Episode Transcript
Patrick Sesko 0:04
You'll see a lot of corporations use a lot of blue because blue is represents like trustworthy and strength and those kinds of things like longevity, and even in like fast food restaurants, you'll notice that almost all fast food restaurants, your McDonald's, Burger Kings, Hardee's, Roy Rogers, you name it. They're all going to be reds and yellows. The reason that is is actually it's physiological. Because when people look at reds and yellows, they actually their body's physiological will start to salivate. It's quite fascinating. What do you think about it?
Monica Pitts 0:42
You're on mission, and you just need more people to know about it. And whether you're brand new to marketing or a seasoned pro, we are all looking for answers to make marketing decisions with purpose. I'm Monica Pitts, a techie crafty business owner, mom and aerial dancer who solves communication challenges through technology. This podcast is all about digging in and going digital. I'll share my marketing know how and business experience from almost 20 years of misadventures, I'll be your backup dancer. So you can stop doubting, and get moving towards marketing with purpose. I'm super excited to introduce you to our guest today. Patrick Sesko. Now, I heard you guys, you told me that one of the reasons that you were having a hard time building your websites was because you weren't solid in your company brand yet. And I understand it. It's a big thing. And so Patrick, though, he's a brand expert. And so he's going to help us understand the psychology behind creating your brand. So Patrick, why don't you kick us off by just introducing yourself and telling us a little bit about your business?
Patrick Sesko 1:50
Well, first, thanks for having me, I really appreciate you having me on your show and allowing me to share with your audience of these things about branding. So basically, my name is Patrick Sesko. I'm a graphic designer and brand strategist, which is kind of technically my, my title. I started my business, which is Patrick Sesko, back in 2005, full time. And you know, I come from corporate America, where I really hated the whole sort of rigmarole of dealing with corporate red tape, and people throwing other people under the bus to get face time with, you know, VPs, and CEOs and all that stuff. So I really just hated that corporate culture. And so that really is what led me to start my own business full time, because I've always done some freelance things. And, you know, I started off just designing, you know, newsletters and annual reports and things like that. But over the years, I really just gravitated towards the visual branding, brand identity, logo design and that kind of thing. And over these past, you know, 10-15 years, I've really started focusing on that, and using that as sort of a springboard to launch people's visual brands as they build their business. So when you were in corporate America, were you still a graphic designer? Or did you have another role? No, I was a graphic designer. And you know, in corporate America, marketing is usually you know, low on the totem pole in terms of overhead. So, in 2000, I worked for a software company at that time, and that was in 2002 2003 is when the.com bubble burst. And of course, marketing being overhead as it is I was laid off from my job. So that made the decision of going into my own business full time a lot easier, I was kind of forced into it.
Monica Pitts 3:47
Sometimes the universe opens the door when you least expect it. And you're like, Alright, I have to look at this as an opportunity to walk through to the next phase, like let's move into the next room of my life and decorated as well as like, amen. So congratulations on taking that step.
Patrick Sesko 4:02
100%. And, you know, just a little aside the, you know, what do you call it aside, inspirational moment is that, at the time, I was really scared, and you know, I had a newborn at the time, and I was like, this is horrible. It's the worst thing and really, in reality, it was the best thing that ever happened. So because the opportunities that prevented that presented themselves thereafter, like you said, the universe just opened up, and it was it was kismet, as I like to say,
Monica Pitts 4:31
It is always really scary when you have a small person, and then things drastically change. I remember even just, we had had our baby and then Mike's car, like his truck that he had driven forever broke down and we were like, nananana No, we've got like three more years that this thing has to run like what are we going to do? We had to go buy a new vehicle for him and that was like, wow, that and so I can only imagine having a new baby and then having to go find a new job because that's it's just a lot there's a lot of expenses and energy that's being put out in other ways when you have the new small people.
