Braid Creative & Consulting

Underselling Ourselves When We Feel Undefined

Braid Creative — Wed, 15 May 2013 15:53:27 +0000

What to say about the Braid Workshop? We brought together a fine group of creative entrepreneurs on an unusually cold spring Saturday a few weeks ago, including web developers, graphic designers, photographers, videographers, and still-trying-to-definers.

One thread that ran through that productive day, is while everyone there was about their creative business – the day felt very personal. Many of these creatives work solo, or with just one partner. So like most workshops and gatherings geared for a very particular “tribe” like this, it really becomes a cool way to come together and see the same stuff we’re all going through together.

And of all the “stuff” we’re dealing with, the big one that became apparent through the selling-yourself exercises and personal-branding conversations was this: all of us do way too much, with very fuzzy boundaries around what we are providing. So the not-so-stellar side effect of all this vision and not a lot of definition – is we creative, entrepreneurial, women (yes we were all gals that day) tend to overdeliver and overplease. While we undershare, undersell (and undercharge) on what we actually do.

Traveling And Working As A Creative Entrepreneur

Braid Creative — Thu, 02 May 2013 16:12:39 +0000

When I worked as an art director at my nine-to-five job at an ad agency I would leave for a week of vacation with no concerns about work. (I was never what you would describe as a workaholic.) Tara, as a very important creative director, had the same policy – upper management and her team of designers and art directors, myself included, were given strict instructions to not call her while she was out of the office. Work was work, and vacation was vacation. The two shall remain separate and never meet.

Tara and I have found many creatives work for themselves because travel is a priority – they insist on the flexibility to be able to set their own schedule and take time off without permission from upper management. But now I'm exploring the question of whether us creative entrepreneurs, myself included, have the flexibility (and balance) to travel and work – at the same time.

When Your Creative Business Finally Feels Real

Braid Creative — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 18:05:51 +0000

Kathleen and I spent last weekend way up on a hilltop in the Austin hill country in the home of artist Alyson Fox, at a workshop hosted by The Jealous Curator. Well, Kathleen will tell you, the “jealous” part worked – at least at first arrival (hint: it had a lot to do with being in a glass house an artist designed and built up on a hilltop). But as we talked and asked and answered and laughed (and maybe cried a little, just a little) with this group of women designers, painters, authors, bloggers and photographers, the question that kept coming up around this circle of working creatives had a lot less to do with wishing we had created something jealousy-worthy, and instead was this – when do you finally feel like a “real” artist? What does it take to get to that place where you say, “okay, this is really what I do now, and who I am, and how I make a living?”

Get Hired For What You Really Do Instead of What You Almost Do

Braid Creative — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 15:06:54 +0000

We recently had an “a-ha!” moment after hearing one of our Braid Ecourse creative entrepreneurs, explain the difference between being understood (and hired) for what she “really” does, instead of misunderstood (and hired, yes, but perhaps not as happily) for what she “almost” does. Brooklyn-based wedding designer Michelle Edgemont is all about quirky, fun, modern wedding design, yet serious about defining her own business and expertise. This is her Dream Customer Catching ECourse takeaway:

Shedworking On My Mind

Braid Creative — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 19:50:13 +0000

If you work for yourself, chances are you do a lot (if not all) of your work from home. In fact if you do work 100% from a home office you probably actually have a designated office room in your house. Like with a door. I bet though, many entrepreneurs who do office in a building, “somewhere else,” still do a lot of homeworking. Except you may be doing it all willy-nilly anywhere that your laptop will plug in (or sustain a feeble charge) on dining room table, couch, floor, bed, front porch, backyard. It just comes with the territory of, well, freedom.

We are other people’s fantasy. But oh boy, do we have fantasies of our own. Or else we wouldn’t be the creative entrepreneurs (or aspiring-to-be’s). So my daydream right now is a shed. Yes, a shed. With a glass door, and a skylight, and a little slanted roof, and a little rock path from my back door and room enough for just a desk and a little space heater under my feet. Sound like a work-dream-space you could get behind?

What To Expect At The Braid Workshop

Braid Creative — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 15:47:26 +0000

So the first Braid Workshop is coming up May 4, here on our home turf in Oklahoma City. We made a video to share a little more about what to expect you can watch here. Our workshop is for creative entrepreneurs like photographers, designers, web developers, coaches, consultants, stylists, bloggers, writers, and marketers – out there on your own, selling what you do and sharing who you are.

But, the problem is, you hate feeling salesy and you can't decide if you love or hate the overlap between what's business and what's personal. So our one day workshop is going to take you through some of our most helpful brand and business vision exercises that get down to what you should be sharing and selling.

Is Your Dream Customer Just Like You or Opposite You?

Braid Creative — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 21:06:56 +0000

I’d say four out five creative entrepreneurs we work with come to the realization that their dream customer is really not that different than themselves. They are cut from the same cloth – they like the same brands, they seek the same adventures, want the same feeling from life and work as you do. And sometimes their work is very similar to yours. That can be worrisome, because then you start to think “wait, what am I bringing to the table if my ideal client can basically do this for themselves for free?” Or what you do is so in the vein of their work/life, that they are surrounded by peers or friends (who they already know). You might ask “why would they pay for this creative service from me?”

Then there’s that one creative entrepreneur we work with that comes to a big revelation: their dream customer is actually the complete opposite of them. And they like it that way. Their dream engagement is helping someone see the “other side.” But a problem for them is sharing content or knowledge that resonates enough with a dream customer to attract their attention and earn their trust – because the service they provide is coming from a completely opposite perspective.

So when your dream engagement is with a client “just like you,” how do you sell what you bring to the table? On the flip-side, when your client is your opposite, how do you share your appreciation for where they’re coming from?

Braid Workshop: How to Share YOU and Sell What You DO

Braid Creative — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 21:41:00 +0000

Creative Entrepreneurs love and hate the overlap – the blended in-between of work and life, of what’s personal and what’s business, of what’s simply talent-for-hire and what they can really be known for. This overlap can be really clarifying or incredibly confusing. Usually both. But the overlap is never more painful or powerful than in your content.

You can think of the content you share as specifically how you blog, or post, or tweet or even structure your offerings – but on a more basic level, it’s all just a part of how you talk, write, sell and explain what you’re all about, to your followers and friends, to your peers and collaborators, to your dream customers and yourself.

Think of your content like a two-sided tag:
- One side is your gift tag: how you share yourself.
- The other side is the price tag: how you sell what you do.

So our Braid Workshop is about the two sides of your creative entrepreneur story. What are you giving away, what are you getting paid for, what is the blended tone for both, and what do you have to really say that is going to help you not only cultivate a more memorable personal brand but really explain your expertise?

Considering A Coworking Space

Braid Creative — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 21:06:50 +0000

Coworking spaces are starting to pop up all over the country, and they’re a great, inexpensive option for creative entrepreneurs. A cross between a cozy coffee shop and an open-concept office, these community-driven spaces encourage collaboration and offer both structure and flexibility for their members.

You’ve probably heard of a place like this in your town or city – and then you start hearing about it everywhere. For us this conversation around coworking really ramped on the heels of a Creative Entrepreneur letter from Tara. (Have you guys signed up for those yet? You should.) She was debating – or musing, rather, with lots of Downton Abbey-inspired metaphors – Braid’s current home-office situation vs. a potential “real” office scenario. She was raising a lot of really valid points, like: How much flexibility can we really thrive within? How much structure do we secretly crave? How many cat butts can our clients really handle in their face when we’re meeting at Kathleen’s dining table?

The One Question We Always Ask Creative Business Couples

Braid Creative — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 22:26:33 +0000

Tara here. We’ve been working with a lot of creative couples lately – as in married people or couples in serious relationships, who’ve turned their common vision into a business.

Yes, they’ve done this to themselves on purpose.

Does that sound cynical? Well, if you already work with your plus-one, you would most likely say that it’s very rewarding, but it’s also no picnic. But, if you don’t work with your mate, you might fall into two camps:

A Personal Brand Exercise For Sharing Yourself Online

Braid Creative — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 17:47:55 +0000

I’ve got a worksheet for you try out today, the Online You Sharing Spectrum. We developed it while working on our Personal Branding Braid ECourse – but I’m sharing this one exercise out of all the others – well, partly as a sneak peek into the course, but also I think this exercise in particular really helps creative entrepreneurs work through two things I’ve been noticing from our clients more than ever lately:

1. They all have this deep desire to more accurately and authentically share who they really are
2. But they’re scared

It can be confusing and overwhelming knowing what to share and how to share it when you’re at a dinner with friends – much less when you have the entire world at your fingertips. But I think nothing is more beautiful or powerful than getting to create an online space that’s so perfectly you, where you can capture, shape, and share who you are and what you’re all about.

I do believe getting clear on your boundaries and creating within your limitations will make you more comfortable, and creative, with genuinely sharing who you are online. Read on for the downloadable worksheet to start defining those boundaries, along with takeaway tips to begin more confidently sharing within those parameters.

Capture, Shape, and Share with Instagram

Braid Creative — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 20:57:36 +0000

(If you’re reading this post through an RSS feed or email be sure to click through to watch the video.)

You guys may already know that we’re huge fans of Instagram. But lately we’ve found ourselves recommending it more and more to our creative entrepreneur clients. Instagram is an awesome way to visually connect with your friends, network with potential dream customers or brand advocates, and “show your tell”. But it’s also a great way capture, shape, and share who you are, and what you do – in a consistent, curated, behind-the-scenes of your life and work kind of way.

Instagram is great for creatives like life coaches and consultants who aren’t necessarily photographers or designers, but still want to show of their goods, and their personal brand in a visual way, and look good doing it.

So this is how I, myself, and Braid’s creative entrepreneur clients, are using Instagram to capture, shape and share their business and personal brand. Now “capture, shape and share” is a three step approach I talk about a lot, especially when it comes to my blogging strategy (for both my personal blog and the Braid blog.) But really, you can just as easily overlay those three principles to a platform like Instagram – like a microblog approach I mention below (but with less writer’s block).

How Stefan Sagmeister Blew My Mind

Braid Creative — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 17:21:15 +0000

This was my third year to attend Alt Summit – a conference held in Salt Lake City for design bloggers. Just a few months prior I was hemming and hawing over whether I wanted to go or not but I ultimately decided to show up and be seen. And when I received an email saying that my design idol Stefan Sagmeister would be giving a keynote, I knew it was meant to be.

If you’re not familiar, Stefan Sagmeister is a legend in the design community for his packaging and design work for amazing musicians like Lou Reed and David Byrne. He’s notorious for carving event details into his own skin with an Xacto for an AIGA event. And more recently he sparked some attention for posing naked with Jessica Walsh to announce their new business partnership. Needless to say, I have a huge crush. Through college I used to fantasize about moving to NYC and working 80 hours a week for Stefan Sagmeister but then I got overwhelmed, scared, and tired. It was much easier to stay put.

When Your Spouse Is Your Creative Business Partner

Braid Creative — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 23:03:33 +0000

One of the coolest things about being a creative entrepreneur is that all rules and standards of a traditional nine-to-five day job are thrown out the window. For example, we don’t have to work nine-to-five. And the word “nepotism” is replaced with “collaboration”. In fact, working with family can act as a shortcut to solving problems and growing your business faster than you can imagine.

I first started working with Tara at an ad agency. We were often self-conscious about the fact that we were siblings and tried to play down our sisterly sympatico when it came to our working relationship. But now, as creative entrepreneurs and business partners we see this as one of our biggest strengths. We haven’t worked with any sibling teams (yet) we have had the pleasure of working with a few of husband / wife duos. So while we often refer to our Braid Method as “brand therapy”, when it comes to working with spouses sometimes it feels a bit like marriage counseling too. It’s fascinating to see how aligned and in-synch these couples are – and it’s equally as interesting to see where the disconnects in business vision surface – and helping them bridge those gaps.

The Art of Growth

Braid Creative — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 17:48:49 +0000

When I first quit my nine-to-five job in advertising to strike out on my own as a freelance graphic designer, my number one priority was being able to pay the bills working for myself. I had this grand fantasy of tending to my veggie garden in the middle of the day and designing work that would spread across Pinterest like wildfire. That fantasy quickly became a reality, but I still didn’t feel fulfilled or satisfied. I felt somewhat scattered and aimless. I lacked purpose until I started a blog series called Freelance Matters – I openly shared my insecurities and victories as well as very specific tips on everything from managing client relationships to creating an effective to-do list. I found that by putting it all out there I was attracting my tribe – other creative entrepreneurs. They were asking me for advice, sharing their experiences and even hiring me to help them.

A year later Tara quit her job as an executive VP creative director to join forces with me. When we first started Braid Creative we had a couple of specific goals in mind. Those goals were as follows:

How Are You Showing Your Tell?

Braid Creative — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 22:13:45 +0000

Liz here. We definitely have word-weaving and message-crafting on the brain at Braid this week. A lot to do with the second offering of the Braid ECourse: "Shape Up Your Content: Tame Your Ideas and Tell People How to Buy You." So why have Tara and Kathleen asked me to share my point-of-view and perhaps a few helpful pointers for creatives on sharing content through visuals – as opposed to only the written word? Well, I can certainly appreciate (and aspire to create) simple, memorable statements in lieu of those daunting “one thousand words” when it makes sense to do so. And, this shouldn’t really come as a surprise, but some enrollees of the messaging-focused Ecourse last time around, requested a little more insight into shaping their image-based content (the ECourse itself peppered with infographics, photos, and videos).

For visual people, sometimes it just makes more sense to share images more often than words. You can usually articulate something – a feeling, a sense of place, a moment in time – that words would only begin to describe. Plus writing is hard! Sometimes “the telling” can feel contrived coming from someone who could nail the same sentiment with a single, well-art-directed image (or a quick candid video, or a tricked-out infographic). What are some ways to create a consistency over time with those images that clues people into the fact that this content is coming from... you?

A Resolution for Routine

Braid Creative — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 16:49:36 +0000

Happy 2013, creatives! Everyone is talking about goal-setting and intentions so I thought a post on feeling lazy and setting a routine would be a perfect start to a new year here on the Braid blog.

You see, a couple of patterns I’ve noticed in the creative entrepreneurs we work with:
1. They all think they’re lazy
2. They all desire process and routine

The Lazy Factor
In a culture that glorifies 80-hour work weeks and six-figure salaries it’s almost impossible to not feel lazy. I think us creative entrepreneurs often feel lazy because our values don’t align with the nine-to-five hustle surrounding us – OR because we’re comparing our daily grind to someone else’s finished product. We think “if I could just put in a little bit more time” or “if I could try just a little harder my career would look so stylish and successful. I’d have an EBook, a workshop, and that super cool blogger in LA would be my new BFF. If I could just work a little harder and be just slightly more talented my life would look like Kinfolk.”

Or maybe that’s just me. But if this sounds familiar continue reading on.

Two Creative Content Quick Fixes

Braid Creative — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 15:45:26 +0000

This is a repost of a previous blog post that somehow disappeared into thin air. But we think it's fitting to repost since we're reoffering our Braid ECourse Shape Up Your Content: Tame Your Ideas and Tell People How to Buy You.

One incredibly common anxiety for the creatives we work with, is a feeling that their content is in a state of chaos. When we say content, we mean the words, messages, images and even conversations that they are “putting out there” about themselves. And when we say chaos, we mean:

“I have so many ideas, which ones do I talk and write about? I feel like my copy is all over the place. I know I need to write, but I hate writing. I love to write, but I need to self-edit. I am embarrassed by the content on my website because I know it could be better. Ugh, I know all my facebook, twitter etc. could be more consistent. I want to blog more but I am trying to strike a balance between personal and business. I don’t want to blog, but I want people who visits my site to understand what I do. None of it is connecting the dots. I have content chaos.”

Daring Greatly

Braid Creative — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 22:02:24 +0000

I like to think of myself as a brave person. I’ll jump out of planes and I’ll take my first trip overseas to Kathmandu. I like to dive headfirst into new experiences. So when I quit my nine-to-five to freelance, followed by teaming up with Tara to start Braid Creative, I knew it’d be a little scary but I figured it would be just another act of courage to ride out. But I had no idea the kind of uncertainty and fear that comes with the bold act of asking people to pay you money to live what you love. It stirred up all these emotions of worthiness-doubt that my ever-worthy-youngest-child-self didn’t know I was capable of.

This has led us to hiring a life coach, taking up a daily meditation practice, and reading lots and lots of self-help books. The most recent one being a signed copy of Daring Greatly by Brené Brown that I received while at Mighty Summit this past fall.

The Modern Mom And Pop Business

Braid Creative — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 20:04:11 +0000

Do you dream of the modern day mom and pop shop fantasy? You know – working with your family (or your best friends) in the cutest little corner storefront, getting the chance to do real good on a real local level, natural light illuminating your counter, creations, or wares?

Well, Sara Kaplan and Matt Runkle have created this reality for themselves. When you look through the store windows of their urban corner grocery, Native Roots Market, you see locally-sourced produce, farm-direct meat, and thoughtfully-curated pantry staples – not to mention a spice bar (Matt’s “baby” in particular) that is unrivaled by anyone around and instantly creates raving fans. All combined, it’s an intentionally holistic experience that they’ve created and continue to grow together.

It makes quite the pretty picture. A true modern day entrepreneurial fairytale. But keeping it all in the family isn’t just storytime magic – it’s hard work. So we asked Matt and Sara to tell us the best parts and the hardest parts of being partners in life, and in business.

Are You Brave Enough to Attract Your True Dream Customer?

Braid Creative — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 18:00:55 +0000

What if the image above was a bridal portrait instead of a side project?

I recently received an email from an aspiring creative entrepreneur, a photographer to be exact, asking me how she can do what she loves and get paid for it. Her fear is that the “bread & butter” paying clients, might not “get” her offbeat aesthetic when it comes to her passion projects. Sound familiar? Read on.

