Branding: my brand tree

Something really cool that came out of It's Business Time and working with Tiffany Han was getting clear on my own personal branding, and creating something called a brand tree. 

Now, "branding" is a term that I want to dig into more, and learn more about. I feel like it can be one of those smokescreen words, corporate-speak. I want to get clear on what branding means to me, what it can do for a business, and where to start crafting a new brand, so it doesn't feel so overwhelming. So, I'm going to write my way through this learning, as I do with just about everything, here on my blog.

I went to design school and I still feel this way about branding, so I imagine you might too! Anyway, I hope it's interesting. :)

So, back in March of this year, I hadn't yet started the It's Business Time program. I was still in Tiffany's 100 Rejection Letters program. And as part of that, I was developing my own brand. In this post, I wrote about the process and shared what I had come up with so far. 

Then the whirlwind of the crowdfunding campaign happened, and before I knew what was happening, I was in the It's Business Time program and the real branding adventure began!

We did a great deal of introspection and writing in the program. It wasn't until Week 13 that we dug into branding and crafting our Brand Trees. I won't share the worksheets, as they are Tiffany and Michelle's intellectual property, but we did things like answer questions like "How do you want people to feel when interacting with your brand?" and "How do you anticipate differentiating yourself from the competition?" (In another post soon, I'll share my own branding questionnaire, that I've come up with for my clients.)

So here is my brand tree, now:

It's so interesting to look back to the one in this post and compare. 

How do I use the brand tree? Well, I keep it on the wall above my desk, and often I'll look at it, just for inspiration, or when I'm kind of staring off into space while creating. The core values are the roots of my brand, and they help me when I'm coming up with new ideas or trying to figure out if an upcoming project fits in my brand. The brand words in the middle are the three things that everything I do or put out there into the world must be. The three words are not meant to be limiting, but rather a guideline to help me remember what my brand is all about. And the branches at the top are the three ways that my business manifests... the things that I do and create. 

nature + inspiration

Nature, man. It's the best. That's why hipsters take photos of leaves in front of their faces, right? 

I put on my agenda, "Write a blog post about how nature inspires me." I was thinking of making moodboards, and taking some photos and then making colour palettes out of them, which is like, lovely, designer-y stuff, and might be a fun project for me sometime, but it isn't something I actually DO.

What I actually DO is go out into nature and take walks. 

And I take photos. So many photos. Most of my iPhone photos are of leaves, trees, roots, water. Shit that at the time, feels so awesome and powerful and beautiful. (And, it is.)

So then I was like, I'll just write about how nature impacts my designs. 

And then I sat down to write about it, and this is what came out:

How can I put into a blog post what nature does to me?

The way it makes me feel? Why I want to be out in it, all the time? What the fresh air does to me? To my soul? How excited it all makes me? The leaves on the ground, the flowing brook, the needles of the larch, the colours all around, the way the clouds change colour. The smell of the air. The goddamn smell of the goddamn air. It invigorates me!! All the exclamation points!

I need it to breathe. To breathe deeply. To really inhale. To feel free. That feeling of freedom, that’s what I’ve been searching for, for the last year. I was feeling frantic, and stuck. Stuck in between boxes and boxes and boxes that existed in my dayplanner… boxes I had set up. The boxes are commitments to things. But along with all those boxes, I was also checking social media all the time. You don’t realize what that does to you. I didn’t realize until these last few months, when my imagination started coming back. When my sense of freedom started coming back.

Reading back through 100 Rejection Letters book, I see: Slow Down comes up a lot. SO WHY AM I RUSHING MYSELF AND PUSHING MYSELF TO DO MORE? I want to build a business sustainably. So that means not making myself burnt out doing it. Simple. As that.

Here and here are other posts I wrote (on my old blog, Dream Big Cape Breton) about nature. I like 'em still. 

Friday music I'm loving right now

Mmm hmm, so so so SO good: the new album by Fat Freddy's Drop. You can hear a track off it on that website. 

I love cranking my tunes, it helps me work. If I'm in my home office and Adam isn't home, I crank it in my speakers with a sub-woofer that makes the bass really pop. If I'm at my day job in my office, I put on headphones and that helps to tune out some of the background noise, and focus. 

(Other times I prefer silence for working. It really just depends.)

And then other times I get up out of my chair and have a mini dance party! Move that body. That really helps creativity.

Happy Friday!

a love note to our own inspirational notes

Portrait of me is by Paige Rankin. "Big Things Happen One Day At A Time" is from the Get To Work Book.  Quote from the Bible was written down by my cousin Ginger. "You are a creative soul" print is by me, it was a gift to the participants of the Creative Soul Weekend.

Dear Notes,

Thank you for being there for me. A simple piece of paper and a thumb tack, or a piece of washi tape, and my own handwriting, or a simple design: you are the conduit between the big magic of God/the Universe, and my simple bones and flesh here on Earth. You bring the words that act as little stones, little pearls to rattle in my pocket as I go about my day to day. Shake shake, rattle rattle. Remind me, remind me, whisper to me, that I am creative, that I shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that I got this, that I am more than whatever bill I am paying at the moment.