Patrick Sesko 5:06
Well, yeah, you know, my wife, the teacher, and she was staying home with the baby the first year, so she wasn't working. So it was just like, ah,
Monica Pitts 5:13
but you made it. And that's so awesome. And I'm glad that now you've really latched on to branding. I explained in a different podcast, that not all designers are logo designers, it takes a specific type of human to be able to take not very many elements and arrange them in an aesthetically pleasing manner. That means something that not everybody can do that, like my designers are great at taking a whole bunch of stuff, and simplifying it and making it consumable and tell a story on a website. But then when it comes to like this little thing, like a logo, and I know logo was not the whole brand, and you're gonna tell us about that in a second. So it, it takes all sorts of folks to get your your business's brand out there and enrolling in the universe. So okay, so what is the brand? Tell us? What is a brand? Because it's a common misconception that is just a logo, but it's so much more? So tell us all about it?
Patrick Sesko 6:10
Yeah, that's the $64,000 question. And it's a very complicated answer. So it really depends on who you ask. There's a famous quotes, and I can't remember, I think it's Jeff Bezos, or somebody, there's two quotes. One is your brand is what they say it is not what you say it is. So a brand is basically the perception of the people who are in your audience that will they will have that your brand is the perception your audience has about you, you know, what their gut feeling is about how, you know, you talk to them down to things like customer service, you know, so you think about the places that you always recommend to people, it's because of certain things and say customer service, you recommend them. So that's sort of the essence of the brand, and the brand identity. And I know you didn't ask me what brand identity but brand identity is sort of the visual representation of what the brand stands for. And so that's where your brand identity is your logo and the visual stuff. So the brand is that sort of gut feeling. And the I think Jeff Bezos is the one who said as your brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room. So it's kind of like that sort of word of mouth. You know, when you're referencing somebody to give them a recommendation, that's sort of the essence of what branding is.
Monica Pitts 7:33
Okay. So their perception, your audience says about you. This, this is that's kind of deep. That's kind of the because you could be thinking that you're telling them one thing, and you might not be in it could be visual, it could be, like you said, through customer service, which I think it's a little, it's easier, but it's harder, depending upon your size of business, because it's super small business, their sales, marketing, account service, they might all be one or two people. And so in that way, it gets real blurry. But then when you start breaking it out into multiple divisions, which is I'm sure what you felt in corporate America, it it gets harder, because there can be like a disconnect between all of them, and what really you want it to be and how you want people to perceive you.
Patrick Sesko 8:19
Yeah, yeah. I mean, you couldn't afford it any more eloquently, really.
Monica Pitts 8:26
So tell me about the roadmap. So I want people to perceive me a certain way, I want my audience to see me, as me, right. So how do I do that? What's the roadmap to get me there?
Patrick Sesko 8:40
Well, it's, there's different levels. If you're an established business, you're gonna go a lot deeper typically. And that's where you get more into the psychology of things. But if you're newer business business, and I believe that's what your your audience are probably more on the newer ish side, if I'm not mistaking. You know, I always say that the roadmap should go in phases. And so if you're just starting out, you know, you want to maintain a consistent visual look and feel. You want to know who your actual customers are, what their pain points are. So I'm sure you've heard of the ideal customer profile or avatar, which is a very popular. ICA, I think is what people say, in our industry. You want to know what kind of value you bring to your audience. You want to understand what your brand personality is, how you sort of present yourself, not in a, you know, contrived way, but just who are you naturally? And just what your positioning is sort of where are you like, how do you compare to the people who are doing the similar things that you are doing? So brand positioning also. So when you think about all of those things together, it really gives you that certain place in the mind of your audience that hopefully, and ideally is not occupied by anybody. else, or if it is occupied by anybody else, you have certain differentiators that will separate you from them. So that way, you're not just a run of the mill commodity, if that makes sense.
Monica Pitts 10:12
Yeah. So what I'm hearing is that visual consistency is something that you should be concerned about, especially as I mean, it doesn't matter if you're a small business, the big business and nonprofit like visual consistency is very important. Because it's like a subconscious thing that people are going to group your stuff together, and it's going to make sense to them. We want to make them feel welcome and secure. It's like I say, like, when I go over to my mother in law's house, and I tried to use her microwave, and I can't figure out how to do it. I'm like, What am I stupid, it's like something, it's a microwave, I should know how to use it. And it should be the same thing like they should understand and feel comfortable within your marketing message and know that it's yours. And then you have to have an awareness of your ICA, you need to understand your own personality naturally. So you can consistently portray it, and then make sure that you understand how you're positioned within the marketplace. So that way, you can bring that to the forefront for your audience. And so those four things are kind of the roadmap for people to consider as they're planning their brand. Is that true?