Here’s her letter to me:

Hi Kathleen,

I've been following your blog for a few years now, so I know you are one busy lady, but I was wondering if I could ask you a quick question that I've been struggling with lately. I've been honing my skills in photography, graphic design, and illustration over the past few years and I'm hoping to start a successful sidebusiness within the year. However, my true passion is coming up with offbeat and weird photos and illustrations... but I don't think I can make money from this.

On Having A Life Coach

Braid Creative — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 20:21:32 +0000

“If you could do this one thing, but weren’t afraid of failing, what would you do?” That’s one of the most compelling questions my life coach asked me. My answer? Start a business with my sister, Kathleen. For the first six months of Braid, we continued with Jay Pryor, our life coach who immediately “put us on the hook” for things we needed to do, and that he’d hold us accountable to doing before our next session. One of those “hooks” for us – which is kind of like homework – was to picture the kind of business we wanted to build, to begin visually tracking the kinds of clients we want to attract (sound familiar? it’s worked so well for us it’s become part of our Dream Customer Catching Braid ECourse). He also put us on the hook to be grateful for each other – to take a second at least a few times a week to acknowledge each other (which we do all the time) for the really hard and new things each of us are tackling each day as creative entrepreneurs.

If you’ve never had a life coach, but have considered it, I’d say coaching, especially for creative entrepreneurs (or about-to-be’s) helps to: 1. steel your courage for big-picture changes, and 2. “put you on the hook” for the small but powerful actions you need to do, to keep you moving toward your goal.

The Dream Customer Catching Braid ECourse

Braid Creative — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 17:55:31 +0000

Our third Braid ECourse is now open for registration – Dream Customer Catching: Embrace Your Expertise & Attract What You Track. Kathleen and I created this course because most creative entrepreneurs (as creatives) don’t like feeling the pressure of bringing in new clients. They don’t like feeling like sales people – or that they’re desperate and will work with anyone.

But as business people we have to keep the lights on, pay the bills with this dream job we’ve created for ourselves. So we want to help creative entrepreneurs still attract and “catch” those new clients, but stop trying to cast their net so wide – and instead do it in a way that keeps them narrow, focused and adding to the depth of their expertise.

What’s so scary about this approach, of honing in on your “dream” clients only – is the idea of saying “no” to the other ones. But on the flip-side, what’s so dang appealing about this approach, is that you stop feeling random and frankly desperate about taking on any one who knocks on your door. Oh, and the bigger picture result is as much for your clients as it is for keeping your dream job, well... “dreamy.” Because if you’re sticking to your core genius – you can actually make more impact with the clients that you do attract.

A Blogger Turns Professional Internet-Awesome-Maker

Braid Creative — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 18:01:36 +0000

Sarah Von Bargen has been blogging at Yes and Yes for over four years. She’s turned a seriously personable writing style (warm, knowledgeable, funny) and a knack for content curation into a dream job - most recently launching Solution Sessions, an online-overhaul for big and small business alike. The opening statement on her professional site says it all: “Some people call it ‘content marketing.’ I like to call it ‘making you awesome on the internet.’”

We recently spoke with Sarah about the meandering path that led to her current dream job, her flexible travel/work schedule, and finding your niche. And yes - it was awesome.

Our Signs Aligned

Braid Creative — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 19:08:24 +0000

Halloween, in many ways, is like a year-end/year-beginning for Braid. It was right about this time last year that we had just begun our business and this journey. And back then we were looking for signs everywhere. Could we be bold enough? Could we be brave enough? And would this ever get easier?

But this year, twelve months later, when Kathleen and I once again broke out the face paint and foraged in our closets to curate the perfect horoscope-inspired styling for our Halloween get-ups – gathering nets, and beads, and cowbells, and tentacles – we were doing it for more people than just ourselves.

Are You A Hot Spark or A Slow Burn?

Braid Creative — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 16:38:20 +0000

When it comes to making an impression in people’s hearts and minds, are you a hot spark or a slow burn? This is a topic Kathleen and I have talked about lots of times in the past. We’ve actually called it “fast burn” versus “slow burn” in our conversations – and I suppose it’s a type of people-chemistry. It applies to your relationships with friends, acquaintances, and in the case of being in business for yourself, it applies to your personal brand.

I have always considered Kathleen’s style as a hot spark (rather than a fast burn, which implies something that dies out.) A hot spark makes a quick brilliant flash of an impression with the potential to turn into something more. The point is, that the flash is what gets your attention, burns into your retinas, and makes you memorable.

A Photographer Capturing Creative Bliss in Work and Life

Braid Creative — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 18:59:49 +0000

Here at Braid we work with lots of photographers - and even though it’s a seemingly saturated market, each photographer we work with has a distinctly unique vibe - both in their personal style and their professional process. Greer Inez is no exception. She’s the kind of gal who isn’t afraid to shave the side of her head, wear high-waisted bell bottoms, and rock a hot neon green bra under a sheer white tee. She has a sexy smoker’s voice (without being a smoker, mind you) that draws you in and hypnotizes you to what she’s preaching - which is usually something along the lines of insisting on living a bold and beautiful life. And being photographed by Greer feels like being photographed by a rock star - a rock star who makes you feel (and look) beautiful.

Greer was headed towards a doctorate with dreams of teaching college students when she found herself unexpectedly pregnant with her little boy (now two years old). It was an opportunity for her to completely change directions into creative entrepreneurship. We’re chatting with Greer a little more on how she lives a bold and beautiful life of her very own.

Personal Branding Braid ECourse

Braid Creative — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 15:29:46 +0000

I’ve always been fascinated by personal brands. It started with a childhood girl crush on Madonna - who she was has had far more impact on the world than her often questionable talent. Even through her more breathy and lackluster albums, the power of her whole packaged and ever-changing self is undeniable. My obsession with celebrity has evolved to those who are even more bold and unapologetic in who they are - from Paris Hilton to Lady Gaga.

I’ve always wanted a little piece of that. Gaga, Paris and Madonna served as inspiration but I’ve learned that you don’t have to be a celebrity to live out loud.

Proximity, Opportunity and Showing Up

Braid Creative — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 15:40:51 +0000

I’m going to be brave here and share, explicitly, that the Braid home office is smack dab in the middle of Oklahoma City. We work with dream customers from Seattle to Miami. From Boston to Austin and everywhere in between. I suppose I’m a little shy, or even at times apologetic, about being from the midwest but the truth is this: I have never felt limited by my location.

How have I been able to thrive as a creative professional smack dab in the middle of the heartland? Half of the formula to being in the right place at the right time is to be in any place at all (a place that isn’t your couch, watching Breaking Bad while putting final touches on that logo design or consultation package you’ve been obsessed with). It’s proximity that creates opportunity, and I’m successful because I show up.

A PopUp Shop Creator With a Passion for Small Biz

Braid Creative — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 14:39:46 +0000

Piper Toth of One Sydney Road has turned her wanderlust, her love of beautiful things and her small business background into an online shop success – most recently curated as a series of city-themed collections (from Parisian streets to Brooklyn boardwalks). And while the pop-up strategy has helped keep the daily grind of running a retail business fresh for Piper, she’s come to realize that her true “passion path” may be actually helping the shopkeeps themselves. These small business gals (and guys) who she often celebrates in her Meet The Shopkeeps feature on her pop-up site, are exactly who she’s come to realize are her true dream customer. And that, kinda gives us goosebumps for where this creative entrepreneur’s wanderings could take her next. See how Piper’s made a go of it so far, and how she’ “braving up” to take her business vision road on a new direction.

The Braid ECourse for Shaping Up Your Content

Braid Creative — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 16:06:44 +0000

So it’s official. Our Braid ECourse is launched and open for registration. This is the first ECourse in what we are developing as an ongoing series – Shaping Your Content: Taming Your Ideas & Telling People How To Buy You. And the biggest question we get from people interested in registering is, “is this for me?”

Our purpose for this ECourse is to take this one particular aspect of how we help our one-on-one Braid clients and offer it in a lesson plan of sorts. We want to help other creatives professionals, bloggers, entrepreneurs and aspiring-to-be’s wrap their head around all their ideas, focus on the ones that are content-worthy, weed out the ones that cause distraction and confusion – and make what they are writing and saying less generic, more authentic, and supportive of their actual vision for themselves and their creative business.

When Creatives Help Creatives.

Braid Creative — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 19:14:31 +0000

Have you heard the saying, “the cobbler has no shoes?” It’s often the same thing for vibrant, bootstrappy creative firms, when it comes to telling their own brand story. Think design studios, marketing firms, sound studios, video/editing studios and other creative shops – in cities, we should mention, that might just happen to be smack dab in the middle of the country or off the beaten path. (Hey, not everyone can live in a creative-metropolis-on-the-coast, right?)

Firms like this often have mad skills, but they need the shoes to match. Or, like that fabled shoemaker, they need to stop “doing, doing, doing” for everyone else, and take a moment. They need to stop just “cobbling” together their own brand into an image of how they think a creative shop should seem – but actually look inward, and start saying what they really mean about themselves.

Kathleen and I just had the chance to work with one such Oklahoma City design firm. They’ve been blazing away creating some really beautiful brands and modern designs for their own clients, and they have this cool open space along an urban street – and their name is Ghost. The name alone is magical, right? The trigger for them to take a hard look at their own brand, was gearing up for a website redesign and relaunch their internal team would design and develop (which is there anything harder than working on your own projects?)

Web Is What She Does. Travel Is What It Gives Her.

Braid Creative — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 16:34:10 +0000

The path of creative independence is certainly a twisty one. And Emily Thompson of Indie Shopography, wouldn’t have it any other way. Her love of travel, her ability to work for clients around the country (with a biz trip to Paris peppered in there, which she’d love more of, please) all from her home office (and breathtaking back porch view) deep in the mountains of North Carolina – and her little family’s ability to pick up and move wherever their heart leads them (right now it’s actually away from their cozy mountain hideout, back to sweet home Alabama, but they’ve got their sights on Austin, TX, fingers crossed) is a big part of her self-employed freedom.

Say What You Mean and Do What You Love

Braid Creative — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 15:52:27 +0000

If you read our blog through an RSS feed or straight from your email inbox you may not have noticed a few changes that have taken place on the Braid website.

The most meaningful one being that we have decided to say what we mean and do what we love. Our header used to say “Braid Creative & Consulting weaves authenticity.” It was our way of being vague enough to be anything to anyone. But with almost a year under our belt we’ve recognized that we don’t want to be everything to everyone. We’ve been surprised by our passion for business visioning and planning. Our style of branding is most brilliant when intertwined with the vision, too. And what we’re really best at, is doing this for our dream customers – who happen to be small microbusinesses and creative entrepreneurs like us.

Who Are Your Permission Givers?

Braid Creative — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 15:10:17 +0000

I saw the amazing and prolific Kate Bingaman Burt speak at the HOW Design Conference three years ago and she kind of changed my life. She’s one of those people who oozes creativity (without pretension) and turns everything she touches into a piece of art which then turns into a viable project that makes said art a career. She’s a true artistpreneur whom I truly have a crush on. But what I want to talk about today is something Kate Bingaman Burt touched on during her talk at HOW: permission giving.

Shop Expert. Quite Possibly A Dream Job.

Braid Creative — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 14:51:45 +0000

We work with so many creative entrepreneurs – serious guys and gals running their own show, their own life and establishing themselves as creative experts in their own specialities. And though we’ve used our Braid blog as a platform to share some work we’ve created for them (from logos, to business-vision plans, to brand videos), we’ve also tried not to bombard you with “look-what-we-made” posts. But our part aside, we want to show you more.

So we’re adding a new thread. We’re going to start sharing the stories of these creative self-starters (many are just a few years, or even a few months, into their biz.) We want to give you snapshots into how their work/life ticks – when it’s not chaotically rocketing ahead at its own crazy pace, that is. So first up, Allison Barta Bailey, a shop expert (yes, that’s an awesome job) who helps independent shopkeeps – keep on keepin’ on.

Working From Home for Creatives

Braid Creative — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 14:12:48 +0000

Braid Creative has been officing out of my house for almost a year now. At first we were self-conscious about the fact that we didn’t have a “real” office space. But over the past year we’ve really come to embrace working from home - and the majority of our creative entrepreneur clients work from home too.

So, let’s say you’ve finally decided to take the leap and make a go at being an artistpreneur. Working from home is an obvious choice. There is no extra overhead and you’ve probably already made your space a sanctuary for creativity. But sometimes working-at-home can turn into always-working and induce a bit of claustrophobia. So here are a few tips, from personal experience, on how to making working-from-home … well ... work:

When Listmaking Crosses The Line

Braid Creative — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 21:46:41 +0000

I am a listmaker. And I know I am not alone. But lately I have been debating whether my lists make me more organized or just make me a raving micromanager of my own thoughts and priorities. My list-making also takes a more traditional micromanagement form, which is to say, arranging and updating our team’s list, too. Kathleen, Kristin and I share a master to-do list on Google Docs that we all refer to daily. They reassure me the list (and my lording over the list at times) helps them see the big picture for the week, and helps us all keep track of our daily tasks. And that’s what lists are for, right? But of the three of us, I think I’m the one that crosses the line into unhealthy list obsession. What are the signs my list-making has gotten out of control, and do these behaviors feel familiar (or freaky) to you?

Reading Reverb by Gwen Bell

Braid Creative — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 16:35:26 +0000

I just finished reading the ebook, Reverb. Kathleen has been more than just a bit fascinated with its author, Gwen Bell, for a while now and told me I should read it. Bell speaks, writes and consults all over the world – uh, and lives out of one bag! So of course she seems right up Kathleen’s alley. As in, Kathleen does hot yoga in the middle of work days and believes the universe is going to answer when she hollers out what she’s seeking. I’m more... well, I can’t think of an opposite to hot yoga, but I still gave this quick read a go. And, uh, hello universe, as a creative entrepreneur who is constantly re-adjusting, refining and reality-checking my business and self (maybe rewriting to-do lists three times a day is the opposite of hot yoga), Reverb actually answered.

Draw More In Meetings & Get Others On Your Page

Braid Creative — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 18:55:13 +0000

Apparently the age-old saying, “a picture is worth a thousand words,” is true – or at least trending. Visit a marketing department or advertising agency meeting room that’s been updated in the past few years and it’s guaranteed to boast a floor to ceiling IdeaPaint whiteboard wall. Their staff regularly say “let’s whiteboard it out” and are perhaps even a little addicted to a spectrum of scented dry-erase markers.

Meanwhile some of the most classic tools of capturing ideas by hand have been making a steady comeback, as well. Look at the renewed obsession with pocket-size journals. What self-respecting creative director shows up to a meeting without their Moleskin and fine-tip Sharpie? Or visit the web site of the scrappy, independently-rugged notebook brand, Field Notes. Their rough brown paper and vintage typography-inspired design is practically a testament to the renewed romance of note taking.

But if the more mainstream popularity of drawing surfaces are any indicator – personal journals are now a fixed staple of any bookstore and while erasable drawing surfaces like the trusty chalkboard have always been in the classroom, the luckier schools are now installing SmartBoards in every class as early as first grade – it seems that creative professionals and marketing communicators aren’t the only ones catching wise to the power of sketching out ideas.

Visual note taking – especially of the spontaneous variety – helps thinkers of all ages and professions, better capture ideas and creatively solve problems in the moment.

But just as powerfully, doodling, drawing, and sketching while explaining ideas can get groups of people seeing on the same page, to be more likely to engage and contribute in the process, and increases the chance that those new ideas will actually get executed down the road.

“Any Problem Can Be Helped With A Picture” is Dan Roam’s mantra and the crux of his how-to book for visual problem solving, The Back Of The Napkin: Solving Problems And Selling Ideas With Pictures. And Roam definitely puts his philosophy – and doodles – into practice, as his book is chock-full of smart, simple, and personable drawings which he uses to explain everything from the science of visual thinking (for the truly geeky), to simple tips (for the truly drawing-adverse) and poses lots of strategies for those of us that fall somewhere in between.

The problems and ideas Roam draws about in his book are the kind found in almost any business-planning scenario. And since being able to tap into new ideas practically on-demand, while also getting others to understand (and enthusiastically-approve) those ideas are basically the top of the list for any marketer or creative professional, this book is incredibly eye-opening for them in particular, providing actionable ideas for creating hand drawn visuals on the fly, especially in collaborative group settings.

“Because processing images activates more corners of our minds than words alone, we have a greater tendency to believe what we see – and the images we create are far stickier than the things we only hear.” – Dan Roam, The Back Of The Napkin

Because Pictures “Are Stickier”
This is Roam’s point that someone may be describing their point-of-view one way, but every other person in the group is seeing it in their mind’s eye differently. Until an idea is put to paper, it’s impossible to tell if everyone’s really on the same page, or napkin in this case.

Now, if the idea of being asked to actually draw in a meeting gives you Pictionary-fright, Roam stresses you don’t have to be an artist to flex your visual thinking muscle. If you can draw a circle, a line, a square, an arrow, you’re pretty much set. But people can get pretty intimidated about this, especially those that don’t consider themselves creative or just don’t want to “play along.” Roam suggests overcoming that resistance might be as simple as just knowing which color pen a person identifies with.

What Color Is Your Pen? Roam identifies three kinds of visual thinkers: “people who can’t wait to start drawing (the black pen people), those who are happy to add to someone else’s work (the highlighters or yellow pen) and those who question it all – right up to the moment they pick up the red pen and redraw it all.”

“Proceed With Curiosity.”
While Roam’s book is very much targeted toward business problem-solving, How To Be An Explorer of the World by Keri Smith, is anything but corporate. “Proceed with curiosity” is hand written – irresistible not to turn – caution on the opening page of her book that’s unfolds like an illustrated journey.