The words become stepping stones. One flat stone in a garden, dew of the morning still on it, my bare feet standing on it. There is another stone, I step on that, and then to the next stone, and I move forward. I am not stuck. The words serve. 

Then there is the cleansing that comes when its time to take a note down. You are like husks and seeds in the fall… the seeds have fallen, the husk remains. It’s time to take you down, put the paper in the recyclable bin. Leave a blank space on the wall for a bit. Let blankness be.

Someday soon, another idea, another quote, another string of stones and pearls will float down into my mind and catch. I’ll write it down, take out the thumb tacks or the washi tape, and attach it to the wall for a little while. And so it goes, the cycle of creativity, the cycle of hanging on to the thread of an idea, the cycle of supporting myself through the Resistance, through the negative voices that would stop all forward movement if it could. 

O little piece of paper, you are so much bigger than your fibres. Thank you.

fall days

A few weekends ago I went around the Cabot Trail with my friend Jacquie. This is taken in Red River.

It's Saturday. It's 11 am. It's late Autumn, and outside the air is cool. In the sky, there are patches of blue sky, and patches of clouds. The leaves on the trees I can see outside my office window are half orange, half green. And swaying slightly, rustling, in a lazy little wind. 

Adam, my boyfriend, is hanging out on the couch in the living room. He's watching Sports Centre. It's his happy place. He's got a blanket over him, and likely he'll doze off. The cat, Mittens, was outside earlier, so there is a good chance she'll curl up on top of Adam and sleep too. And me, well, I'm in my office, carving out some time for my business. 

What that looks like today is: first, tidying up my space. Emptying the recycle bin of paper into a blue bag. Piling up the library books that I'm ready to return. Moving the pile of newspapers I'm saving to use in the garden, from the middle of the desk over to the far corner. Creating a spot on the shelf for magazines I want to use in making collages. 

Same Cabot Trail trip from a few weeks ago, this is from the top of Smokey Mountain.

Then, I open up my planner. I take care of a few quick things: emailing my Mom and brother about tomorrow, when I'll drive up to Baddeck to hang out with them. We needed to confirm the time. I send an email to my friend Leah Wechsler, who came through the It's Business Time program with me, and who is now my "biz buddy" - we will be Skyping next weekend for a monthly check-in with each other. (We call each other Wechsler and Noble, since we are both Leah.) And I send one to my mom and Adam's mom Mary Jane, to confirm a date in November when we three will meet for lunch. 

This is at Groves Point, collecting seaweed for my garden, a few weeks ago.

Now we get to the hard part. The part where Resistance gets to come out and tap dance all over my face. It's like when I'm at the gym, and I'm on the exercise bike, intending to be there for 30 minutes, but the pedals start to feel heavy. The machine is pushing back at me. It's on purpose: it's to make me work. It's to make me use my thigh muscles to push back, to raise my heart rate, to get healthy. It feels good, and it will feel good, once it's done. But in the moment, I'm incredibly tempted to get off the bike and say "Well that was just too hard, maybe I go better read a book about exercising, instead." You know? LOL. 

It's the same with doing the work of my business. The work of my business takes a number of forms: doing design work, but also writing my blog posts, coming up with ideas for things to create, things to share. Showing up day after day after day is actually how things get done. And Resistance looooves to tell scary stories about failure, about how they're all gonna laugh at me, about not having what it takes. 

From a mid-week walk, a cloud selfie in the field near my house.

Funny how easy it is for me to forget I've been blogging since 2002. That's thirteen years I've been typing into a white box on a web browser and hitting Publish. I forget even now, thirteen years later, that we figure it out as we go along. As we show up. That content plans are great, and goals for what we want to communicate to our audience are great, but that Showing Up and Doing Work (and maybe changing the plan as the work happens and we realize new things) is what trumps ALL. 

I so want to be able to plan plan plan, and then have creative inspiration show up when I schedule it to. "Wednesday at 9 am, OK inspiration? Show up then if you can." 

But Inspiration is like, "Leah, you show up, and I'll meet you there. Sometimes. Sometimes you'll be all by yourself. But do the work anyway. I'll be there again soon."

West Mabou Beach, last weekend.

As I'm writing this, Mittens came and sat next to me, right next to my computer.

Adam is getting up, I can hear him moving about the house. I think he's going to do some sort of home-reno-something-or-other. He's the handy one in this relationship, for sure. He does things like tile the laundry room, or put a new screen door and trim on the front door. 

So is there a moral in this blog post? Ha! Likely not. Likely it's just me rambling. But it's also me showing up. Showing you pictures of life lately. Sharing thoughts from life lately. Putting into practice my belief that 60% is a passing grade. That you do the work, and put it out there. Before you're ready. Right? Right.