Patrick Sesko 11:14
Yeah. And that's really the first part of the roadmap. I mean, the roadmap, the I have a 4D branding roadmap, I call it and it's, you know, it's not anything I discovered or anything like that, but it's just kind of the natural progression. And it's, it's four phases, one of which is your discover phase. And that's kind of where you do your brand research. And the second phase is to develop and that's when you're really developing your visual identity that's going to be informed by what you do in that discover phase. So it's sort of sort of this connection. And then that third thing is sort of the design phase. And that's kind of where you're rolling it out in your social media, your website, sales pages, brochures, you know, stationery, and PDFs, and slide decks, all those things. And then the last one is the deliver phase. And that's kind of your whole marketing plan. How are you getting this out there? What's your social media set a strategy? Are you doing any paid advertising, I don't focus a lot on that deliver side of things in terms of what I do and what I teach. It's just that is definitely part of it. Because you can do all you want with a brand identity. But if you don't do anything with it in terms of putting it out there and putting it into a strategy, then it's just it's worthless.
Monica Pitts 12:27
So discover, develop, design, deliver.
Patrick Sesko 12:30
That is correct.
Monica Pitts 12:31
There are roadmaps. Now, another thing I know that you talk a lot about is the brand stack. Andthe way I remember it is that your two thirds of your brand is homework. And then 1/3 is the things that people actually see. You want to elaborate on that for me?
Patrick Sesko 12:51
Yeah. So the framework that I've sort of developed over the years, I call it the brand stack framework, because similar to part of this basically falls within that roadmap, and this is under the first two phases. And this is the framework that I use to develop visual identities for businesses. And a lot of that is, you know, I know, some people are, they're very excited, because they think about the sexy part of the brand. It's the logo, it's the colors, it's all the cool stuff that you see. But you know, sort of like that stereotypical Inspirational Poster of the, the iceberg is just the tip that's sticking out. But most of your brand is the stuff that's underneath the water. And so that's kind of where I derive this brand stack framework, whereas it's three, it's three stacks, as I call them Foundation, strategy, and brand identity. And the foundation is basically it's a cross section of your area of influence your footprint in the world of like, you know, if you have the entire world of people, you have a small section or your audiences of what it is, that is your area of influence. And then within that stack, which is the foundation, that's where you have to really identify what it is that you do, who you do it for, which some would call a niche. How do you do it? How do you deliver these things, you get into why you do it. And that kind of goes back to your core values. Because people, people will work with people who have similar values as them, some people lead with, you know, faith. And there's a lot of faith based businesses, and that's great. Some people lead with, you know, philanthropy and those kinds of things in terms of core values. So those are really important to sort of explore and say, Hey, what do you want for front? Or what do you want as a foundation of your your business? And then you have like, just your general vision and mission like what is it that you want to do? And that kind of goes back to the whole why? Why are you doing what you're doing? So that's sort of the first stack called the foundation.
Monica Pitts 15:03
What was the second stack?
Patrick Sesko 15:06
The second stack is the strategy. I just didn't know if you had any questions about the foundation,
Monica Pitts 15:11
I think you did a great job explaining it, I was taking notes. I love it.