Less about presenting, and more about capturing what we find when we actively cultivate our curious nature – is where visual note taking, drawing and documenting comes in to Smith’s method. It’s why pens play a big part of her book, too. Pens, notepads, and pocket-journals are just a few of the tools Smith recommends to analyze, collect, compare and spot patterns – be it in the detailed study of the bark of a tree or the observations of every person you see walking out of the corner grocery store in a one-hour sitting.

“Artists and scientists analyze the world around them in surprisingly similar ways.” – Keri Smith, How To Be An Explorer of The World

Branding exercises, employee or customer observations, workshop activities, and collaborative group problem-solving are all ways that businesses, from a two-person startup to a multi-layered organization can drill down to their unique differences and most compelling attributes. So, while it’s anything but a business book – any person trying to find the underlying truth in an organizational challenge can find lots of simple, unusual, and frankly fun methods in Explorer.

Every page is basically a mission. Smith uses quirky photos and line drawings to describe each one to the reader. They are simple to execute exercises that transform commonplace objects, environments and tasks into almost clandestine assignments with the promise of eye-opening revelations. Three such experiments that could be easily adapted to a branding, concepting or other creative business challenges are “Fifty Things,” “Local Lore” and “Accidental Art.”

From The Back Of The Napkin To Explorer Of The World
Getting comfortable with capturing what is seen, and making sense of it on paper for others to understand (or on whiteboard paint with a grape-scented marker) improves problem-solving skills in the professional world. But busting out those markers shouldn’t be reserved for only brainstorming sessions. Even a Monday morning staff meeting can be improved by a brave person setting down the coffee mug and pulling from their tool belt of visual skills (and that doesn’t have to always mean illustrating-skills here, so simmer down you draw-phobic).

So whether taking even a small cue from “business-savvy-doodler” Roam or “artist-as-scientist” Smith, here are some practical visual skills worth uncapping your pen for.

Work On Your Capturing/Seeing & Sharing/Showing Skills:
- look for patterns in what you’re seeing or hearing
- categorize or “clump” commonalities in columns, circles or grids
- try thinkmapping or mindmapping
- try out other visual maps like venn diagrams
- charts are okay, but beware letting them get dry, think about the data as the star
- timelines or “family-tree” type flowcharts can be enhanced with touchpoint drawings along the way
- listen for and collect “found words” things people say that strike a chord
- if you’re talking about a person, draw that person (stick-people method is fine)
- if you’re talking about a product or service, draw an object that symbolizes what it stands for
- take digital photos if you’re visiting an office or worksite, even if it’s one you’ve gone to hundreds of times before
- then use the photos you took to explain a solution along with simple captions
- draw a single object that captures the emotion or you want to convey as the starting point of a story you want to tell
- create a vision board with magazine clippings, colors, found objects to make your idea one that others can imagine

Your Next Meeting Of The Minds
Next time you’re in a meeting (even that Monday morning one) rather than conceding to the typical agenda, and letting everyone just go their separate ways at it’s close – often saving the heavy thinking for the privacy (or procrastination) of their cubicles and computer screens – instead seize the moment and either:

a.) visually frame the actual problem so all parties go away from the meeting with a better understanding of what steps they can take next, or

b.) sketch out some solutions on the fly. Just because you come up with an idea spontaneously, doesn’t mean it’s not of value. A lot of times a five minute idea can serve as a catalyst to get leaps and bounds closer to an answer. Especially when everyone can see it.

Try practicing some visual problem solving skills we’ve outlined above, or check out Dan Roam’s The Back of the Napkin or Keri Smith’s How To Be An Explorer of The World.

Everybody’s Creative. Just Don’t Tell The Creatives.

Braid Creative — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 18:54:27 +0000

In advertising agencies there is a label that is used in an interesting and pretty clear-cut way. If you are a member of the creative department, you are called a creative. As in “the creatives are in a brainstorming session,” or “see if any of the creatives can fit this project in by end of day,” or “where the heck are all the creatives? oh, out at the ping pong table in back.”

The Creative Label and All It Implies:
1. That creatives are somehow their own species.
2. That creatives are a “tribish” species, at that. A ping-pong prone one, too.
3. And perhaps not on purpose, but a real perception nonetheless, is that anyone who is not labeled as a member of this paddle-wielding, nothing-they-can’t-Photoshop, nothing they can’t cleverly call-to-action, effortlessly hip, and usually really funny (but often really crabby) creative tribe is, well... not creative.

Now, if you are nodding your head and tracking with me here, you probably a crabby, clever, wonderful “creative,” yourself – or you belong to a certain tribe that goes about their own daily rituals within close-proximity of the creatives, crossing over into their midst now and again. You are an account coordinator or executive (creatives are your coworkers), you are a vendor partner like a printer (creatives hire you), or you are a marketing director or a small-business owner (you hire creatives).

Maybe you love working with creatives because you they are inspiring and fun. But maybe you kind of dread it, too? Maybe you feel both ways. That’s okay, creatives make people feel like that. Their crazy sort of rubs off. But sometimes, frankly, they just rub people the wrong way.

That’s because creatives don’t always make it easy to feel part of the circle. And that’s a problem.

Hey Crabby. Yes, You’ve Got Mad Skills.
Okay, so I’m being all covert, and whispery here (that’s what the “pssst” implies, you know like Grover trying to not wake the monster at the end of the book), but I feel you creative, reading these words and either laughing or fuming or being, all like “whatever.” It’s okay. I’m a crabby creative, too.

And, before crabby turns ugly, I will concede that no, not everyone is creative like you are creative. They do not have the same creative-focused education, the painfully-practiced craft, the Xacto knife skills (don’t ever give an account coordinator an Xacto blade even if they tell you they can help you mock up for a presentation or it will end in a trip to the E.R.). They do not know every nuance of every Buffy episode or understand that there are several shades and textures of black that make for a perfect outfit, and they definitely can’t wear that up-cycled vintage shirt with a blazer with jeans like you can and call it professional.

But really, for most of us, 90% of being a creative is training and practice (with a healthy dose of personal style in there depending on how into the effortlessly hip part you are). The other 10% is the mojo, the undefinable talent that made you decide to pursue this profession in the first place. I’m not going to say that 10% is not magic. It is. But it’s not the muscle. The muscle is the creative “lifting” you do every day, it’s where you get your bulk.

Not Creative? Not So. You Just Use Different Muscles.
So let’s say you work with creatives, in fact depend on them to help you develop a solution or reach a goal. You want to have input in the process, but you don’t want to step on their toes, or “smother the creative” by being too pushy or overbearing. Maybe you have the opposite problem, where you have no idea how to communicate to them what you want.

Or perhaps you work inhouse, as a sole marketing person let’s say, where it’s all on your shoulders to lead the creative vision. In your organization you are the only “creative” by default, but you feel overwhelmed and under-heard (somehow at the same time) in that role.

Either way, a little creative exercising can go a long way toward building up your own creative strengths. So next time you have a meeting with a “creative” and you want to be better prepared to bring your very valid point-of-view to the pow-wow, and get what you actually want from a member of that strange, magical tribe – or if you have to stand up in your own circle and deliver a creative plan of your own – try out one of these muscle-building methods:

1. Use A Picture. Try cutting back on the words, and adding in a healthy dose of drawing. Don’t trust your own skills? Do it anyway. The creatives will think your doodle is charmingly lo-tech (kind of like ironically hip) and the non-creatives will admire you for your skill. The point is not to sketch a Da Vinci but to better represent your challenge or concept. Sometimes you may think you are verbalizing your point, and everyone is nodding, but until you put pen to paper (like visual expert Dan Roam suggests here), they may be seeing it completely differently in their nodding heads. So sketch it out, Leonardo!

2. Make An Inspiration Board: Cut and paste. Want to get across an idea, a feeling or a mood? Create a vision board. You can do this by pulling together images online. Pinterest is a great way to curate imagery that inspires you. Or literally cut and paste. You know, like with scissors, and glue. If you’re afraid it will come off as too craftsy for your round table meeting, make a joke about it – believe me, once the chuckling dies down, the images you share are going to make a much more lasting impression. This is also a great way to communicate a direction you’d like to go to a creative person, without feeling like you are getting to specific with the actual execution. You know, non-smothery.

3. Think Backwards. Okay, so drawing and clipping aside. A more logical way for you die hard left-brainers to communicate a creative idea or come up with a creative solution is to reverse-engineer it. Simply draw a point that is your end goal, then start going backwards from there. What are the actions, words, feelings, that have to happen to get there? This is a great way to “accidentally” write a creative brief – and basically create a road map for others to fill in all the roadside-attraction creative details.

4. Tell A Good Story. Everyone knows one of the best methods of the greatest public speakers is to tell a real, genuine story. But you don’t need an audience of hundreds (that probably makes some of you break out in a cold sweat thinking about, anyway) you can just have an audience of one, where a story told in your own words can convey a great deal.

As a creative professional myself, when I have meetings to get to the root of a problem or uncover the culture of an organization, when someone goes into a story, oh man, that’s where the best insights come from. Use stories to communicate more, and you’ll engage your listeners, you will connect information with emotions, and you will not only feel more creative – but you will inspire creativity in others.

If you think you’re a “not creative?” Try out one of these methods. Already a member of the “creative” tribe? Don’t forget, you get to exercise that muscle more.

Gaahhh! Do Not Make Me Write!

Braid Creative — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 18:53:10 +0000

When I was in high school I was in this competitive writing class that we had to audition to get into, called Aegis. We wrote one painstakingly elaborate essay, oh, every month – like about Chaucer. Sometimes we wrote creative stories. And sometimes we’d win national awards from judges like Garrison Keillor. Of course we had this amazing professor that inspired greatness, Dr. Ballard, and she was tough, too. It was all very Dead Poets Society. Except in suburbia not some picturesque New England prep school. And, no one died.

But man, there were nights before a paper was due that I thought I would die. I just hated getting started. I’d procrastinate, staying up watching TV dramas with my mom on the couch. Then I’d eventually slide off the couch and moan “gaaaahhhh wwwwhhhyyyy” as I would drag myself across the carpet over to the living room computer desk. Did I mentioned no one actually died? Anyhow, once my mom went to bed, these dramatics ended since I had no audience.

I never had any problem with my other extra efforts. Like band. Just practice your flute for fifteen minutes and you’ll probably get second, if not first chair, since most people don’t practice. Art? Okay, I really loved art. I would draw and draw and draw as a kid so it wasn’t like practicing, it was like playing. No dramatics required.

But writing? That was hard. Is hard. The blank page. The false starts. The doubling back. The deleting. The “oohh gaahhh!” I feel myself slowing as I type right now just thinking about it. And here’s the thing, the less you do it, the more rusty you get. Like the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz, just frozen there with his axe in mid air.

But once Dorothy oils him up (hmmm, nope, I’m not deleting that one) that Tin Man really gets his axe swinging. He declares he has no heart, but the irony of The Wizard of Oz is that all the characters have a surplus of what they’re each searching for, already inside them. See, that smarty-pants class of mine paid off after all – unless that’s not actually ironic. No, wait, yes. I’m pretty sure that’s ironic.

So my point is, you have a surplus of something inside you, too. And whatever your profession, and as painful as it might be, if you don’t find some way to communicate it (and communicate it well) you’ll never really hit the stride of all you can do.

Remember how I said art was so easy for me? Well, guess what my college major was? Art. My dad was soooo excited. And I can say with certainty that’s sarcasm right there. And my first job? No, not selling pencils out of a cup on the street corner, like dad feared. I was hired as an art director. Basically I was just banking on what I was naturally good at. Case in point, I got dropped from the college marching band the second year. Apparently those flute players practice more than fifteen minutes.

Anyway, what happened for me about a few years into being paid to design, was I found that if I wrote, too – be it my own headline or a logical creative rationale to send along with the piece – all my visual solutions became so much more complete, my concepts made way more sense and my work was more enthusiastically approved by my creative director, my account executive and eventually the clients. It clicked for me. Eventually.

Is the pen mightier than the paintbrush? Wielding one like you know what you’re doing will do make you exponentially more effective in getting across your ideas (and getting them approved.)

Author Dan Roam is all about “Vivid Thinking” – that the verbal or written should always be paired with visuals, even though it’s a way of creating and sharing ideas that isn’t always comfortable for people that don’t think they can draw (we made a video about it here).

So I asked Dan (okay, we’re not on a casual first-name basis, but we’ve corresponded ya’ll) what he thought about encouraging creative professionals, like designers, who do rely on the visual and are comfortable with pictures – to write more. Here’s his response (sans drawing) but I know he could just as effectively doodle this idea and it would really rock your world:

“By hot-wiring our years of verbal training and grammar, we can make any verbal idea clear through adding the visual. And, of course, for those creatives among us, the opposite is even more true!

‘Creatives’ do ourselves a grave disservice when it comes time to ‘sell’ our big idea: we don't provide the words. The stereotype is that hard-core business people think of we who draw as slightly-wacky softies with our heads in the clouds. Sadly, they are partly right – and it’s our own fault.

If we want to sell our ideas, we're going to have to meet each other half-way.”

Roam (Dan to his friends, and to people like me who are pesky enough to email him for a comment) recommends using Vivid Grammar to link the right pictures to the words, which he explains in his most recent bestseller, Blah Blah Blah: What To Do When Words Don’t Work.

“Although the emphasis on my book is converting words to pictures, the opposite is also true:

1) ‘Creatives’ draw out or map out our idea.

2) We end up with a multi-layered pictures.

3) We then look to the "Vivid Grammar Graph" to see what verbal parts
of speech we need to convert the underlying essence of those images
into verbal phrases.

4) We add captions to our image (either literally on the page or keep
them in mind for when we talk) -- and as we unroll out image, we
recite those captions.

5) As we present, we watch as the business-folk understand us -- not
because we threw our drawing away, but because they now get to HEAR
what we are thinking as they also SEE it.

6) Presto: Instant Vivid Idea!”

Was it “presto!” for me? Well, it wasn’t easy at first. I had to steel myself up for it. I had to remind myself that I was a writer. That no client presentation would ever be as tough as turning in a paper to Dr. Ballard, and that deciphering a complicated brief would never be as brain-numbing as reading Chaucer in actual Middle English. I had just gotten rusty. “Oil caaann! Oil caaann!”

So if this idea of integrating writing into your skills tool belt (even if you’re not a creative professional) makes you grimace – relax Tin Man, or your face will stick like that. There are different levels of writing confidence, discomfort and then just plain fear.

Here are some ideas to help you get (I’m not going to say oiled-up) just de-rusted:

1. You Are a Writer. Do you write creative copy, press releases, speeches, presentations, grant applications, the company blog? Well, thanks for playing, but you already write. In this choose-your-own-adventure, I would direct you to our Draw More In Meetings article so you can rest your verbal talent (and crutch) for just a second, start doodling more, and getting other people on your idea page.

2. You Hate Writing. Okay, well, read on. If you’ve made it this far, there’s something about my point that intrigues you. I challenge you to consider just one of the ways below to integrate writing into your profession. I promise, it will make you smarter, and the effort won’t go unappreciated. Think of it as 15 minutes of band practice. Hardly anyone else is doing it, so you’re gonna look good if you just put in a little extra.

3. You’re a Recreational Writer. Do you write lovely letters to your friends and family? Do you pride yourself on witty Tweets and Facebook posts that strike a perfect balance of humor and friendliness. Do you craft your work emails carefully? Do you write some amazingly articulate memos? Do you have a personal blog, or often think about starting a blog about cooking, fashion, your pets, your comic book collection, your kids?

This is how my branding partner, Kathleen, started writing, by the way. Her life and style blog has helped her infuse writing into her working life. She is first and foremost an amazing art director and designer, but she uses writing to help support her work. That means every time she presents visual work she also writes by:
- backing it up with strategy and rationale copy points
- going beyond just presenting a desing by “making it real’ and describing and showing examples of how that design solution can be applied going forward

And while Kathleen would not ever introduce herself as a writer she writes content in her own style every day by:
- writing her own copy for her designs, when it makes sense
- writing presentations for public speaking,
- and writing blog posts for our business website

All because her personal blog has de-rustified her writing skills.

4. You’re a Hidden Writer. Did you write in school but quit in the real world? Were you in debate or drama? Often times readers are just writers who haven’t had the chance or it just hasn’t occurred to them to pick up the pen themselves. Did you read all the Little House on The Prairie books in third grade? Did you read every Stephen King novel before you graduated high school? Did you know every Quentin Tarantino monologue by memory in college? If this seems familiar, you are a writer at heart.

This was me. And still is in some ways. I still don’t think of myself as a writer in the traditional sense, but as a storyteller. Mostly because I can’t break the bad habits of using too many ellipses, parentheses and made up hyphenated words, and not being diligent enough about proofreading. But I have learned to embrace my style by:

- turning anything I write into a story (going for either tears, laughs or goosebumps)
- weaving logic into every creative solution (for the people who didn’t get goosebumpy)
- using writing to help round out the “back-end” of any visual (it’s like added-value)
- writing to continue to learn and position myself as an expert
- writing to define my personal brand (which surprise, surprise, is “a storyteller”)

If you glean just one takeaway as a hidden creative writer, it’s to have courage. Say “ohh gaahhh,” for about five minutes, then drag yourself across the carpet, pull yourself up to the computer, suck it up and just write. And swing that axe just a little bit every day.

By Tara Street
Notetaking obsessed. Storyteller of her sideshow family.
And the "left braid" of Braid Creative & Consulting.

