, the design was different and then it went to flat design and they all went flat. And I think when you're doing your brand in, I think there was an element of. Keep it simple, stupid about it. You don't really want to add flourishes just because you need to.
So with our lawyer, the name is probably fine in the font. It's going to communicate all they need to, you know what they're going to have wings of justice or something you don't really need all that, and I think that's the thing, because it makes it so much easier to change without affecting your brand is so much, so it was pretty easy with both apple and Google to just stick to their original shape and get rid of job shows or whatever gradients that they had on it.
There was all that glass thing wasn't there. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I think that was a missing section. I think when you're. Brandon, I think thinking about the longterm about how trends will change and how you keep it as simple as you can see, it's, whatever you've created is more adaptable to change is probably a
[00:50:58] Nathan Wrigley: good thing.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. There we go. So that was, I think we've reached the end there. Haven't we, we were on, so you've just listened to series two, episode four. We've been talking about creating a brand what's a what's episode follow you've.
[00:51:12] David Waumsley: It's going to be about UX and I have no idea where we're going because.
[00:51:16] Nathan Wrigley: Topic user experience. That'll be the next step. So that'll be out in a couple of weeks. That was enjoyable. Thanks, David. Yeah. Thanks a
[00:51:23] David Waumsley: lot. Bye.
[00:51:24] Nathan Wrigley: I hope that you enjoyed that. Always a pleasure to chat to my good friend, David Walmsley. If there's anything that you agreed with or possibly that you disagreed with, be sure to head over to the WP Builds.com website.
Find episode number 275. And leave us a comment there. Alternatively, go to WP Builds.com forward slash Facebook, which is our Facebook group of over 3000. Very polite WordPress's and leave us a comment there again. Search for number 275. Don't forget that we've got a, this week in word pressure. It's a live show each and every week I'm joined typically by three.
Very nice word presses. And we chat about the WordPress news from the previous week. That'll be live 2:00 PM UK [email protected] forward slash live. Alternatively, we'll see you here next Thursday for the next episode of the WP Builds podcast, all that remains for me to do. Is fading some cheesy music and say, stay safe.
[00:52:22] David Waumsley: Bye bye. For now.