Patrick Sesko 15:19
The second stack is the strategy. Now this is more. This is more like homework for the information that's going to eventually inform what you do in the visual side. But this is also very important part of branding. And there's really a blurred line between branding and marketing. Some of these things are, you know, are also associated with marketing, but so is branding. But then this second stack, which is the strategy, this is your, your brand messaging and positioning, so these are the things that you're telling your audience, that you're basically what's what you're making the case for, why they should hire you, or why they should work with you. What is your messaging? And same thing, like I discussed earlier about your brand positioning, how are you compared to other people who are similar to you, in your, in your industry in your niche? I'm not I mean, graphic designers are a dime a dozen. And I'll be the first to admit that so how are you differentiating yourself. And depending on how you do that, you can you can differentiate yourself as a commodity and charge very little and then your, your competition is going to be based on price. Or you can position yourself as a luxury or high end and then your competition is gonna be based on value. So it's depending on where you are in that. So there's a lot of homework that goes with it. So to speak, or research. Other parts of the brand strategy is your your brand personality. That's basically how you present yourself and should never be in a contrived kind of way. So it's really kind of easy, but you just have to be true to who you are. Because it's a lot harder to maintain sort of a false persona, in a brand. So you know, you think about like the bro marketers, right, and they're standing in front of jets and Lamborghinis and things like that, when really, they don't really own any of that stuff. So. So you with brand personality. There are brand archetypes, which are based on Carl Jung's psychological archetypes, there's 12 different ones. There's also the tone of voice, how do you speak? Are you in a professional tone? Are you conversational? Do you curse a lot? So you think about, you know, Gary Vaynerchuk, if you're familiar with him, you know, his brand is basically the F words. So it's stuff like that. Other parts of the strategy, and I'm really this is high level here, this is not something that you just do in a day, this is, you know, time consuming to do all of these things with the correct way. But audience persona, you know, what's the value that you provide to your audience and just sort of what is unique to your industry that you can incorporate into your, your, your strategy, that before you get into the visual part of things?
Monica Pitts 18:09
This is really cool. Because, really, I really, really believe that people just think their brand, just like their logo and their letterhead and their colors. And what I keep hearing you say is, it's all kinds of stuff. It's your whole personality. It's the way that you approach business, why you do what you do, like, your unique proposition, it's not just one little thing. And I love that. And I, I like to your example, that, you know, some, there's people that are very tied to a specific platform of why they do what they do. And like you said, some people are face space, other people are philanthropy, philanthropy, we're like problem solvers. Right. And we just latch on to that, and we're holding on to it for all we're worth, because this is why we do what we do. Because we love solving problems. It's I think there's like some type of a dopamine rush or something after you get done solving a problem. So maybe we're just like junkies. But ultimately, like, I think, understanding that and holding on to it, and then allowing yourself to wear it on your sleeve. And don't be afraid to be who you are. Like, I think that's super, super important. But it's exciting. Because then you get when you do all your homework, you get to do the actual design part.
Patrick Sesko 19:31
Just to sort of attach to what you were just last saying, like, you know, for me, and it doesn't have to be faith. It doesn't have to be philanthropy, for me. Important value is family. Like, when I ended up working for myself, I realized that oh my gosh, I can coach my kids softball team. Now I can go to all the school events that you know, I'm not traveling for work like it was so that was so hugely important to me. And that's what made that even though I was like, you know, had to have a pity party for awhile, when I got laid off, it was just like, that's when the universe said, Oh, now you have the opportunity to do this. So it's just like, that was hugely huge for me. So just those are the kinds of things we talked about when I say, you know, you see your personal values, so people who are really family based, they'll they'll latch on to that, you know, and it's not contrived. That's just who I am. And I love music. And I bring that into my, you know, you can see my guitar over here. And so I bring that into my business, because that's a passion of mine as well. And people who love music will be more drawn toward me, it's not necessarily associated with business, but it's associated with more of my personality, and we tend to do business with people who we, you know, have Kismet towards, or we have, you know, some sort of connection with.
Monica Pitts 20:49
So what I'm hearing, and what I want to say, to all of you find listeners is that you get to be yourselves, and that's okay, so you don't have to be like everyone else. And especially as a, as a business that I mean, we do so much online, right? All the online marketers are all about all these pictures of themselves and all these fancy, you know, blah, blah, blah, and holding a coffee cup, yay. Like this, I can't, right? It's one thing to admire somebody else's brand. But then when you just see everybody trying to look like everyone else, they just don't stick out anymore, you don't remember them. So if family is your value, then like, hold on to it and do it and put, you know, make sure that you are like following through with that value. And don't be afraid to make all of your imagery reflect that. Not Not to the point that they think that maybe your kids are doing the graphic design, but like it's okay, you know, like, it's like people will will gravitate to you and remember you because you are you so you guys get to be yourself.
Patrick Sesko 21:55
Right? And you know, how exhausting would it be to have to like, pretend to be somebody else all the time. It's kind of like lying. And then you have to make lies up to cover the lie. And then you don't even remember what you're lying about anymore. It's yucky. I don't like it. I don't want to have Lambos behind me. And I also don't want to wear a big pink frilly dress because I'm just really not into it. Yeah, normally, I'm a little bit more clean shaven. But yeah, I'm showing off today.