Why Your Best Asset Is Your Own Brand of Weird

Braid Creative — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 18:52:16 +0000

First a confession. I have been meaning to read We Are All Weird by Seth Godin for a few months now. It has been sitting in my queue for a while, right next to the Jonathan Fields book everyone’s been talking about that’s all about turning fear into brilliance or something really useful like that. So there’s a little sneak peek into some insightful reading I might be sharing soon – that is, if I can stop reading The Magicians by Lev Grossman. Talking fantasyland creatures and young adult angst, hooray!

Sometimes the fiction just won’t let you go. You scroll down your titles to read something really topical by a non-traditional marketing guru like Seth Godin, and you almost click it, and then ack! You click Game of Thrones instead. Talking ravens, hooray! ‘Cause I’m a weirdo, right? Turns out Seth Godin thinks I am, too. Apparently it’s the way of the world now.

We Are All Weird.
So how did I finally decide to read We Are All Weird first? Um, the cover art. It’s this gnome-like bearded guy in a pointy hat. In fact, I got all excited to dig through my prop drawer (see, weird) to find the perfect accessory for my own weird picture. I always wanted an excuse to wear those kooky eyes glasses! Weird’s also a quick read, a manifesto really, so you have more time to dig through your prop drawer (or start a prop drawer! hooray!)

But honestly, I had only gotten like a couple chapters in and I already started being obnoxious by telling everyone about this idea of the weird!

In a nutshell, Godin’s point, which is as pointy as the fantastically freaky hat on his book’s cover, is that mass appeal is just not cutting the mustard anymore. In fact, the full title of his book is We Are All Weird The Myth of Mass and The End of Compliance. It sounds pretty hard core. And I wouldn’t say that I’ve been driving in my car with a megaphone shouting out “it’s the end of mass media! mass reach! mass messaging! the era of Mad Men is over!” But I have been getting slightly more obnoxious in client meetings about it lately, but we’ll call it “experty” vs. “obnoxious.

What’s Your Buffalo On The Table?
For example if you’re a local independent grocer that sells fair-trade goods, organic food, spices, tea, and all sorts of stuff you can’t get at the big box store that’s great. But if you’re also the only store around supporting dozens of local farmers and have the most amazing seasonal local produce and buffalo fillets from a pasture just a country drive away? Then forget talking about the organic, the fair trade, the tea and the reclaimed and refurbished kitchen sink. Lead with true local. Lead with that buffalo on the freaking table!

People who love eating that special buffalo, who love to buy an “ugly pear” that isn’t picked for beauty but for taste, who love that their food is from farmers down the road – those people are intentional. They have preference. Make them feel special for being weird, and they will be your raving fans. But beware, weird changes into normal. And organic, well that’s just become normal in a pretty package.

Okay, I may have almost jumped up on the client’s table with a megaphone at this point (and we’ll be sharing more about this buffalo-lovin’ client of ours down the road) but what you can take away from this, is that if you’re trying to be everything to everyone it’s just not going to help you stand out at all. Whether you’re trying to define your personal brand, your startup business vision, or if you’re a more established business who’s become too normal (i.e. dull).

Wear That Dang Pointy Hat. (Cause It Matches The Kooky Glasses So Well.)
Not being dull is a duh. You know this. But it’s so easy to lose sight of your, well, your pointy point. So go pull out your weirdo glasses, read Mr. Godin’s manifesto, and resharpen that point of yours is one way to rediscover your weirdness.

This may sound like another duh. But make a list. The ten weirdest things about you or your business. If you’re the kind of artistpreneur or small business startup we usually hang out with (because you’re our weird peeps) this may not be too hard. But you might be surprised. We are so programmed to “sell” ourselves as normal, that you might have to really force yourself to write down the real stuff. Which also happens to be the stuff your dream customer or reader loves (remember, not what all your customers or readers love) what your weird peeps love.

Gee, That Internet Sure Is A Swell Invention!
And chin up weird person, you don’t have to present this picture of glossy perfection, and you don’t have to do it the old fashioned way either, in fact, as Godin reassures us (to some people this is scary, but to us it is reassuring as a warm fuzzy blanket) “it's easier than ever to reach particular pockets of weird people with stuff they're obsessed with."

What makes your passion, your personal brand or your small business most weird? If it helps you wrap your brain around it you could replace “weird” with “special” but that’s (yawn) not the point!

Leap Forward By Looking Back

Braid Creative — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 18:51:33 +0000

Let’s say you’re about to take a leap into the future – a project launch, a new collaboration, a complete brand overhaul – or (brace yourself) a new business that’s all your own.

A leap implies mustering enough energy and bravery to propel yourself across a distance that you wouldn’t ordinarily be able to just, you know, step across. Another factor is of course the motivation to leap. There has to be something visible on the other side to make you want to risk crossing the gap to reach it (or something chasing you from behind with big teeth.)

But typically, unless you have angered a bear, a dragon, or some volcano temple’s warrior god you’re not leaping across some chasm to save your skin. You’re leaping to get somewhere new and exciting. But that doesn’t mean it’s not just as scary. In fact without any immediate consequences for not jumping (i.e. getting eaten, consumed by flames or sacrificed in some lava pit) there leaves too much room for hesitation, self doubt and backpedaling.

And then the real beast rears it’s ugly head, the one that can freeze you dead in your tracks and stop any sort of momentum that you had going for you. She has many names but I like to call her “analysis paralysis.”

But I would like to argue that looking back over your shoulder, doesn’t have to stop you in your tracks, in fact it can give you clarity and courage. And when paired with that future vision waiting for you, it can help channel that energy into actions that will help you “leap” on through to the other side.

Analysis Without The Paralysis
There’s a branding exercise that Kathleen and I have created called Past Present Future. And no, it doesn’t involve tying on headscarves and pulling out a crystal ball. But it has amazingly has revealed some of the most insightful brand “truths” to come out of our methodology.

Basically it helps us get realistic about what we’re communicating with a brand. Not getting so far into the future vision for a business that it’s too far removed from any authenticity. And not getting so bogged down in the safety and comfort of what’s been done in the past, that we’re not getting anywhere new.

Finding Clarity and Courage
Okay, but none of that sounds too dire. An established small business taking a “leap” with their brand is usually more like an evolution, moving up into a new league with their look and feel with either a rename or logo or website redo, a launch of a new product or service, or introducing themselves to a new market. We find that the Past Present Future exercise for them typically helps them find an overlap between pie-in-the sky hopes for what’s next for their business and where they’ve already had the most tangible success. It’s mostly a clarifying overlap.

But it’s when individuals are really taking that first leap into their small, sometimes even micro- businesses, that this exercise really lends more than just clarity – but courage.

The Problem With The Present:
The funny things about actions, you know like leaping, is that you have to, well... act. That’s the challenge of the present. And the biggest contributing factors to delay, especially when embarking on a new endeavor like a first-time business or startup, are:

a.) I’ve got too many ideas, how do I focus on the right one?
and
b.) I don’t know if I can figure this out, what if I fail?

Solve those two problems and you’ve got your a.) clarity and b.) courage, or at least enough to spur you into action.

So Try This Past Present Future Brand Exercise:
A. In the PAST column write five most memorable accomplishments or victories.
B. In the FUTURE column write five goals or dreams that would define your future success.
C. Last, in the PRESENT column rewrite just one idea from the PAST and one from the FUTURE that have the most natural overlap between them. Why those two? How can you pull strength from your past and find a way to execute on that single future action?

The overlap is where you uncover the most natural thread that runs between where you’ve excelled and where you are going. Like a rope between what you’ve already done and what you want to do next. Dare I say rope to help you across the gap? The past in this case doesn’t not freeze you with indecision, but but steels your courage by reminding you of your core strength or talent. The future is always going to need “shades” it’s so bright and busy, but picking just one beam to focus on frees you to execute – to act.

Don’t know what to do with that extra freaky day of February? Try some more of our 10 Minute Brand Exercises.

How A Rebrand Should Roll

Braid Creative — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 18:50:14 +0000

Let’s say you’re about to take a leap into the future – a project launch, a new collaboration, a complete brand overhaul. You might be a small independent, yet established business who outgrew your logo along with your first office-space years ago. Or, like many of our microbusiness and artistpreneur (one-person-show) clients, you’ve finally grownup enough in your confidence, expertise and offering that your website your college roommate’s cousin designed for you just isn’t hacking it anymore.

Regardless of your small business style, or size, it’s a great day when you can finally close the gap between the brand you’ve always wanted and the one you’re finally about to get. So it stands to reason, that if you’ve spend the time, effort and money to take your brand to the next level, you want to share it with anyone who will look or listen. The more attention the better, especially when it comes to all your dream customers-to-be out there.

We don’t disagree. But before you share your rebrand with the world, you better stop, drop and roll it out to the people who matter most. A brand update, facelift, or just plain reboot means a change (even if a good one), to an existing brand (even if a bad one), that your employees and customers have gotten used to. Which is why when it comes to a rebrand, you should roll it out to your inner circle before it ever rolls out the door.

So the idea of a roll out isn’t rocket science. Obviously there are some pretty great reasons to give the people closest to a brand a sneak peek. To get buy in. To help them better communicate the brand themselves. To get their shirt sizes so you can give them a new logo tee. And, well, to just get everyone rallied around something you spent a good amount of energy creating.

But we think the most important reason is this – to make sure your biggest fans and your biggest critics (who can sometimes be the same people, people) feel “in on it.” These are usually either your employees, or your customers, but can also be longtime working partners and vendors, and even friends and family who have supported you along the way. They know the truth of your brand firsthand (even if they don’t call it that). They know the good and the bad and the ugly, the thick and the thin, the richer the poorer and all that jazz. So you want to make sure they don’t feel disconnected or alienated by something as seemingly harmless as a rebrand. You want these people to feel included, like they are an irreplaceable part of how you got there. Because they are.

So here’s a swell idea. Throw a party. Now this can mean different things depending on your size or style. But the intent is the same – to create a moment around your new brand. Create a moment to reflect on where you’ve been and then show where you are going, to say “isn’t this cool!” For a small business this roll out should start with your employees. For the microbusiness it starts with your friends, family, vendor partners and most of all your current customers. But however you define your inner circle, and whatever the scale of this celebration – the key ingredient is appreciation.

For The Small Business: Employee Appreciation Roll Out

An all-staff breakfast is one way to make sure everyone can attend before the work day begins (but happy hours can work if you have a smaller group). Give the team a heads up, and send out the calendar appointment a couple weeks ahead of time. Build some excitement and anticipation around the brand reveal, let them know the “why” of the gathering but don’t give anything away. Keep everything under wraps as long as you possibly can. Now, hopefully some of your employees have had some involvement in the brand development on some level leading up to this point, but we mean keep the final look and feel secret until the end. Remember, your goal is to show appreciation and to create a moment.

Roll Out Checklist

Festivity: Food, music and decorations. Themed along with your new brand is nice, too.

Speech: Short and sweet, but delivered by the leader of your small business.

Visuals: Creative documentation along with a short presentation can include a few slides or even posters on easles showing how you arrived at the new brand. This is a great way to give everyone a sense of the journey. Think inclusive, so if you have any quotes or pictures that bring the employees into that process, definitely highlight those.

Magic Moment: Unveiling the new logo, name, tagline or overall look and feel can be a really cool moment. If you have the budget or means to create a brand video (just 1 to 2 minutes) this can really bring it all to life in a way that is hard to match. Then you’ll always have it, to use it on your website or in future new business presentations after the roll out.

Logo Gift: It may seem like a small thing, but if you can give at least one small gift to each employee that captures the spirit of the new brand, a tshirt, a framed piece of desk art, a tote bag, along with a note (especially a personal note) conveying your appreciation for them as the biggest part of your brand – it can really help make the new look and feel more tangible.

For The Microbusiness: Client Appreciation Roll Out

If you are just a couple people or just one person running the show, you can take many of the ideas listed above and just adapt them to a happy hour, an open house. Or you can take it on the road and plan a week where you visit with each of your clients, sharing the new brand. A gift is nice, a bit of that “behind-the-curtain” explanation of how and why you got here is great. Don’t forget to stress how they helped you get here and don’t create an upsell feeling about it. Keep it casual and fun. If many of your clients are from different parts of the country or world, create a nice mail piece and follow up with an email and/or phone call combo. If you spent the money or time to have a brand video created, by all means, share it.

You can push out a beautiful brand, but someone’s gotta catch it.

We recently had a branding client, who after spending weeks developing a rebranded look and feel for their logo suite, sales collaterals and website with us, hadn’t yet gotten around to launching it with their team. In part, because we hadn’t pushed it, and in part because they got busy, like people and businesses tend to do.

Feeling a little frustrated with the lack of an employee launch, this client told us she felt like we had all spent this time and effort giving birth to this really beautiful baby together, and then everyone let it fall on the floor. Ouch! Since then we’ve started planning a belated internal launch together, following the same suggestions listed above.

But that description will stick with me for a long time I think. So don’t let your rebrand just roll every which way before you unroll it to the people that matter most. And don’t let this beautiful little brand you created fall on it’s head on the floor. Create that moment, give the people in your “inner circle” a chance to be part of it, let them hold it – and then roll that baby out the door.

Choosing Your Brand Video Style

Braid Creative — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 18:49:18 +0000

Creating brand videos is some hard work and some amazing fun. It’s also the coolest way to really turn brand story and imagery into something that feels alive. If you are a creative professional and can get involved in creating videos as part of your work experience, then do so. If you’re a small business owner, tackling a video or video series might seem a bit overwhelming, (and either expensive on one end of the spectrum or cheap-looking on the other end) but it doesn’t have to be. And if done well and shared well can be one of the most engaging ways to connect with your dream customers, short of them connecting directly with you.

The Traveling Entrepreneur

Braid Creative — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 18:47:12 +0000

LIVING THE DREAM

Summertime is synonymous with travel and vacation. And one of the biggest patterns we’ve uncovered after working with dozens of creative entrepreneurs from all over the world is that travel is important to them. It’s important to us too. You see, when Tara and I started Braid we agreed on something crazy like 8 weeks of vacation a year. And as summer approaches we’re cashing in on that fantasy.

Brand Training Cultivates Smarter Employees

Braid Creative — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 18:45:14 +0000

We've all heard the phrase "singing to the choir." It implies that preaching to the converted is overkill. But looking at brand giants Starbucks Coffee and Disney, and how they "sing it" to their own staff, certainly implies that brand training as part of employee screening, orientation, ongoing education, and recognition – is a tune most organizations could benefit from getting in time with.

Obviously Starbucks and Disney have raised a high bar when it comes to brand experience. Most of us have been on the consumer side of both. And many of us have even heard a few not-so-magical stories about the machine behind them, as well. But regardless of the ups and downs in eye of public perception, there's no denying that both inspire fierce brand loyalists in their customers as well as employees.

We'd like to get a small picture from an employee's point of view, of what it's like to be indoctrinated into a brand – that is so undeniably big.

Along with a smile that's always come naturally, Keri has worn a trademark-green barista apron in the world's most famous coffee shop, and larger-than-life costumes in the happiest place on earth. But Keri's first experience with employee brand training was at nineteen, when she was hired at Starbucks Coffee. The company's reputation as a great employer, with health benefits and stock options, meant there was always stiff competition for a spot. Plus, back then there were only two stores in her midwestern metro area.

So when Keri got the job she felt practically "elite." But she quickly learned after three weeks of training (not exactly quick, but certainly thorough) that skills were only half the picture. Beyond pouring the perfect shot of espresso, she should to be able to educate the customers about it, too. So while the product was high-end, the customer interaction should feel more encouraging than elitist.

Advising Goes Deeper Than A Smile

Through ongoing training and peer recognition programs, Keri was taught to be a "friendly advisor." She could help a suburban mom confidently order an Americano or put a construction worker at ease ordering his first Frappucino – lines often got longer for the frozen treats than the coffee, which Keri didn't mind, because she could chat with waiting patrons from behind her blender station.

Personality was a natural reason Keri got the gig in the first place. But cultivating an expert who could explain their product in a non-intimidating way, was how the organization ensured that Keri and thousands like her could deliver on the two aspects of its brand combined – the human connections as well as the actual coffee.

Next, pixie-sized Keri set her sights on a more theatrical role. Apparently no matter how petite, a smile can be conveyed from head-to-toe if just mimed big enough, and Keri found she was a perfect fit for the character department at magic-central – Walt Disney World.

Whether assuming the persona (and the heavy costume) of a beyond-famous mouse or a classic honey-loving bear, she'd interact with hundreds of park guests every day – all with an emotional expectation of her character before they even got the first hug. Talk about living up to a brand!

Teamwork + Autonomy: Turns Brand Into Action

While Keri had to master every nuance of her character, down to their autograph – a guest interaction could be completely colored by the one they had just before it. Every cast member's performance built on another's, whether that was a honey-bear's hug, or a street sweeper's wave. But beyond teamwork, individual choice was how Keri was empowered by Walt Disney World to really put their brand into action.

"Guest Experience" was a mantra cast members repeated with focus and consistency during all aspects of their training. With roles and expectations so clearly defined, freedom was given to employees to interpret and deliver that experience on a case-by-case basis. So if Keri saw a child drop a ice cream cone on the sidewalk, she could make the choice to get him a new one for free – with ease, as part of the natural brand experience, and without waiting to ask permission from a higher-up.

How an organization recruits, hires, trains and recognizes its employees should reinforce its brand principles – to equip its people with the ability to translate that brand into action.

Beyond Just "Whistling While You Work"

Keri has since moved back home to the midwest, where she works in event coordination. But her training has stuck with her. She strives to act as an advisor and trust herself to make decisions that help better deliver on her customer's expectations. And of course, she still does it all with that easy smile.

She was also smiling when we asked her to humor us with this exercise, one that you might try yourself – or with a few of your employees – to see how prepared the individuals of your organization are to "carry on" its brand.