So now I'm going to use the remaining hour or so of the time I've blocked out for myself today to work on upcoming blog posts. I'm thinking of doing a "Day In The Life" post this week or next. I'd also like to share some actual designs I've done, but I imagine those posts will take a bit more to get together: sketches, my thoughts on the process, the finished designs. I'd also love to know in what ways I can be useful to you, my readers. What bits of expertise or thoughts can I share, that would make your day better? Do let me know. 

That's all for now! I hope you're having a lovely day, that you get to get outside and feel the fresh and delicious Fall air on your face and in your hair. 

xo Leah

just show up, yo

I was kind of in a funk this week. I did some budgeting and realized that I needed to make some Adult Choices... and man I hate those, haha. I basically was living paycheque-to-paycheque and not really keeping track of my spending at all. So I put my Big Girl Panties on... and sat down with a calculator and my bank account. It feels good to have done that, but not so good to realize I can't afford my personal trainer. (Which, man, that feels like the most yuppie thing to say EVER.)

But I'm not a rich lady. I was going to a personal trainer for a medical reason I may talk about on here one of these days, and it was super amazing and helpful. 

Anyway, that plus the fact that I don't feel like I've hit a creative groove yet, since launching this website, meant I was in a funk this week. You know, that mood where your inner critic says all the mean things.

Then I went to visit the current second year Graphic Design class at NSCC, my alma mater. I talked to them about my story so far, about all I've done to get to this point, and about what I've learned along the way. It was fun! We laughed, and shared, and I looked at all their work afterwards, and it gave me the kick in the butt I needed to remember:

Oh yeah. I GOT THIS. Just show up. Just do the work. Just put it out there. 

So here I am. Re-remembering for the 456th time (roughly) that I work best through writing it out. Through sharing. That my blog posts need not be 100% polished, perfect, with photos, with links, to be ready to get out into the world. 

And then there was this.

the story of how I got into graphic design, part 1

Photo from I Love Typography.

I'd like to tell you the story of how I got into graphic design.

It actually begins back when I was a kid, but I'm not going to get to that part for a bit. (Because I didn't realize that that's where the love started, until much later.)

Where I thought it began was: 2007. 

I had moved back in with my mother at the age of 23, having left university in my third year. I had had depression. My energy was totally depleted. I was living at my mother's house, and I remember becoming totally entranced with typography of all things. Specifically, with a website called “I Love Typography” -- and I cannot remember now how I found it. 

My computer monitor at the time was a big bulky thing. Flat screens weren’t yet mainstream. (This was 2007.) I had the computer set up in my brother’s bedroom, upstairs, which was a small room with a high ceiling. I would sit there, crammed in between a high shelf that held books and random bits of my brother’s life (he was in Ukraine then, I think), and his bed, at a small desk I’d inherited from a friend, which was wobbly and painted a weird green. I'd sit up there, and scroll and scroll through this website. I was discovering: Typography was a real thing, and I loved it!

It seemed so magical. I’d always loved letters. I’ve always read voraciously, and loved design, kind of from off at a distance… I didn’t know I loved it, the way I do now, but I knew that a beautifully designed book or magazine had a certain something that just brought the reading experience to a whole new level. I learned the term “ligature”, which means when two letters ajoin, like “fi”. I learned about letterpress printing, which seemed like another kind of magic to me. From the belly of an inky, noisy beast could come this crisp white paper with an ever so slight indentation, and a beautiful design on it. I wanted to try it. I tucked that desire away like a precious stone.

Work came again to me. Once I had my strength back, I taught seniors how to use computers at the local library, and worked for a non-profit that runs computer sites in rural communities. Part-time work was good for a while but then I wanted more money. I went looking for a full-time job and ended up at the local marina. Now, I am not a boat person. I do not long to tinker with jibs and mains, or refinish the wooden deck of a sailboat. I do love the water, though. And I love people. And my job had me in the store, working with boat parts, selling them, arranging them in the store.

I stayed at the marina for three years. But somewhere in the middle of those three years I started looking for what was next. I looked at the local community college, NSCC, which has campuses in thirteen towns across the province. I looked at their landscaping and gardening program, in the Annapolis valley. I looked at their Office Administration program, thinking I did well in office work and wouldn’t mind some sort of credential for it. I lined up a visit to the local campus, signing up for both the Office Admin tour and the Graphic Design tour. When I was in the cafeteria with all the other students, though, and it came time to actually go on the tour, to pick Office Admin or Graphic Design, I went with my gut and I went with the graphic design teacher. Being in that classroom for the first time – ah, I can still feel the way it felt! The excitement. The feeling of “I need to be in this place!” They took art and letters – my first loves – and gave it a sacred space, a room with desks and tables, a dedicated workspace for each student to do their work: try, to create, to explore. To make drawings and posters and test out ideas.

I was hooked.   

(Part 2 to come... sometime.)