Monica Pitts 22:24
I love it. Nobody can see you anyway. So it's all good. So I kind of do want to ask about now some of the design things I know that you can talk about, like colors and all kinds of stuff. Can you tell me a little bit about like, the visual brand identity and the kind of the psychology about some of those elements of the designer? Like how? I don't know, I'm going to stop there. And I'm going to let you say something now.
Patrick Sesko 22:53
Yeah, sure. So what I'll do is, I'll just kind of give you a list of, of the primary things that are going to be included in a brand identity, and then focus on the sort of the bare minimums that you need to focus on for people who are newer. And the reason why I say that is because you don't just design a brand. And it's done, it's really an evolutionary thing. So you have to start and you have to do these sort of, you have to build your brand and sort of phases almost because, you know, if you're just starting a business, you're just not going to be Apple or Nike, where you can just throw up a the visual icon of your logo, and everybody knows what it is you're just not going to do that. So you're going to be having those same kinds of influencers. But just on a smaller scale audience, it could be just 100 people on your email list. So, but it's the same concepts. So just with that, I wanted to give you sort of an overarching list of everything that's included in your brand identity.
Monica Pitts 23:50
I wanted to Can I interrupt for a second and tell you that one of my biggest pet peeves is when people come into my office and they're like, No, I just want to have you know, like Nike, I'm like, but you're not. Nike, like Nike would not come into my office and ask me for this crap, because they're Nike and clearly you're not them and it's okay to be where you are. You don't have to be Nike. But don't come to me and ask me to design you this identity mark, that everybody's gonna know what it is like Nike, because you've got like, billions of dollars you have to put behind it before you can take your freakin name off of it. It makes me so annoyed as a designer. I'm like, Oh,
Patrick Sesko 24:27
when I get that, and I get that often. And it's been much less because I, I put out what I want to attract. So I don't want to attract people who are just like, I just want a logo, you want a logo, you can go your fibers or whatever. That's not what I do. I do logos but I do conceptual logos as part of a brand. And in like you said it's like if you want to be Nike, then you have to have, you know, hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars spent in advertising and reinforcement of that over you know, three decades or however many however long they've been around for, you know, so, yeah,
Monica Pitts 25:03
So it's okay, you don't need to have that sorted out of the gate. And I love it that you said it's a journey because it's so right. It's a journey. And so it's okay. It's okay. Like everybody starts.
Patrick Sesko 25:14
Because early stage entrepreneurs, like, you know, that's, that's a primary audience of mine, of course, I work with, you know, further along people one on one and do different things. But you know, for as far as, like, the education stuff that I do, a lot of that is all geared towards early stage entrepreneurs. And, you know, one of the things I would say is like, you know, you don't have to get fancy, you don't need a fancy logo, you don't need, you know, you don't need this high end design designed by, you know, Chris do or whoever, some Rockstar graphic designer, you don't need that in the beginning, because nobody knows who you are. But what you need to do is to be at least consistent with whatever it is that you're doing. So what I'll do is I'll start off with this list, it's not a big list, but the main components of the brand identity are going to be, and I'm lumping these as one is your logo, your colors and your fonts. And that's kind of like the base visual thing of your identity. And then you have things like symbolism, you have visual patterns, and textures. And then you have other design elements, those could be icons, or things like that, or just lines or circles or shapes. Then you have your photography, which is a big one, because most of us are probably going to be personal brands, meaning that we're the face of our business. So a lot of times, and that's where you get the whole sort of cliche, look at me, I'm looking off into the distance with my coffee mug, and my laptop in hand, you know, the brand photography, things. And then your design style. So you think of what your personality might be, like, you know, like, I'm into like punk rock, and rock and roll, I play music. So there's a little bit of edge to my visual stuff, some grungy kinds of things. But it's still nice and clean, because I do consider myself very professional, but I'm also casual, you know. So those things are reflected in my visuals. And then lastly is a brand guidelines document that kind of puts all of these things together. So that if you hire a website designer, they have all of the guidelines to make sure that whatever they're working on, and you hire a social media designer, to do your social media graphics or whatever, they'll be working from that same set of guidelines. So no matter who's working on your stuff, whenever it's brought together, it will have an it should have that visual continuity.