Recreating Your Brand Experience "Survivor-Style"

If you had to recreate your organization’s brand, by yourself on a desert island, and could only take a few items with you to recreate the brand experience, what would they be? And, what one skill would be the most valuable to you? Here were Keri’s answers for Starbucks and Disney as examples.

Your Organization's "Desert Island"
1. What objects would you take with you to recreate the brand experience? Object A, B and C.
2. What one extra special ingredient would you add to the mix? Could be music, a smell, or something environmental or even abstract.
3. What one skill would be the most critical to the brand's "survival?"

Next time you're planning for an all-staff meeting or conducting organization-wide training on a new product or process, think about if it might also be an opportunity to reinforce your brand. Try the desert island questions. Or at least serve some strong coffee and get some conversation going. How the individuals on your team translate your brand into action might surprise you.

Shared Workspace Music Sanity And Spotify

Braid Creative — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 18:54:32 +0000

Last week we were comparing Instagram and Pinterest. This week we’re comparing Spotify and... well, our well-loved but quickly growing stale iTunes playlists. When you share a small office space like ours, shared music has to strike just the right mood. Kind of like when you walk into a store and the music makes you want to buy everything so in some warped illogical way, you can be amazing, like the music. I also want to eat scented candles, because I feel I am not fully experiencing them, so it’s a thing. Sensory confusion aside, if you choose to play music out loud in your shared creative office space (see our post Headphones or Not?) give Spotify a try. If it’s an old hat to you, then you are hipper than us. Carry on.

On Saying No To New Business

Braid Creative — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 16:56:46 +0000

Whenever we get a new business inquiry – in less formal terms, someone emailing or calling us to test the waters of what we charge or what we can do for them – we make a tally mark on our chalkboard for the quarter. Sounds super-business-time, right? But really, these email inquiries can range from super-casual to super-let-me-tell-you-my-whole-life. Regardless of the request, we always send back the same Braid proposal (see Kathleen’s How To Write An Email for tips on how we frame that response). It’s not because we are robots that always stick to the same response. It’s because what’s in our proposal is what we rock at. It’s either a fit or it’s not.

Pinterest vs. Instagram

Braid Creative — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 16:15:12 +0000

If you’ve been following Braid for a while you already know that Tara and I are avid fans of Pinterest as a tool for gathering inspiration and collaborating with clients. I’ve recently had a few small creative business owners (typically ones selling goods & products vs. a service) tell me that they really want to get into Pinterest but don’t quite know how - especially when it comes to self-promotion. I think it’s as simple as this: If you are someone who is constantly right-click saving inspiration images to your desktop then Pinterest is for you. It’s about sharing your taste and the things you like (not necessarily your own content) with others.

Summertime Travel for the Creative Entrepreneur

Braid Creative — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 14:31:40 +0000

It’s one thing to fantasize about working for yourself and traveling the world and another thing to actually do it. Tara and I pride ourselves on not being workaholics but sometimes it’s hard to unplug when you’ve got deadlines to meet and new business to keep up with.

So when I was planning a 3-week trek in Eastern Europe for the summer I checked in with Tara and asked her if she was sure it was okay for me to be away for that long. And here’s what she said “If we can’t do it our way then what’s the point of working for ourselves?”

We Liked We Loved May

Braid Creative — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 15:49:19 +0000

Have we ever told you about our brother? You see, we’re not the only creative entrepreneurs in the family. Almost a decade ago our brother, Donny (aka Donny Vomit), ran off to New York City to join the original Sideshow by the Seashore in Coney Island. Now he tours the country performing his act – which includes his signature stunt, The Human Blockhead, in which he drives a nail into the back of his head by way of his nose. In fact, Tara and I got to close out the month of May by watching his act on stage last night after his show came through town.

Which Kind of Creative Are You?

Braid Creative — Thu, 24 May 2012 21:28:32 +0000

Last week Kathleen talked about creative rituals to help get over creative anxiety. Some of our rituals include feel-good ones like running midday to refuel the brain and obsessive-compulsive ones like methodically setting up the margins and rules on a blank document to help overcome getting-started inertia. Jonathan Field’s book, Uncertainty: Turning Fear and Doubt Into Fuel for Brilliance dedicates a whole chapter to this idea of ritual.

Uncertainty

Braid Creative — Fri, 18 May 2012 14:56:47 +0000

When I was a young designer working at a small ad agency, fresh out of art school and full of anxiety, Tara (my sister and creative director) told me “If you don’t feel like you want to throw up you’re not doing it right.” It was her way of telling me that it’s okay to be scared, that feeling of crippling anxiety can actually be good for you - if it doesn’t break you. So that’s what Jonathan Fields’ book Uncertainty: Turning Fear & Doubt into Fuel for Brilliance is all about. I know I’m a little late to the game on reading this book but it’s a must-read for any creative entrepreneur who wants to feel good about feeling scared out of their wits about pursuing their passion as a living. Because launching your own creative business is a lot like graduating from art school - where your future most certainly looks uncertain.

Get It On Paper: A Roadmap For Creatives

Braid Creative — Fri, 11 May 2012 19:21:37 +0000

One of the things we do here at Braid is help aspiring creative entrepreneurs who are not quite ready for a brand design pinpoint their purpose, define their dream... and get it on paper. You think it would be easy enough to be on the same page with yourself but if there is one thing we’ve learned about working with artistpreneurs is that they are not at a lack for vision. In fact, they typically have so much vision and talent they don’t know where to start and what it looks like to see a project to fruition.

We give them a roadmap of sorts. Because before you can clearly brand yourself with a look and feel you have to identify your content. You have to know where you’re going.

Creating A Brand Video

Braid Creative — Thu, 03 May 2012 18:41:19 +0000

The style of this Monscierge video (white, clean & business-time) is not for everyone. Just like our Braid video about our Austin adventure complete with a cow giving birth is not for everyone. Yet, ironically our Monscierge clients (these really creative smart guys who are going to take over the world some day) love that dang “cow video.” But regardless if cowboy boots or business suits set the tone for the day, we love creating brand videos. Short of actual one-on-one exposure to your product or experience they are the most effective way to get across the essence of your brand.

The Inseparability of Person And Business

Braid Creative — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 19:50:41 +0000

A lot of you guys already know that Kathleen blogs over here at Jeremy & Kathleen. In fact a lot of you who read Braid, found your way over here from J&K. It’s funny, because when Kathleen and I decided to start our own small business, we though “okay, how do we separate Kathleen’s brand from Braid?” You know, cause Braid is serious-business-right? Oh, silly, silly girls. That’s the wise me talking to the silly me seven months later. Because the obvious answer is. You don’t.

Speaking To The Students

Braid Creative — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 20:37:22 +0000

Along with speaking to our people about branding and finding your niche I’ve also been making my way around the local universities. A pattern I’m noticing across the board with senior design students is that they’re all freaking out about transitioning into the real world. Their professors are sharing horror stories about botched print jobs coming out of their paychecks, 80-hour work weeks and painful due-paying to be had. I’ve got a lot of compassion for these kids - because it wasn’t that long ago (was it really 8 years ago?!) that I was in the same boat.

Speaking To The Locals

Braid Creative — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 19:01:53 +0000

You know how in eighties teen movies it’s all about class division? It’s always which side of the tracks you’re from – if you wear diamond earrings or just one earring, if you wear tennis whites or a pizza place apron. In these movies the locals are always called townies or goonies (maybe that was just in Goonies), and as a kid it’s always clear who you should be rooting for. So of course our generation would grow up and start a new kind of local revolution, the small independent local business. And let’s just say, Kathleen and I have picked our side of the tracks.

March Was All Talk And Hot Air

Braid Creative — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 21:51:49 +0000

Oh, March. You’re usually so blustery and, frankly, kind of a tease. See, around here March has a bad reputation of pretending to be spring when really it’s just still winter being a wet blanket and won’t let anyone have a good time. But not this year. Kathleen and I have been wearing shorts and flip-flops and spending our family weekends (that we now treat like precious stolen time), greedily soaking up the unseasonably warm sun, catching fish off our parents little dock, roasting marshmallows over a little fire pit they got at the hardware store and just, well, talking.

How Daylight Savings Jacked Up Our Work Life Balance

Braid Creative — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 20:46:57 +0000

Tara and I have always been proud of the fact that we’re not total workaholics. Even coming from an advertising agency background we’ve always believed that if you can’t get it done in 40 hours a week then you’re doing something wrong.

As creative entrepreneurs it can be hard to it shut down. The lines between work and life are blurred when you’re passionate about growing your business. And as of two weeks ago daylight savings has sprung us forward an hour - completely jacking with our internal circadian rhythm that tells us when to wake up, begin work, and more importantly shut down the computer, eat dinner and go to bed.

Here is how we try to maintain that work / life balance and clues for when we’re overextending ourselves.

A Well Rounded Brand Roll Out

Braid Creative — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 23:08:08 +0000

We absolutely love the exciting, emotional moments that come from helping independent small businesses remember why they decided to build something all their own in the first place, whether that means looking back on just a few years or nearly forty.

Heritage Solutions, formerly Heritage Press, is one of those businesses with a long history, who came to us for a brand overhaul. Their services, like many progressive printers across the country, had evolved to the point where only calling them a printing press would not only be a disservice, but a brand disconnect. So after some truth seeking and Braid Methoding (we’re making methoding a word, okay) Kathleen and I helped them arrive at a new logo, a revitalized brand story, and a new name – now just short and sweet, Heritage.

Heritage really rolled this out right. Before they even considered sharing the new look and feel with their customers they gathered their employees for an all-staff early morning breakfast, complete with balloons, enough pastries to choke a printing press, and a ton of anticipation. See, they would be the first people (and rightly so) to see their own place of work, challenges and change – brought to life. We couldn’t wait for them to see how their own role in the rebranding story was not only appreciated but whole-heartedly celebrated.

The Heritage leadership took the podium to explain why they embarked on this brand evolution. I got up there and shared our inspiration, and how much of the brand insights came from straight from employees Kathleen and I visited with in the weeks leading up to the event. Then we played the brand video.

Cheers, oohs, aahs, perhaps a little tears? It happens. When a brand video is shared for the first time, it’s really all the pieces coming together in full color, and that’s about as emotionally-charged an employee roll out gets. But with Heritage, there was a moment that even trumped the video.

Once the speeches were done, the pastries scarfed down, and the bundled t-shirts given out, a great loud honking started. The blinds across four plate glass windows raised up, and there outside, glinting in the early morning sun was the huge white Heritage delivery truck with the giant logo across its side, with the new employee motto, “We Roll On.” Goosebumps.

Okay, in retrospect that may sound melodramatic for, well, a vehicle wrap. But who can’t use a little drama, a lot of applause and that feeling that comes with knowing you perfectly paired the here-and-now of a place with its what-is-to-be – all before nine o’clock in the morning? What can I say? That’s just how we roll, too.

Sometimes your longest relationships can turn into not only rewarding (and profitable) projects but also meaningful reinventions along the way. See how Kathleen advises other creative professionals to work with printers, like Heritage, on her Freelance Matters series.

And read more about the how-to’s of orchestrating an “inner circle” rebrand prelaunch, whether you have fifty employees or you’re a one-man band, in our Braid newsletter: How A Rebrand Should Roll.

We’ve Been Minted

Braid Creative — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 16:11:15 +0000

When Minted Magazine, an online publication that empowers women in their lives and careers, asked to do a Q&A feature with Braid, we said, “bring on the empowerment, Minted!” So Kathleen and I got to share our take on some of the unknowns facing other entrepreneurial women just starting out – like dealing with unexpected scariness (it’s not always what you think it’s going to be) and trending brand topics like how to blend personal branding into the professional.

We can share advice like that all day, so consider us minted! And we certainly don’t mind sharing the company of other connection-minded women like Molly Cain, the CEO and co-founder of Glass Heel, an online community for professional women. Molly is going to be featured on the cover of the Minted Spring Issue coming out March 12th.

Great quote and Glass Heel is a cool name. A little bird (okay it’s Kimberly Lin the co-founder/publisher of Minted) tells us that Minted and Glass Heel are partnering up to host a women's small business conference this October in Austin, TX. We’re hoping we can be part of the event, as well.

“The challenge is being brave enough to take on the scary things that matter, to stop doing the things that aren’t strategic. The last thing you want is to be trapped on a treadmill of your own making.”
- Minted Magazine, Q&A with Braid Creative & Consulting

‘Cause we like to share our minty-fresh point of view, too.

Check out the upcoming issue of Minted Mag coming out on March 12 and the meantime be sure to check out our Q&A over on the Minted Mag blog.

Leap!

Braid Creative — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 21:02:46 +0000

Leap year day is the best. Think about it - a whole extra 24 hours to do whatever you want. What immediately comes to mind for me (and my 8-year-old self) is recreating scenes from Home Alone where McCauley Caulkin goes crazy with all his new found freedom - complete with eating an oversized bowl of ice cream while watching black & white gangster movies and cleaning out my belly button with a q-tip. But the more grown up me is fantasizing about soaking up some of this unseasonably warm weather we’re having here. In this fantasy I’m on a patio with a cup of coffee and a legal pad reflecting on six months of creative entrepreneurship with Tara. We’re chatting and taking notes on where we’ve been and where we’re going next. In short, we’d be doing our Past Present Future brand exercise.

But here at Braid we’re excited to have a whole extra day of leaping head first into work because boy, are we busy as ever. In fact, this morning we rolled out a brand we’ve spent months developing for a 100+ employee company. And this afternoon we’re finalizing a web design and brand video we produced for an international tech startup. The universe continues to fill our chalkboard with a variety of creative entrepreneurs and small businesses.

As this full day comes to a close we’ll be taking a big leap into March. You see, we have big plans for March which include doing the Braid Method on ourselves to identify our dream customer and narrow in on our niche - the small and the weird. The people like us who are brave enough to take leaps of their own - any day of the year.

In February:
• We got to work with dream customer Allison Barta Bailey to help her uncover her own authentic brand
• We shared what a day in the life of Braid looks like with a short documentary by artistpreneur Rory Gordon
• Tara dug through her costume closet and found a Time Machine
• We helped you find clarity and courage to leap forward by looking back with our Past Present Future brand exercise

Elsewhere in February:
• One of my favorite bloggers, The Jealous Curator, has released more dates & locations for her Girl Crush Tea Party art workshop - we want to go!
• I break down my secrets to working with printers in my Freelance Matters series over on my lifestyle blog
• I saw the guys from G.F.D.A. speak at AIGA and developed a bit of a design crush
• One of my favorite local artsits, Jabee, hosted the ADDYS here and it was awesome. He's taking a leap of his own - help him with his Kickstarter project here.

Time Machine Brand Exercise

Braid Creative — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 16:29:33 +0000

Since we’re in a futuristic kind of mood this week, here’s another ten minute brand exercise that’s a great followup to Past Present Future (if you haven’t tried that one already try it here.) See, I have two kinds of coping methods for uncertainty and doubt when venturing into the unknown, either with a big creative challenge or a life milestone or... oh let’s say starting your own business for the very first time. One, is I pretend like I’m a robot.

Okay, I’ve only really done the robot thing maybe once or twice in extreme moments. This is more a personal coping method for stress. I just try to keep the emotions at bay and default to logic. Boop once for “no.” Beep twice for “yes.” You know, kinda just to put things in perspective.

Two (and this one is less freaky and more frequent) if I’m about to venture into something new, I pretend like I’m in a movie. I usually do this while driving in my car to a soundtrack that helps me visualize how the three day film shoot I’m about to do in a different city is going to go down. Or how being an entrepreneur for the first time is really going to look and feel.

Pretending like you are in a movie is really like telling your own story before you get there. And it’s our inspiration for this ten minute brand exercise, Time Machine.

Time Machine:
Imagine you’ve traveled three years into the future. When you look back and tell the story of your endeavor, it sounds something like this:
1. Once upon a time I decided to start a ____________________ business.
2. I wanted to be different than other _________ businesses who only ________.
3. I wanted to deliver ____________ to people who want ___________________.
4. It was a lot of work but found that people really loved our _________________.
5. They spread the word like crazy by sharing ________________________ about us.
6. Our most loyal fans are people who appreciate __________________________.
7. I’m glad our brand captured a sense of ___________ style and ___________ purpose.
8. Today, I think clients “get” that we stand for _________________________________.
9. Now I want to try “what’s next” by trying _______________________________________.

Chunking your intent into these simple phrases is a really simple way to build your future story. Hopefully it starts to paint a more concrete (and simplified) future vision in your head. If you still feel you need some more perspective? Beep twice for “yes,” and try more of our ten minute brand exercises.

Steel your courage for your leap year, read this month’s newsletter Leap Foward By Looking Back.

Past Present Future Brand Exercise

Braid Creative — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 23:20:58 +0000

As any good Back To The Future fan knows, the things we do in the past can really jack up our present, our future and – apparently stuff we did back in the old-west times, too? I do admit I sometimes get lost in the timeline in these films. Perhaps it’s because crazy-eyed Doc Brown looks exactly the same age – and exactly like he just stuck his finger in an electrical socket – no matter which time period (or sequel) he’s in.

Past Present Future is a brand exercise we created for small businesses to help them balance out their crazy-eyed Doc Brown future-vision – with a realistic look at where they’re already great. Like Marty McFly (a.k.a. Michael J. Fox), who’s effortless confidence comes from sticking to what he’s good at – playing electric guitar really loud and looking boyishly mischievous in designer denim and puffy vests. Talk about what goes around comes around.

If a small business can find the overlap where big dreams meet proven core strengths – the result is a balance of truth and aspiration. But you don’t need a flux capacitor, just ten minutes, to try this brand exercise for yourself.

So Try This:
A. In the PAST column write five most memorable accomplishments or victories.
B. In the FUTURE column write five goals or dreams that would define your future success.
C. Last, in the PRESENT column rewrite just one idea from the PAST and one from the FUTURE that have the most natural overlap between them. Why those two? How can you pull strength from your past and find a way to execute on that single future action?

