Let's talk a little bit about how to address problems with this visceral layer, if you think you have those. Visual design and brand stewardship is its own whole big area of endeavor, but I didn't want to leave you hanging. I thought I would give you a few quick tips here that are really practical and things you can apply in let's say less than a day to just straight now your design program and at least make it consistent and explicit. Generally speaking, a visual design program will have these four stages of strategy. What is this thing about this brand, this company. Creation. Application of the design program, and then your stewardship and maintenance. So if you are in an existing company that is big, you probably have almost certainly some of this stuff, and the best thing to do because consistency is win, is to go get it. So for example, if your company has a website, but not a style guide, go get all the stuff from the website that they are already using and just make your own set of notes on your style guide. It doesn't need to be fancy, just needs to be clear and explicit for your team that user is going to go to the corporate website, go over to your application and see something totally different, for example. That said, there's generally a strategy. So you have a positioning statement, moodboards are a way that advertising agencies, branding agencies will do this. I have a fun and affordable at the price of completely free tool for use. There's this website brand lattice that I built with some friends, so you can use to go through and create a brand strategy in like 15 minutes. Now, is that the right way to do it? Not necessarily, but if you don't have one, if you're in a brand new brand or program or this just doesn't exist and you want to talk to someone about it and bring something for strategy, this is a pretty good way to do it really quickly. So you'll go through and just come up with brand metaphors, this is the thing that an agency will do with you over a long period of time, and they'll do more stuff. They'll test it, they'll give you multiple versions of it, but if you want to quick version, that's a pretty good alternative for the step of strategy. Then there's creation, and there's a note here, and we have this in the course resources. Just create a style guide. Yeah. Just write all this stuff down, and there's an example of this for the stuff that you're seeing here and the color and website, and it's just this Google Doc with the colors, the typefaces, and there's a template for this that you can make a copy of and use yourself, or just put in a text file or a note, we always use this typeface and these sizes and these colors. It doesn't have to be really fancy, it just has to be clear and actionable for whoever it is you're collaborating with. Then there's the application. Sometimes you find that either your brand elements don't work well in the way you're applying them, or you pick this typeface, but this tool or this place you're using it, you need an alternative, and so there's some maintenance and interpretation, and that's why it's really important that wherever this stuff is, it's easy to get at, that's why I used a Google doc for example, but whatever you have, that's equivalent, a shared drive, the Microsoft equivalent of Google Docs, all those, just like all our stuff here, a good style guide is one that's being viewed a lot, being used a lot, and as necessarily being changed, and so that is the stewardship step of looking at what's actually happening and maintaining the brand accordingly. So those are some quick and dirty tips on how to work on the visceral layer, the winds are all around consistency and being explicit about the why, but the consistency is the easiest win. So check out that style guide, use the brand lattice tool if you want, if you want a brand strategy to present, to connect to that stuff, you think that would be useful. But above all, stay consistent with whatever else is going on with your company or your product, that's the easiest way to get a win here.