Monica Pitts 27:40
I love it. So we have logos, colors, fonts, that's where you kind of start at the top, and then symbolism patterns and textures, elements photography, your style, and then your brand guidelines.
Patrick Sesko 27:51
Yes. And then what I was going to suggest for early stage entrepreneurs is really focus on that number one is that your logo, your colors, and your fonts, and really your colors and fonts. Because I don't think you should even have a super duper fancy logo in the beginning. And in fact, you even see some of the biggest names in the industry like you know, your Amy Porterfield or your Jenna Kutchers, or jasmine stars, their their logos, or just their names typeset in a nice font, there's nothing fancy to it at all. So especially with personal brands, because we are the face of a personal brand, as opposed to a company brand. A company brand is the name of the company. And you would typically have more symbolism and that kind of thing in a logo versus a personal brand.
Monica Pitts 28:41
I feel like I need to do another podcast about should you have a personal brand, or a company brand? Because I think the question that people are trying to like they'll ask What should I call my company? Should it be Monica Pitts design? Or should it be mayecreate design? Like which one should it be? I don't know that we should answer that question now. But I feel like there's got to be some differentiating factors in there. Like, which one is it? But I totally agree with you. I don't think that people need to have a super fancy logo to start out. I think there's a lot of times where just a really nice typeface would would work for them. Do you have any suggestions? Like when they're looking at fonts? What are things that they might think about based on the type of personality that they're trying to convey?
Patrick Sesko 29:31
Yeah, so I do this workshop. It's called nail your brand colors and fonts workshop. And it's kind of designed for this early stage entrepreneur that you know, a lot of people you see these fonts and you see colors and you're like, how do I select these things? So we start off, I start off with a real simple personality exercise. And it's not it's deceptively simple. It's just you go through and just be like, what how would How would your friends describe you? How would your family describe you? How would you describe yourself, and just do a full on brain dump of all of these sorts of personality traits that you can think of that apply to you. Or adjectives, you know, the scripting type of words, and you just do a brain dump. And then you sort of narrow that down to a list of 5 to 10. And really, and then you narrow that down to like your top two or three. And then that's what you would use to inform what colors you might choose, excuse me, and what fonts you might choose. So let's say for instance, you know, you're happy and cheerful all the time, and you're just happy go lucky. That would probably lend itself to a brighter color, a brighter, happier color, if you will. And so then you can go to those warmer colors, your reds, your oranges, your yellows, and you can kind of go through those and say, Okay, well, these colors sort of represent happiness. And this is the psychology of things. And I'm really simplifying it some here. But sometimes it's as simple as that, you know, if that's one of the personality traits that you want to lead with. So your colors can represent that one personality trait. So colors, warmth, you'll see a lot of corporations use a lot of blue because blue is represents like trustworthy, and strength in those kinds of things like longevity. So you'll start to notice that, and even in like fast food restaurants, you'll notice that almost all fast food restaurants, your McDonald's, Burger Kings, Hardee's, Roy Rogers, you name it, they're all going to be reds, and yellows. And the reason that is is actually it's physiological, because when people look at reds and yellows, they actually their body's physiological will start to salivate. It's subconsciously, it's it's not something that you'll recognize. But through years of research that all these companies have done. That's why you'll see McDonald's is yellow, and red, Burger King, yellow, and red, they have a little bit of blue in there to Taco Bell is when they have some blues, but it's orange in purple. So it's, it's, it's quite fascinating when you think about it.
Monica Pitts 32:14
So colors, that's a great, I love that you said those things about colors, because I do think that it's important that people think about what these colors can convey when they pick them. And I wish that I could sit through your workshop, because that would be so great. It probably leave me smarter to be able to explain it to people. And then the second thing that you said that you want people to think about is their fonts, is there anything that you would suggest they think about as they're picking brand fonts?