The thing is, this brand exercise has been equally eye-opening for individuals who still have some proving to do and whose aspirations are frankly a bit overwhelming. We’re talking about creative professionals taking the leap into their own startups or micro-businesses. And this brand exercise can actually help them gain clarity and courage on what they should act on today – even when their actual “brand” is still a few more milestones away.

Steel your courage for your leap year, read this month’s newsletter Leap Foward By Looking Back.

Documenting A Day Of Braid

Braid Creative — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 18:11:09 +0000

Wonder what Kathleen and I do all day? Well, apparently we eat arugula-topped pizza, talk with our mouths full, peer around cat tails in our face while pinning images to brand inspiration boards, type a lot, draw giant circles on chalkboards, look very expert as we spread out our full-color methodology on our distressed (okay, faux-distressed) barnwood table desks, and sometimes stand in stripey swatches of light that look almost like our logo (ooh, subliminal branding) slash across our “it’s business time” faces. Whew! You can twist your way through that hell of a run-on sentence, or you can just watch the video by Rory Gordon.

Rory Gordon, a west coast photographer who specializes in small business photo essays, created this mini-documentary of a day in the life of Braid. She does this for other small businesses too, even the ones that don’t (gasp!) like photographing themselves or blogging about what they’re doing all the time. Rory actually makes them look good sharing their daily behind-the-scenes routine, their bigger picture purpose, and their small business culture.

Our filming happened to take place on the day our above mentioned (maybe faux-distressed) wood table desks arrived. The three workboot and hoodie clad delivery guys were only momentarily taken aback by the photo shoot happening in this unsuspecting 1920’s house full of laughing, drawing, eating, cat wrangling – and then they just got to work.

‘Cause this house is where Braid lives.

Photo and video by Rory Gordon.

Sign Your Niche Across My Heart

Braid Creative — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 22:09:11 +0000

Plucky, sparky, smarties. It’s kind of the defining characteristic of some of the small business and self-starters that capture our heart. We want you to meet one of our favorites, Allison Barta Bailey. Why? Well, the smarty plucky part, yeah. But mostly, we just love uncovering and shaping brands for people who know their niche and aren’t afraid to stick to it.

Allison works exclusively with local retail shops and districts. She’s a creative professional who is all about the element of independence. Oh, and Allison has opinions. So when defining Allison Barta Bailey’s signature mark, literally came down to capturing her very own signature, were we surprised? She may have been. But when we tried to act casual asking her to sign her name with one of my always handy Sharpies on a page spontaneously ripped out of Kathleen’s notebook (you know, like a handwriting audition), we knew it it was going to be the defining element of her new brand.

Allison is an expert on these local shop districts, about the community they should foster, and what real estate developers should be doing to make them come alive and thrive. And when it comes down to the individual shop owner, her opinions only get even more laser focused. She wants them to stop looking at the economy, stop looking at the competition and remember what makes them unique – their niche. Yes, a girl after our own heart, we told you.

So she helps these shop owners stop looking over their shoulder or getting distracted by the daily duties that are spreading them thin, so they can instead cultivate (and stick to) their shop philosophy.

Shop philosophy! That really struck a chord with us when it came up in our Braid Method findings with Allison. And she’d only been using it in casual conversation, if at all, with clients and clients-to-be in the past. We were about to change that. We also drew inspiration from her love of the mercantile spirit, of main streets and modern pops of color, and her strong beliefs that a shop owner’s gotta know themselves and make their mark.

Fun side note, we proposed Allison change out her signature logo to the Pantone Color of The Year when it’s announced each year. This year it’s Pantone 17-1463 Tangerine Tango.

We’ve since helped her uncover her own small business philosophy, including a new logo and brand story that she could adapt to her sales materials, website and personal brand. And like a true signature – she’s stickin’ to it.

So, tell us. What's your niche?

How To Pepper Business Into Your Personal Blog

Braid Creative — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 16:36:46 +0000

A little over four years ago I started blogging about my home remodel project with my then boyfriend Jeremy. My blog quickly gained attention when our home wedding was featured on Glamour Weddings blog and when A Cup of Joe shared my quirky wedding invitations with the world. I was working as a senior art director at a small ad agency but on the side I was getting requests from my blog readers to design things for them. I was starting to pepper my professional experience in my personal blog by sharing my work. And when I decided to make the leap into freelance my readers supported me with encouragement and cash.

I was recently invited to facilitate a round table session at The Altitude Summit, a conference for design and lifestyle bloggers, about my blogging experience and share with other bloggers (who might not have the metrics to support huge sponsors) that they too can mix the professional with the personal and leverage their blog as an authentic marketing tool.

Here’s how:
1. Don’t be afraid to blur the lines between personal with the professional
Because I had been sharing my post-apocalyptic outfits and frank discussions on deodorant with my readers for years they wanted to hire me for ME when I took the leap into freelance. I also take time to infuse a little bit of design into every post - whether it’s about trekking through the Himalayas or road tripping down to Austin.

2. House your professional work within your personal blog
A lot of bloggers separate their professional portfolio site from their blog - but I like to keep it all in one place. This keeps my work in front of people who are coming to my space to see where I’m going, what I’m eating and what I’m wearing. And on the flipside - if your blog is strictly to share your work or curated collections of things you like maybe start injecting some lifestyle bits in there too. If I like YOU I’m much more likely to support your work.

3. Show your readers what you’re working on w/out feeling like you’re “selling”
A lot of people are afraid of overly aggressive self-promotion so think of it more like show & tell. If your intentions are sincere you’re not going to come off like a used car salesman. Let your readers in on your creative process. For example, I once shared with my readers that I had to reprint an invitation project 8 times and maybe even cried a little before it was printed perfectly.

4. Be consistent with your content
I’m not saying you need to have an editorial calender filled with alliterated day of the week blog topics (ie. Wordless Wednesday, Thrifty Thursday, etc.) but if you can consistently share the same kinds of things your audience will begin to develop a relationship with you and your content by knowing what to expect. For example, I always have a mix of anatomy of an outfit posts (always against my black chalkboard), with freelance matters posts, with travel posts, with food posts, with home posts, etc. This is part of what it means to develop a personal brand.

5. Tell your audience what to do
Remind your audience that you are for hire. Your readers are smart but they need to be told what to do - even if it’s seemingly obvious. If you want people to visit your Etsy store, buy your art or hire you to design or photograph something for them you have to LET THEM KNOW. Or if you simply want them to comment on your article ask them to comment. It can be on a sidebar of your blog or at the end of a post where you’ve shared your work. Remind your readers to support you and they will.

6. Your content as proof
When you’ve been capturing, shaping and sharing consistently you will be proud to direct potential readers / customers / superfans to your blog in order to explain “what you do”. Your content becomes proof that you’ve been doing the work. Think of your blog as an extensive capabilities packet that vouches for your skill and character... it builds your “cred.” So not only are they getting to know what it would be like to work with you because they “like” you... but you’ve already naturally positioned yourself as an expert in their mind. Because once you get someone’s business, there’s nothing worse than not being percieved as an expert, and becoming an order-taker. But if you are working with people who already want what you have, you’ve already won more than half the battle of “holding your own” in the relationship.

7. Collaborate
A good way to expose yourself to other audiences isn’t necessarily by purchasing banner ads on other blogs but actually collaborating with other bloggers. For example, The Jealous Curator is collaborating with artists from all over the country to host a series of Girl Crush Tea Parties - a series of one-day art workshops to talk insecurities, artist blocks and inspiration. It’s a genius way to collaborate and build community.

8. Authentic Sponsorships
If you do want to open your blog up to sponsorships or reach out to other bloggers make it genuine and seamless with your content. For example, I may not have the metrics to get HP to sponsor me but maybe I could reach out to the company I trekked to Mt. Everest Base Camp with to send me to the top of Kilimanjaro and blog about it.

9. But I’m Already A Business Blog? How Do I Pepper In the Personal?
On the flip side if you have a business blog don’t be afraid to interject some personality and company culture into it! We all like knowing that we’re working with (or spending dollars with) real companies with real people. We do it on Braid, and are still finding that balance every week. But that’s a post for another day.

So let’s hear from you. What are some ways you leverage your personality and point-of-view to support your professional business (either online or off)?

Home Office. New Hire. Hello 2012.

Braid Creative — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:49:19 +0000

Tara and I were anticipating a few twists and turns going into the new year but we had no idea how quickly we would be changing things up - starting with an office space overhaul. And hey, let’s throw an employee into the mix while we’re at it. All while working up a storm for our customers and developing content to share with you all on a weekly basis.

Our Home Office
We’ve been looking at spaces around town for the past 4 months but nothing quite beat my airy historical home that we’ve been temporarily working out of. Equipped with a bright breakfast nook, a couple of friendly cats and low overhead costs we decided to embrace our decision to work from home. If Rachel Zoe and Jeff Lewis (Bravo TV royalty) can own it so can we.

Our New Employee
Meet Kristin. We brought Kristin on as a part-time designer as she finishes her senior year in design school to help us tackle all the work the universe has been sending our way. She’s super cute, has some killer personal style, good taste in music and can put up with my sometimes crass sense of humor. Oh and she can … you know … design.

Our office cat, Scooty Boots, oversees Kristin’s project management.

In her first week of work Kristin has brought us into 2012 by getting us properly networked on DropBox, introducing us to Spotify and successfully scouting out some local music for a client video we’re working on.

Also in January
• We drew analogies between niche social media and highschool cliques. We found our crowd in the art room (that would be Pinterest).
• We shared how we take a project from inspiration to execution.
• But it’s important to understand the distinction between inspiration and imitation.
• We’re weird. But so are you.
• I led a round table discussion at Altitude Summit where I spoke about leveraging your blog as an authentic marketing tool.
• And guess who gave a keynote at Alt Summit? Pinterest co-founder Ben Silberman. He got a standing ovation from 500+ Pinterest crazed bloggers. I tracked him down in the lobby bar that evening to personally thank him - as if he had invented Pinterest just for me.

• Tara wrote a guest post for The Financial Brand about avoiding the creative blahs when you work in-house

Things that caught our eye in January
• We’re not the only creative sister duo who is obsessed with Buffy The Vampire Slayer.
• Tara decided to break down the Sideshow for a bit.
• And we almost cried when we saw this Matthew McConaughey role reprised from his Dazed & Confused “alright-alright-alright” days, and then feared we might be getting old, you know, since our other pop-culture link is about Buffy.

How is your new year shaping up? What's new?

Inspiration and Imitation: A Note For Beginners

Braid Creative — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 16:26:27 +0000

Last week Tara and I shared our inspiration boards with you and how we reveal them along the way on our projects, way before they are complete. Lots of designers and creators want you to pay no mind to the man behind the curtain, but we like being transparent about what influences us. And what influences us could be anything from other design trends to interiors to fashion to photography. So that opens up another conversation about inspiration-gathering. Though we’ve spent years and years honing our craft, our creative process doesn’t exist in a vacuum and we are inspired by outside trends. But when does inspiration cross the line into imitation and how do you avoid it?

We have worked with a lot of students and new designers who have a hard time finding the balance between inspiration, imitation, and their level of taste vs. their skills. Here is our advice to them. But mind you, if you’ve been working for years as an inhouse creative where you have to go out and hunt and kill your own inspiration, or even in an agency where perhaps imitation is a big no-no and a constant worry – these tips might help as well:

1. What do you like?
From color combinations your obsessed with to artists and authors you admire - it’s important to identify what you like. (We think Pinterest is a great tool for gathering these things.)

2. Why do you like them?
Once you figure out what you like determine why. Find common threads and uncover patterns. Stare at a composition of a beautifully designed room or a badass layout design and break it down into it’s elements. Identify the colors, textures, scale, grid and typography and then mentally piece them back together to see how the whole piece was created.

3. Practice by imitating.
We think it’s okay to imitate. I spent a good amount of my time in design school pretending like I was David Carson and Art Chantry. Should you post these pieces in your online portfolio? Probably not. But emulation can be a great way to hone your craft.

4. Find inspiration elsewhere.
When you limit your sources of inspiration you run the risk of becoming a copy cat. You will start to find your style when you diversify your influences. And don’t limit your sources of inspiration to within your industry either.

5. Mind the Gap
Ira Glass, public radio host of This American Life, has this great quote on the creative process for beginners:
“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you...”

And that takes us right to the 10,000 hour rule.

6. Practice for 10,000 hours.
I recently read Malcom Gladwell’s Outliers and had a major “a-ha” moment when he said it takes 10,000 hours to become successful at any given task. A big part of becoming a master at your craft and creating your own style is to practice. If you don’t quit before 10,000 hours you’ll start feeling more comfortable with your craft.

Here are a few other really great reads about inspiration and imitation:
• Jessica Hische has a very articulate post on inspiration vs. imitation - a must read for every student and designer (new and old) out there.
• Becka Robinson at Life As An Artispreneur prefers to shut herself off from outside influences to avoid the risk of unintentional imitation.
• Erin Loechner talks about the fine line between imitation and inspiration on Decor8.

What are your thoughts on inspiration and imitation? Any advice for young designers or students?

Inspiration to Execution

Braid Creative — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 18:03:25 +0000

Earlier this week we talked about using Pinterest as a niche social media marketing platform - but today I want to show you how we use Pinterest as a tool for capturing inspiration. Tara and I are very methodical. A very specific part of our method is capturing inspiration and sharing it with the people we are working with – way before we get to the “end” of our branding recommend. So we use Pinterest to collect and curate visual inspiration. And we do it for every one of our projects.

Here’s an example of an inspiration board we did for Leo & Kat Evidente, a couple of artistpreneurs in Ventura, California making a go at capturing artistic yet authentic wedding photography for modern couples.

Here we were inspired by mid-century modern furniture, music and vintage lion sculptures - as well as the color stories found in Leo Evidente’s photography.

Here is how that inspiration transformed into a logo execution.

How we create our inspiration boards, is we make a visual collage using this found inspiration, combined with snapshots we capture ourselves from our Field Study (including The Start Deck) with our clients. And there’s always words and phrases that come to the surface that are layered in.

The cool thing about the “checking in” with these inspiration boards, is that the final brand design is always a natural next step. So yeah, we don’t quite get that dramatic Don Draper big reveal - but we do get a satisfied client that feels like we really “get them.”

And we’re not just going through this process with artistpreneurs and microbusinesses. When Doug Bannister and his team over at The Stamp Store, an established decorative concrete business, contacted us to brand their new product line, SS Specialties... yep, they got a Pinterest board, too. Because we used the exact same method. Just a different end result, obviously.

Here’s what their inspiration board looked like:
SS Specialties is inspired by clean and modern brands but their space is full of warmth and Santa Fe details.

When we shared this creative direction with SS Specialties they voiced their opinions - they liked the idea of the compass but didn’t want something busy or antiquated on their final logo. Here’s how the final execution came out:

They loved that the final logo is something that could be executed both in print, on packaging labels and on a concrete floor and that it was new but was still “them.” We loved gleaning inspiration from a site like Pinterest, but also sharing our inspiration with them along the way.

How do you feel about sharing works in progress? Do you like to be completely finished before you show & tell? Or do you like sharing a rough vision first?

My So-Called Social Media

Braid Creative — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 19:02:04 +0000

As Tara and I launched Braid we knew we had to have a solid social media plan in tact. We knew we should incorporate some of the big players like Twitter and Facebook in the mix - but we also wanted to go with some more niched routes like Vimeo (vs. the more prolific YouTube) and Pinterest. As we were brainstorming ideas on how to utilize and leverage our brand across these various social media platforms it helped us to think in metaphors.

So let’s pretend like internet-land is a highschool. We’ll call it Social Media High.
Our blog is like a classroom - good for capturing, shaping & sharing what we know and do.
Our newsletters are like the library - for when we have lots of information on one topic.
Twitter is the fun hallway chatter and often directs you from point A to point B.
Facebook is the cafeteria where you join friends in conversation, flirt with your very own Jordan Catalano, and where high fives are the equivalent of the “like” button.

And Pinterest? We thought of it more as a great tool for capturing inspiration but we weren’t quite sure where it fit in within our Social Media High metaphor.

Pinterest is more like the art room where kids who dress in colors of the rainbow, and collect weird (yet beautiful) things in their backpack, hang out. It turns out Pinterest is “our people” - we like it there. And the best part is - on Pinterest we’re not even trying to sell ourselves. It’s not the same kind of hustle and bustle that exists on Twitter and Facebook - over there we’re just quietly curating the contents of our backpacks - so it surprised us to look up and find other people were noticing. And sometimes even hiring us.

This article on Mashable about using niche social media marketing gives the following tip: “Members of these communities won’t respond well to advertising messages; instead, take the time to understand the networks’ specific culture and then determine how to assimilate...” But I think it may be more authentic to “find your crowd” first and then figure out how to weave your business philosophy into that community in a genuine way.

Finally, I’ll leave you with a quote from Seth Godin’s newest book We Are All Weird: "The community you choose can be a mirror and an amplifier, furthering your interests and encouraging you to push even further."

Do you have a niched social media community that pushes you further? Who is your crowd?

Related:
• How To Pinterest
• Pinterest As An Idea Vault

Follow us on Pinterest, Twitter and Facebook.

What Branding Twists Will The New Year Bring?

Braid Creative — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 15:29:33 +0000

For us, the last three months of this quickly ending year started with building Braid. There was the name. The logo (which Charlie redrew here... he also built us a virtual blocky office, complete with two desks, and a gigantic outdoor statue-sign in his Minecraft world on the computer). There were chalkboard photo shoots and brand adventures. Refining our methodology. We knew weaving authentic brands was our best talent. Following a set process was how we’d hold ourselves accountable, and really make our clients part of the journey.