Patrick Sesko 32:45
Yeah, and again, I use the same concept of I, basically, that's why you pick, you know, three to five, maybe even 10 personality traits that you want to lead with. That's not to say that those are the only ones that you have. Because each one of your components of your brand identity should at least map back to either a personality trait, your core values, or something. So that way, there's just there's some psychology behind it. And there's a reasoning why that color is that color, or there's a reason why you only use black and white or whatever. And then the same kind of goes for fonts. So let's, let's say say you chose like your happy, cheerful, empathetic, and you base your colors on that. And let's say you went with some oranges as sort of your primary brand color, well, then you're like, Well, I'm more than just cheerful and happy and empathetic, I also am professional, I'm also smart, and you know what I mean? Those kinds of things. So then you could use your fonts to sort of convey that personality. So then you could have a really nice warm color palette, with a really strong bold font choice, that kind of, you know, in juxtaposition to that, you know, gives you that sort of contrast. So there's a lot of things that you can do with colors and fonts. And, you know, so if you have a font that's like italics, or softer, you know, that's going to be more of a like a feminine trait, or a softer trait. Rounded fonts are going to be more softer than, you know, squared off bold fonts. You know, obviously, there's script fonts. So there's, I mean, there's millions of fonts literally. And some of that is chosen through the psychology part of what I was saying in terms of like mapping those personality traits to it. But there's definitely a component of that that is subjective because we are talking about, you know, aesthetics and aesthetics are definitely subjective to some degree. But a lot of it is rooted in this this concept of mapping the personality to the style of font and colors.
Monica Pitts 34:48
Whenever I'm looking for a font to design with, I always make sure that a it's legible, because I'm telling you, I know it sounds stupid, but I cannot tell you like I just got Graduation announcements in the mail. And I can't read the word like, like, I'm not that old of a human. And I can't read the words because it's so thin. And it's so small. And so I always am looking for a font that's going to actually allow me to read it. And at a glance easily, you don't have to think about it too much. And then I also look for at least one logo font, or one brand font that has lots of styles, like not just because some people will have their brand font, but it's only all capital letters. And I'm like, great, so we're gonna yell at people all the time. And so I'm always like, hey, is there another one that's a lot like it that has uppercase and lowercase and maybe a at least like a bold, a medium and a light, that would be the bomb.com like that would that would make our life so much easier as a designer, and people don't think about that when they're picking them. So I'm like, Man functionality, I want it I want it to.
Patrick Sesko 36:02
And just to dive deeper into the font side of things. It's not just about the aesthetics, and its readability is the number one thing that you should be concerned with. So that's why people tend to get really crazy with these scripty fonts. And it's so it's so trendy right now, especially with like, personal brands. Obviously, it's more of a feminine side. So you see a lot of female entrepreneurs use the same looks. Amy Porterfield is one and you see, so many people are emulating her style that I have actually, on many occasions, mistaken somebody else's visual brand for Amy Porterfield brand, for instance, or you know, others, you know, and because they use that as inspiration, but partly end up copying, which is not good inspirations, okay. You know, copying is not, that's more infringement, if you will. But the whole thing is readability. And you can have more than one font, obviously, it's a little bit easier to manage when you have one font, but if you have the multiple styles like bold, italic, those kinds of things, that gives you a little bit of variety. But if you're pairing more than one font you can have, it's important that those fonts have contrast visually. So you know, if you're having a sans serif for your titles, and maybe you should have a serif font for your text, or a font that is visibly significantly different than the other font, so that way, there's not confusion, or it doesn't look like it's a mistake. And that that again, that pairing fonts is an art in and of itself. And there's a level of it that is subjective. But bottom line is readability. Don't go crazy with all these fancy, fancy stylee fonts and then do a whole body copy of that. And that it's that's that'll just turn people off.
Monica Pitts 37:51
Especially when they get skinny, really skinny, like blinds get really skinny, or they get really light in color. Because there's times where I'll look at it. And I'll add like I can't even like I'm not sure how to make this out because it'll be like a yellow scripty thing. And I'm like,
Patrick Sesko 38:06
Oh, the hardest.
Monica Pitts 38:09
Oh, I love that. In your example. You were like, if you're a bright person and you want to use like oranges and yellows, you can pair them with like this nice thick font. And I'm like, Yes, you can. And you should, because otherwise nobody can read this stupid thing.
Patrick Sesko 38:24
Right? Exactly.
Monica Pitts 38:27
Okay, so um, I love talking about fonts. I wouldn't do it all day, we had a complete meltdown about them and another vodcast. And it was, yeah, y'all can go listen to that one. Enjoy yourself. Okay, so anything else you want to tell people about branding before we wrap ourselves up?
Patrick Sesko 38:48
You know, going back to, since probably most of the people listening to this are going to be personal brands, I could be wrong on that. But because of the people I work with, it's most of those people are going to be their name or if it is a company name, it's still just them and they're the face of their their business is to you know, think about your brand photography, and but don't overthink it. In fact, if you go to my website, which is patricksesko.com, I did a photo shoot in my kitchen with my daughter during the height of the pandemic when it first we were all quarantined. And we just did it with iPhones, and I'm still using those photos. They're not the highest quality photos. I didn't go and spend you know, $2,000 for a photographer, because I didn't want I just did. I couldn't because I was quarantined. But secondly, it's it's fine to use your iPhone, just take some photos and just have some thoughts about it. And if your brand colors like in my case, my brand colors are two different tones of blue. And so I wear a blue shirt. So think about those kinds of things when you're doing your photos. Even if they're just really simple iPhone photos goes, just give it a little bit of thought. And that will go a long way in sort of building that cohesiveness.
Monica Pitts 40:07
And we did have a guest come on earlier this year and talk to us about how to get like great photos for your website and marketing using your phone. And he talked about like the psychology behind pictures and posing and so you guys can go listen to that episode as well. I don't do a ton about photography, because I'm not a photographer. But I do understand that people need it. And I love it that almost all the people I talked to in marketing all agree that, especially for most of the digital things that you're doing, you can just take your photos with an iPhone. Now we do have clients that have like, cattle out in fields that we're going to use pictures of these animals on a tradeshow booth. Don't take that with your iPhone, you're like, there's no way I can make it big enough to be functional on the tradeshow booth. But for I think like for the most of us, our iPhone is an okay thing to use. And it's, it's, we know how to use it.
Patrick Sesko 41:00
Yeah, yeah. Especially for web. But yes, even print, you know, lighting is really your friend. You can take some great pictures with a crappy camera if your lighting is really good.
Monica Pitts 41:12
Sweet Okay. Well, thank you so much for all you've shared with us about branding. We've talked through colors and psychology and the brand stack and the roadmap and all the great things. So yeah, tell people where they can learn more about you, where can they go to find out about you, and maybe have you counsel them through making their brand?
Patrick Sesko 41:35
Sure, sure. So my website is Patricksesko.com. If you want a copy of a brand, the brand roadmap it's as I don't know how many pages it is 19 pages or something like that. But not that that matters. But it basically goes over all the components of the brand roadmap. And you can get that at Patricksesko.com/brandroadmap. And I also have a lead magnet template that's called How to Create a lead magnet that doesn't suck. The template is basically a Canva template with some bonuses and all that kind of thing. But it's a template that allows you to just take your brand colors and your brand fonts and plug it into this template that you can use to create a professional looking lead magnet. So you know PDF lead magnet, you can get that at Patricksesko.com/leadmagnet. And for your audience, I set up a 50% discount code. So at checkout, you can just type in MWP for marketing with purpose and MWP 2023. And you'll get 50% off if you choose to do that.
Monica Pitts 42:41
Well thank you for that offer. I love anything that's gonna save me time and get me to the finish line faster so that I can go to all the other things that I like to do you know
Patrick Sesko 42:50
exactly, exactly.
Monica Pitts 42:54
It really is. Well, thank you so much for your time today. And everybody who's listening, thank you for hanging out with it with us. Until next time, go forth, and the show notes. And all those links that we just heard from our guests, head on over to Mayecreate.com and mayecreate.com. And of course, I have to tell you the things that all podcasters are supposed to tell you at the end of episodes. Like if you thought this was awesome, you could subscribe and then I would like get to tell you when I have new stuff for you to learn and new episodes and new people to meet new stories to tell. And of course, I would really love it if you left a review. So head on over to mayecreate.com for those shownotes mayecreate.com . Or maybe even contact my team about building that next website. We can do it for you. And we even have our better than DIY website program that teaches you to plan and build your own website. So head on over to mayecreate.com mayecreate.com I'll meet you over there
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