But a brightly colored thread that kept weaving in and out – like a startling string of magenta that you didn’t expect to like until you saw it next to the other colors – was how our logical method kept attracting other creative professionals (especially ones that are finally steeling their courage to strike out on their own).

Turns out, our brand methodology actually helps them clarify their own vision, too. We don’t even get to the brand execution part. It’s all about the process and journey. Figuring out their past strengths, future visions, and a realistic overlap where they need to focus in the present (as in stop coming up with more sparkly shiny ideas and execute one!)

So what’s our plan for the first three months of 2012? Personal branding is a topic that we feel pretty passionate about, and from artists to corporate CEOs to our Coney Island sideshow performing brother, it just keeps popping up all over the place.

Sigh. We can plan and process and plot all we like. But there will certainly be more than a few surprising twists and turns in store. What color thread will emerge? Perhaps vermilion.

What branding topic do you think will be on everyone’s mind in the new year?

The Power of Word Weaving

Braid Creative — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 20:48:12 +0000

Everyone knows the magical tale of Charlotte’s Web, how Charlotte the well-mannered spider saves Wilbur the naive pig from inevitable slaughter by basically creating a branding campaign for him – weaving headlines like Terrific, Radiant, and Humble, into her barn door web.

The web words kind of freak out the farmer and his family and eventually the whole community, but it saves Wilbur’s neck. I always thought it was odd that the pig got all the attention instead of the spider. Charlotte was the one that captured his personality, crafted it and shared it with the world. Of course, if this were a modern-day tale, evil government scientists would capture Charlotte, take her to an underground facility in New Mexico and do all sorts of experiments on her, like make her weave code for the military. Then the little girl and that sleazy rat and Wilbur would have to bust her out – all in 3D of course.

The other day as I was visiting my seven-year-old’s class, and I saw a collection of their most recent art project displayed along the hall. They were handmade webs, with a single word in the center that each student felt best described them. I thought this was such a clever project. And it made me think, if a spider can write (granted a fictional one, but humor me here) and a seven-year old can evaluate their own best trait, shouldn’t the rest of us brave up and get more confident with sharing our written word?

I argue that Charlotte’s web campaign was a bit old-school. Kind of the equivalent to headlines on a bus bench. “Terrific” was a bit generic. It’s like saying “quality” or “great customer service.” “Radiant” was a bit of a reach. I think there is a definite brand disconnect there. Wilbur was a friendly, charming, little firecracker of a pig, but “radiant” always seemed odd to me, considering he wallowed in mud. He was also a bit precocious, so I don’t know if “Humble” quite fit the bill either.

But, criticizing Charlotte’s Web is making me feel a little uncomfortable, like in a second I’m going to bust into that class and tell those kids that Charlotte dies at the end. Oops, spoiler alert.

Honestly, though, isn’t it the criticism that keeps so many of us from expressing ourselves through writing? Well, that and the drudgery of proofreading. So whether you’re taking a crack at writing your own creative copy for the first time, or finally steeling your nerve to start that blog, or even just crafting a few perfectly phrased bullets to defend your work, present your ideas or (gulp) even save your own little firecracker of a neck – think of that little spider-that-could.

5 Writing Skills A Spider Can Teach Us:
• Editing. Sometimes you don’t have to say a lot.
• The power of one unique word.
• The importance of being authentic (okay, I think she could have tried harder on this one).
• Surprising people with a skill you didn’t know you had by just trying.
• Taking your worst critic (be it a talking rat, but most likely yourself) with a grain of salt.

Want more reasons to write, read our featured newsletter Gaahhh! Don’t Make Me Write!

And tell us, what are your favorite single words? Someone mentioned “jaunty” last week. Surprise us with your “Radiance.”

Writing Shy? Wayne Geyer Will School Ya

Braid Creative — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 14:17:41 +0000

Wayne Geyer is a Dallas, Texas copywriter and speaker who is all about teaching designers, art directors, and basically any creative professionals that consider themselves only “visual” – to write. Wayne is speaking our language, for sure. In fact, our Braid December newsletter, Gaahhh! Don’t Make Me Write! is about mine and Kathleen’s personal experience with how writing can shape your career and get your ideas more enthusiastically approved. In fact, even if you aren’t technically paid to be creative, I truly believe almost everyone can benefit professionally from becoming a better writer.

Wayne was nice enough to answer a few Q&A’s with us. And if you’re vibing on what he’s laying down, check out his upcoming seminar, Write More Good: Copywriting for Visual Thinkers, where he teaches participants how to bridge the gap between strategy and creative, distill any creative challenge down to five words or fewer, and write their way “out of a wet paper bag.” read more >

Q: Wayne, how did you come to be a copywriter who encourages designers to write?

A: I have a BFA in Advertising Art. In reality, it’s a graphic design degree. But in my first few years of working, I was “the designer who writes.” Then, I started my own business—and chose to focus exclusively on copywriting. Along the way, I found that I still needed to solve my clients’ communication problems before I could effectively write compelling copy.

In my daily work with designers and art directors, I found that many of them were trained in “portfolio” programs aimed at teaching formal design. For lots of reasons, they were missing a writing component in their education. Suddenly, they found themselves in the working world—having to create concepts and even write simple copy to support their work. Some of them viewed writing as intimidating—but others didn’t even consider it a part of the design process.

So I started teaching “copywriting” at my alma mater the way I thought it would be most helpful to graphic designers. I wanted to give “visual thinkers” some tools and techniques to bring more strategy and communication to their work. And because I’m a graphic designer too, I can speak to the unique issues a “non-writer” faces when he or she looks at a blank sheet of paper.

Today, I help people who draw... learn how to write: So they can kick ass for their clients and get paid more for it. I’m on a mission to elevate our industry—and to save graphic designers from being viewed as commodities.

Q. Why do you think visual creative professionals should get more comfortable with creative writing?

The term “visual communication” is limiting: it only refers to the media we use or the “things” we make: graphic design, advertising, brochures, websites or whatever. In reality, we’re just as responsible for the words as the layout and the pictures. So we’re more than “visual communicators.” We’re brand communicators. We control content. And we need to understand how words, stories, messaging and writing work in unison with imagery to create meaning and contribute to understanding.

Q. Do you think there are misconceptions in the industry that have created this “division of roles” between writing and design?

Well, it’s a fact that some of us are more “verbal” and others are more “visual.” And the industry has traditionally liked putting people in pigeonholes based on their skills. But then I see something like Braid’s recent post and it feels better to me. I, too, like to think we’re all “creative.” Or more specifically, we’re all communicators.

I picture a brainstorming session where those different personalities work together to define a clear message and a creative concept. At the end of that meeting, one person opens the Adobe Creative Suite, another starts typing in Word, and still others go back to managing schedules or planning a media strategy. Along the way, I see them looking over each other’s shoulders and sharing ideas in the interest of strengthening the communication. The perception is that we work in silos. Sometimes that’s also the reality. But I think many of us believe in the power of collaboration.

Q. What are the most common barriers you’ve encountered that discourage the overlap?

Individual skills or tendencies aside, the structure of traditional ad agencies and design shops doesn’t help. In his book, Designers Don’t Read, Austin Howe suggests that today’s most desirable “creatives” and “creative agencies” aren’t “art directors,” “designers” or “copywriters,” but actually those who possess the kind of strategic thinking skills required to see the bigger picture.

There’s another challenge, and it lives at the college level. There are plenty of designers out there who basically just learned about grids and got proficient in Photoshop. Some of those people will enter the marketplace to find they’re very small fish in a very big pond—and they’ll struggle. I think it’s because they weren’t exposed to storytelling, concept, or messaging.

Q. What has surprised you most about your copywriting seminars?

At my workshop in September, one of the participants said, “I fell in love with design all over again.” It was so powerful, I was actually taken aback. She had been stuck in a rut (and who hasn’t), and she was reminded that design isn’t just about making things. It’s a process—a journey. She got immersed in the client and the story. She asked questions, and allowed herself to be surprised by the answers. She focused less on “what” she was going to make, and instead tried to understand “why.”

Part of it had to do with getting away from the daily grind of meetings and deadlines and familiarity. But I like to think that in trying a different approach, she gave herself the tools to discover a completely unique solution. There have been plenty of other surprises, but this one blew me away. She fell in love with design all over again. And I had a little bit to do with that.

Q. If you had to share just one tip to get a "non-writer" more confident with writing, what would it be?

Ask yourselves this question: “What does my audience need to hear?” It’s been one of my favorite tools for almost 20 years. First, it focuses your attention on the most important thing — the audience. Then, it demands some laser focus. What do they need to hear—not just “what do the client (or I) want to tell them?” If you can filter all of the noise down to a clear, singular answer to that simple question, you’ve solved the communication problem. After that, it’s simply a matter of translating that message in an interesting and memorable way.

You can get more than just one tip at Wayne Geyer’s seminar, Write More Good. And, of course, we want to know how you rate your writing confidence. Do you hate to write, are you just shy about it or do you want to write more?

Headphones Or Not?

Braid Creative — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 19:01:44 +0000

Music is linked to creativity, right? Filling our head with our favorite tunes is how many creative professionals get in the zone. But how often are we plugging into our creative source versus just blocking everyone else out? The truth is that headphones accomplish both, and that’s cool... or is it? So perhaps the creative debate isn’t if you prefer ear plugs or oversized bass-thumping mustard yellow hipster headphones, but instead when is it appropriate to plug in or not?

But how can you be productive with noise pollution interrupting your flow? That’s the biggest pro for headphones, especially in open workspaces. But how often are your headphones your subliminal (or blaring) creative message to everyone else (like those pesky non-creatives) to stay out of your space and your head. Are you abusing your headphone usage like a sulky teenager posting a giant “keep out” sign on their bedroom door? So a con to your favorite headgear is that creativity is as much about collaboration and communication as it is about getting in the zone, and keeping your brilliant brain under lock and key can be counterintuitive.

I asked our friend James Harber, creative director of Studio FJ website design shop in Oklahoma City, what his headphone policy is around the office. His biggest frustration is having to wave down a team-mate like an air traffic controller just to have a discussion. So his unofficial rule? The half-of/half-off. That means cocking your headphones to the side so one ear is always uncovered. Plus it’s kind of jaunty.

So we want to hear your weigh-in on this heady (wink) issue. What’s your headphone policy?

Thanks November

Braid Creative — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 19:50:00 +0000

In November we made our first dollar. It started with the two of us deciding to get serious about tracking clients-to-be. It just seemed like the responsible business-like thing to do (it can’t always be fun and games and face paint around here). Tara and I, being the visual gals we are, decided the chalkboard wall would be a perfect place to start documenting this info – chalk dust and all. And did the dust fly! We chalked out 15 empty spaces for 4th quarter customers and speaking gigs. It was a little daunting staring at those blank spaces but the universe clearly abhors a vacuum because we filled 10 of those spaces within a week.

And with that we made our first dollar. We spent our November slammed and grateful for a chalkboard full of clients - you see, as agency trained creatives there is kind of a friendly familiarity in the mad dash between deadlines. And there is loads of comfort in creating, writing, designing and storytelling for other people.

By the time Thanksgiving rolled around we had more than just green bean casserole to be thankful for.

Kathleen & Tara’s November:
• Kathleen spoke at AIGA about the Culture of Creativity in Oklahoma
• Tara reveals that everybody is creative (but shhh... don’t tell the “creatives”)
• Dan Roam read our review of his book and said this on Twitter:
I am stunned and speechless (sorry Mr. Fox, words fail) that @BraidCreative would put such effort into a book review.
• After a hearty thanksgiving lunch we thought we would go for a nice ride in a kayak - then we rolled into the freezing lake!
• Kathleen modeled for SHOPGOOD’s holiday lookbook (P.S. Watch this video about being a designer / model.)
• We went from having 100ish Pinterest followers to almost 600! (You can follow us too - or let us know if you need an invitation to join yourself).

Elsewhere in November:
• Speaking of Pinterest - check out this article about small businesses attracting fans and customers using niched social networks instead of just the classics (like FB and Twitter).
• Rainbow Parade - we fell in love with color-loving Brooklyn designer and vintage clothing crusader Jessi Arrington (see her TED talk about it here). We also love how she follows up her speaking gigs, like at Creative Mornings NY, with a rainbow parade down the street!
• Wayne Geyer’s No Cilantro page made me laugh (check out the rest of his site too - he helps designers who want to become better copywriters).

Dang, Is It December?
Next month we’re really looking forward to sharing a lot of the branding work we’ve been shaping as of late. You know, earning that dollar! But we’re also excited to blog more about a different kind of shaping – how we’ve been helping other creative professionals weave method into their madness and focus their vision. Strangely, chalk helps.

Two Kinds of Brand Distress Signals

Braid Creative — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 20:24:51 +0000

Brand is such a big word. And brand problems can be even bigger. So stay on this small desert island for a moment, where distress signals are of two varieties. The S.O.S. in the sand (as to be seen by the scrappy little prop plane that is sure to help you) or the giant bonfire (all the palm fronds are getting stacked on that inferno) sending up major smoke signals for some major rescue. Here are six types of brand distress that we think can be helped with either 1. a quick fix or 2. a major rescue.

Quick Brand Fix:
So note the duct tape. It’s a perfectly respectable way of, well, fixing anything. If you’ve been “duct-taping” together your brand message and look & feel, but you, or your employees and your customers really like you and your product and the missing piece is just looking and sounding the part, here are some of the distress signals you might recognize:

- logo shame, you are embarrassed to hand our your business card
- you have trouble summing up what you do in one or two sentences
- updating your online presence (be it your site, or the need to engage in social media) keeps getting put off

If these signals ring true, then it might be time to wave down that scrappy little prop plane and get some support. Peel off the duct tape and scrape of the residual goop and get a clean fresh update. Mostly, just recognize what you’ve done well in the past, look where you want to go in the future, and find a realistic way to better interpret what you can inject into your brand today. That might mean hiring a designer, spending some time doing some brand exercises like our desert island series or finally getting your head wrapped around what social media style you can execute consistently (i.e. not dread or quit doing).

Major Brand Rescue:
Okay, so these are those big black smoke clouds puffing up. To a passing by ship or commercial plane they might seem small, but if you are on that island (i.e. in the thick of your small business) then they can seem looming and large. Here are some smoke signals for sure:

- a disconnect between what you are saying about your biz, and what people (be it you, your customers, or your employees, even just your business partner) are actually experiencing
- your online presence is confusing, it’s not just in need of an update, but is actually repelling what might be some great inbound traffic, or on the other end of the spectrum, it is non-existent
- your tribe is restless and just can’t get a clear grasp on your vision and are actually at a point of resistance to forward motion (and by tribe, this could be the people mentioned above, or even just all the conflicting voices and ideas in your own head, especially if you are an entrepreneur)

Before you can put out the fire, you need to just take a deep breath, know that you are busy and aren’t struggling with anything that anyone else hasn’t before, and just really try to find a partner that’s a good fit before you jump in feet first to coordinating your brand rescue plan. It’s going to take more than one pair of hands, but it will be worth it.

Some good books for DIY rescue are Rework by Jason Fried & david Heinemeier Hansson for getting scrappy and getting started, and Launch by Michael Stelzner for common sense social media and content sharing strategy.

Backwards Brand Treasure Map

Braid Creative — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 23:23:04 +0000

So when pirates bury their treasure chests, you’ve gotta imagine they put in some serious hours figuring out how to make a proper map. We’ve got a brand exercise that should only take ten minutes, and is a continuation of our fun “Your Brand On A Desert Island” series. This one’s called Backwards Brand Treasure Map. See, once that pirate heaves that last shovelful of sand on top of their piratey chest, they’ve sort of got to work backwards to document its location, right?

They have to backstep and count their paces from where “X” marks the spot to the next landmark. Like fifty paces back to the palm tree that forks in two, then a hundred back to the giant rock that sort of looks like a giant crab, and finally back to the spot on the beach where this savings-minded pirate plans to come ashore someday to dig up his treasure and retire in all his piratey glory.

So how will you determine your brand’s future success? Will you consider striking “gold,” when your brand becomes a household name? Or, is being perceived as one of the top ten experts in your niche field, or the best in your region, your version of brand treasure? Is it a certain number of followers that you count like coins, or is it the emotional connections you are able to forge with your rareness?

Backwards Brand Treasure Map:
So here’s a fun arrrggh-signment matey. (This is actually a variation of an exercise that Michael Stelzner, social media expert and author, outlines in his content strategy book we reviewed and recommend titled Launch. But his version involves a rocket ship, and less pirate-speak.)

1. Get a piece of paper and draw an “X.” That marks the spot.
2. Next to the “X” describe in just a few words or a picture what you consider to be the most glorious end-goal of your brand. Now let’s say that’s five years in the future. Write that down. Five years. Now, all you have to do is pace backwards.
3. Draw a line and a dot backwards from the “X.” That’s a landmark. Perhaps it’s a three year landmark. Write down three things you had to do to get to that landmark.
4. Now go back to one year. Write down three actions you had to complete to get to that achievement.
5. Now, trace back to today. You are standing at the shore of your beach. What are three things you can do today?

Now looky there you scurvy dog. You have an albeit rough (but aren’t all authentic pirate maps) but perfectly respectable brand treasure map.

Although it always seems the pirate ends up a poor heap of bones with an eye-patch in these stories, and some other plucky adventurers (those dang Goonies!) follows his map to the treasure. But hey, if you are a small business of more than just one person or even one-hundred, there’s something to be said for other people being able to understand where your heart’s treasure lies.

Can other people understand your map? Can they share your passion? But mostly, does it make sense to you?

Invite A Left Brainer To Your Next Brainstorm

Braid Creative — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 19:26:58 +0000

When planning a brainstorm, there are certain supplies that always make the ideas flow a little more readily – Sharpies, dry erase markers, notepads, crunchy-salty-sweet snacks – and in the movies, a small bouncy ball to throw against the wall and catch as you come up with the big idea. The ideal attendee list is typically made up of creative types (though we talk about the unpleasant side effects of the “creative” label in this month’s article here).

So we challenge you to include someone in your next pow-wow that you wouldn’t have otherwise considered – a logical, colors-inside-the-lines, rule-following (and erroneously labeled) “non creative.” Invite a true left-brainer.

The beauty of inviting these logical, linear thinkers – especially in a brainstorming or fact-finding scenario – is that they don’t feel the pressure to perform, to come up with the brilliant idea, to be expected to be creative. Not to be crude (you know, if your visual right-brain goes there) a lot of times “creatives” can get all performance-anxiety in front of each other. Anew person in the mix who can just as surprisingly come up with really creative ideas, gives the other brains a chance to have an idea bounced off them for a change, rather than always being the ones throwing them out there.

So ask someone unexpected to be your guest. (Like those bumper stickers that say “invite someone to church today!”) And remember, creativity loves constraint. If there are rules to follow and sharp angles to navigate around, it forces us to be more inventive.

Now, if brainstorming isn’t a typical part of your day, there’s a takeaway to be had here, as well. We all have meetings, right? If someone you consider only interested in black and white, or numbers and facts is sitting at the table across from you – don’t let out an internal groan of despair. Just think of them as your left-brain compliment. And hey, look there! They like crunchy-salty-sweet snacks, too. Go figure.

Which are you? Left brain or right? Or are you a perfect (salty-sweet) balance of both?

Oh, Mr. Hallorann. Everybody Shines.

Braid Creative — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 16:13:43 +0000

One of my favorite movie scenes is from The Shining, when very young Danny and good old Mr. Hallorann (the groundskeeper of one haunted beyond all heck hotel, The Overlook) sit down to “have some ice cream, Doc!” and talk about stuff like, oh, being telekinetic, and never, and I mean never, going into room 237! I love this scene so much, that I quoted it whenever I had to give one of those inspirational quotes to go with my program bio in one of those a-type achievers under-a-certain age award events a couple years ago. I wanted something unique like that, because I thought it was fitting for a “creative-type.” See, there usually aren’t a lot of “creatives” (that’s what we call ourselves, right) at these types of events, so you have to be sure you stand out among the corporates. You have to say, “whoa, there buddy. I’m different. I shine.” But I don’t know if I believe that anymore. I think those “non-creatives” are way more shiny than I’ve given them credit for. And if you are a creative professional like me – you should reconsider it, too – Doc!

“It’s just that some places
are like people.
Some shine –
and some don’t.”
What Mr. Hallorann (As Played By Scatman Cruthers) Has To Say About Shining

Alright, so my point is that Danny has a special gift. He can sense things others can’t, he can talk to his little imaginary friend-finger, and write Redrum on mirrors, and see freaky twin girls beckoning him to play with him forever and ever at the end of the hall. Mr. Hallorann has to educate him to how this all works, as he is a “shiner” himself.

But here’s the deal, once that hotel went full-on crazy, everybody was seeing those twins, right? I mean, it was less like shining and more like turning on the flood lights.

Everyone just had to get, well... warmed up, and exercise that “shining” part of their brain. I think designers and writers and photographers have mojo. Yes, they shine. But the mojo is just a small percentage of what makes them able to see things that other people think they can’t. The rest is just existing in that creative state-of-mind more than other people and being expected to perform (daily) and get paid for it, doesn’t hurt, either.

So what am I saying? We should all go full-on crazy? No. I just think creative professionals should consider tapping into the creativity of others they don’t label as “creative” – or, at least communicate with them better, because those are typically the same people (mentioned above) that are also paying. I’m writing about it in this month’s newsletter, where I also encourage those people who say “I’m not creative,” to exercise their creative muscle more with some simple exercises, in Everybody’s Creative. Just Don’t Tell The Creatives.

Tell us, when were you most taken a-back by the “shining” (and frankly, surprising) creativity of a client or coworker?

Coaching for Creative Professionals

Braid Creative — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 16:04:56 +0000

I’ve mentioned before that prior to Braid I was working as a freelance art director - focusing primarily on branding for microbusiness and artistpreneurs. But at the same time I was also documenting the freelance experience on my personal blog. I would share my struggles and successes in a monthly review and I would touch on tricky topics in a series called Freelance Matters. I started to get amazing feedback from other freelancers who were intrigued by my creative process and how I worked – from my to-do lists and managing projects to firing impossible clients. I started receiving requests to talk about other issues like how to estimate, bill and get paid doing what I love. College students started asking me about my career path and what worked for me.

I always felt a little funny being perceived as an expert on the topic because … you know … isn’t someone else more qualified to be talking about these sorts of things? But what I found is that these artistpreneurs wanted to hear it from me - they watched me grow through my experience and found themselves inspired to do the same. I became just as passionate talking about being a creative professional as I did about actually being a creative professional.

The more I write about being an artistpreneur the more I find other folks sharing their dreams and plotting their escape from the cubicle for a creative career. Tara and I want to help. That’s where our idea for one-on-one creative professional coaching comes in play.

You might be a good fit for creative professional coaching from Braid if:
• you are ready to move forward in your creative career but are unclear on next steps
• you could use a little motivation, inspiration and support from another creative professional who’s been there
• you need clarity on your own creative process
• you have lots of vision but need help paring it down into actionable steps to get you there

What we do:
Over 2 months (6 phone or Skype sessions) Tara and I, through a methodical process, will:
• help you uncover and clarify your creative career goals
• help you identify and overcome barriers on your professional path
• help you develop your own creative process and work style
• hold you accountable with actionable steps
• act as the creative director you may be lacking when it comes to guidance

If this is something you’re interested in email me at kathleen@braidcreative.com for more information.

“When Words Don’t Work.” A Review of Blah Blah Blah By Dan Roam

Braid Creative — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 16:17:05 +0000

A fox, a hummingbird and two cave people named Oog and Aag. These are just some of the charmingly doodled characters Dan Roam uses to illustrate the dangerous tendency of words alone to befuddle and bore us, in his third book on the subject, Blah Blah Blah: What To Do When Words Don’t Work.

Warning, if you read on an iPad or Kindle like me, then you will miss the tiny lineup of the “players” of the opening of the book – including the fox, the cave people and even Einstein and Jon Stewart – as drawn by Roam. Because Kindle and it’s app for iPad always automatically start books on the first page of text. You must tab backwards to see the cover and table of contents art. And I don’t know about you, but I always have to look at the cover art before I can begin. I know that goes against the saying “don’t judge a book by it’s cover.” But I think it’s apropo, since this Blah Blah Blah is all about merging the verbal and the visual to create the truly vivid in our minds. read more >

How We Forgot To See Forests
This book really explains how from the days of Oog and Aag we started to develop our need for words, but how today in a world of information overload we can’t afford to abandon using pictures and other visual means to solve and explain our ideas. We must find a balance between our fox and our hummingbird. And no, the fox and hummingbird are not like some kung fu thing, young grasshopper. But they are a little yin and yang. They represent our verbal (sly foxy mind) and our visual (dazzling hummingbird mind) who together, help us see the forest and the trees in otherwise supercomplex or even snoozeable exchanges of ideas.

Un-Blah Your Brain. Balance Your Sly Fox and Your Pretty Bird.
Like in Roam’s other highly acclaimed books, The Back of The Napkin, (which I’ve read and put into practice) and Unfolding The Napkin, (which I haven’t unfolded... yet) there are lots of handrawn pictures and diagrams in Blah Blah Blah that visually and verbally (because Mr. Roam is a foxy-wordsmith as well) explain his theories of why the show-and-tell combo is still one of the most powerful ways for us to absorb, ponder and communicate ideas – and become double-minded thinkers.

Plus, he gives his reader smart and funny tools, like his Blah-meter for recognizing blah not only when you hear it, but when you’re dishing it. You see how public figures and celebrities are guilty or not in this fun game here. Because, as Roam puts it, no matter your profession or your talents or your big ol’ smart brain, we’re all “deep in the doo doo of blah-blah-blah.”

Unfortunately no doodle to illustrate that one. But you’re picturing it in your hummingbird mind right now aren’t you?

I plan to reference this book myself whenever I am:
1. Preparing for a first-time meeting with a client or collaborator
2. Creating visuals to go with a speaking topic
3. Uncovering the hidden elements of a brand I’m working on
4. Explaining a sticky homework concept to my seven-year old (and myself)

Tell us what examples of wordy blah-blah-blah really drive you crazy? Or leave you snoozing? Or better yet – when do you catch yourself dishing out the blah’s?

Only In October

Braid Creative — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 17:30:15 +0000

Only in October can you put on skeleton makeup and call it a work day. From sugar skulls to paper flowers, Día de los Muertos, also known as the Mexican holiday, Day of The Dead, has been trending all over Pinterest (one of our favorite places to gather visual inspiration). So Kathleen and I decided to get deadly festive on this last day of October, and take a moment to celebrate one of the best days of the year and some of the best Braid highlights of the month.

Of course we had to sketch it first! The costumes may have been spontaneous but planning is in our bones.

Kathleen and I hadn’t really planned to dress up for Halloween, which is a bit shocking for us. October has been so busy, and it just hadn’t been a priority. But the closer we got to the 31st, the more the spirit of the day started calling us. In truth, it was Heritage who actually called us to ask if we’d be judges for their company treat and costume contest. Um. Let me think. Sí! We’re there! No, really, we’re there. Right now. Satisfying our sweet tooth and a seeing what spooky getups are prize-worthy.

As for the rest of October, here are the Braid note-worthy’s:
- Got fantastic feedback after introducing our Brand Starter Kit for microbusinesses and artistpreuners
- Also shared our method for getting started on all our brand projects
- Challenged you to uncap your Sharpies with our video A Case For Brilliant Note Taking
- Vibed on visual explorer and author Keri Smith with a review of her newest book
- Finally met our favorite Little Rock, Arkansas sound guys face-to-face, the LuckyDog Audio dudes. This actually happened in Scary September (the day after our recap post.) But after meeting with these kindred creative professionals and small business owners we felt way more inspired than scared.
- In fact, towards the end of October we “put it out there” that we want to start consulting and coaching for other creative professionals, as well. Let’s just say, November heard us.

Other October Awesomeness:
- Tara’s BBC interview makes us feel like quitters (in a good way)
- The annual Oklahoma City must-see Gazette Halloween Parade
- Out Of Africa on cable this month and now Tara’s new movie obsession (and she’s not alone, it’s our most popular “pin” to date)
- Kathleen’s addictive fall dish is sweet potatoes, black beans & goat cheese quesadillas
- Looking forward to pre-ordered for Nov. 1 release, Blah! Blah! Blah! by Dan Roam auto-loading on Tara’s Kindle (and wondering if it will happen at the strike of midnight?)

How did October treat you? Are you looking forward to November? We know we are!

Brand Message In A Bottle

Braid Creative — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 15:23:30 +0000

If you’ve been following the “Your Brand On A Desert Island” themed series we’ve been sharing over the past few weeks, then you’ll be able to get into mental castaway mode as fast as cracking a coconut (which actually probably takes a long time but roll with me here) and in the perfect frame of mind to try out this fun ten minute brand exercise, Brand Message In A Bottle.

Through history and popular culture there have been different purposes for composing, curling and corking a handwritten message and sending it out to sea. It can be a desperate attempt at discovery and rescue or just an unrequited sentiment directed to some unknown soul and sent out into the universe with really no hope of reply. Yikes, it’s actually quite bittersweet when you think about it. No wonder notorious softie, Nicholas Sparks, took the idea and ran with it.

When it comes down to it, the point of this particularly romanticized (if not exactly efficient) form of communication is not the long shot that someone will actually find the message, read it and act upon it. The point is the act itself, of writing down what you want, putting it out there, and basically making your intent known to the only person that is guaranteed to “get the message” – yourself.

Okay, getting a little Laws of Attraction here, so let’s get back to that fun ten minute brand exercise I mentioned.

Your Message In A Bottle: Dream Customer
The idea is to picture your perfect customer. It’s sort of a no-brainer when you think about doing this, but then you realize you haven’t actually done it. What’s even better is writing down who this customer is. And we don’t just mean an ordinary customer but a raving fan, like I Dream of Jeannie (you know, ‘cause of the bottle) – a total loyalist.

But the point is not that it’s a message to them. It’s a message to yourself. It help keeps them in your mind, so you remember who you are branding to. So to help you easily compose your message, you can try this fill-in-the blank format:

1. My dream customer values ______________ but really loves ____________________.
2. A stress they have might is _____________________________.
3. But a happy milestone in their life right now might be ___________________.
4. They often trust others who ____________________________________.
5. But what really makes them a loyal fan is _________________________.
6. Something that might happily surprise them about my business is _____________________________.
7. Some other favorite brands of theirs are _________ and ________________.
8. My brand should make them feel ________________________________.

You don’t have to actually have a bottle for this, but it does make for a nice reminder if you decide to keep your message or use it again to stash future notes or goals, if that sort of thing floats your boat – or bottle.

A multiple-person version of this Dream Customer exercise could involve a real bottle (and no, it’s not Spin The Bottle, although that could very well be the title of the next nostalgic Spark’s novel) but it’s just filling out the same form independently in a group setting, placing it in the bottle, and then each person takes turns pulling out a “message” and comparing notes (differences and similarities) about who you perceive to be your dream customer.

Got another ten minutes? Try one of our other “Your Brand On a Desert Island” exercises:

• Your Brand On A Desert Island

• Draw A Line In Your Brand

Draw A Line In Your Brand

Braid Creative — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 21:31:43 +0000

“A strong stand is how you attract superfans. They point to you and defend you. And they spread the word further, wider and more passionately than any advertising could... [but ] for everyone who loves you, there will be others who hate you. If no one’s upset by what you’re saying you’re probably not pushing hard enough. (And you’re probably boring, too.)”

Those are some fightin’ words. They’re straight from Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson of 37Signals. We thought the chapter titled “Draw a Line in The Sand” from their must-read business book, Rework, is great inspiration for a ten minute brand exercise for our “Your Brand On a Desert Island” themed series.

Now Rework definitely takes a tough-love stance on figuring out what your beliefs are as a business overall. They use the “line in the sand” metaphor to wake you up to the idea that as a business you have to stand for certain beliefs and stick to them no matter what. If you try to appeal to everyone, then ultimately nobody will care.

Here’s a way we’ve adapted the idea as a warm-up exercise to start uncovering your authentic brand. You can do this on the beach, in a sandbox, or more realistically – on a piece of paper. You can also do it with more than one person and compare answers (preferably all wearing Bermuda shorts to get in the spirit.)

Drawing Your Line
1. Draw a big circle.
2. Draw a line down the middle.
3. Draw a single stone on the left side. That’s you, or your business.
4. On the other side of the line write down what you DON’T stand for. These are the practices you can’t stand, the things you’ve never liked doing, believed in doing – or at least want to stop doing. Then once you get a really unlikable list going, refine it down. Circle the words that really make you itch with disapproval (it’s okay to even feel annoyed, mad or even smug about all the things you are not).
5. Now go back and write in all the opposites on YOUR side of the line. These are the beliefs that make you unique. Or perhaps they are old-fashioned, simple even – and yet you feel all the more strongly about them. You’re lucky you have a strong opinion. But most likely, if you feel like you operate in shades of grey, this exercise is a fun way to get your point-of-view a little stronger in contrast.

Sometimes it’s hard for us humans to start with the positives. We’re just flawed that way. Trying to pin down our beliefs as a business, entrepreneur or as a creative professional can make that circle of sand seem like an awfully intimidating blank slate. So start with the “don’t” side to get all stirred up, but don’t dwell there. The challenge is to hone in where you can make a stand.

Then stick to your side of the line. Continue to capture your beliefs and make sure they are being shaped and shared through your brand. That’s how other people will know you have a line, and a side, that they want to stand behind with you.

P.S. Are you subscribing to our blog feed? Do you like us (on Facebook that is)? And you're totally missing out if you aren't following our Pinterest boards.

Tools For Capturing

Braid Creative — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 18:35:40 +0000

We’ve been talking a lot lately about the importance of taking (and sharing) brilliant notes but today I would like to give you specific tools for capturing sparks of creativity in the moment.

Here is my personal toolkit for capturing and creating on the spot:
• Sharpies - I’m very specific about my Sharpies. I prefer Ultra Fine Point in a variety of colors.
• A Highlighter - A neon yellow highlighter is great for identifying patterns or calling out especially inspired notes you want to make sure to remember later.
• A Composition Notebook - There's something about not being afraid to mess up when you're taking notes in an old school composition book. The kind you can find for 25¢ at your local pharmacy.
• A Moleskine - For when I need to feel artsy and hip. I like the gridded kind.
• Post-It Notes - These are great for making quick notes that I can stick to my monitor later for reference
• An iPhone - I use my iPhone to take quick notes, video or photos on the fly. Tara and I even use an iPhone to capture our branding adventures.
• A Point and Shoot Camera - I love my little Canon G10. I use this to capture real life moments or details that pen & paper can’t do justice.
• Ruler, Xacto & Corkboard - These tools are used to create a vision board from magazine clippings, paint chips or other found objects.

And don’t forget to share your notes as you’re taking them to get others on your page!

What are your favorite tools for capturing? Do you have a favorite pen or notebook that get? Let us know on Twitter, Facebook or in the comments.

Being An Investigative-Creative. A Review of Finish This Book.

Braid Creative — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 13:35:48 +0000

Tara and I became super fans of Keri Smith when we cracked open her book, Explorer of the World, while on a business trip to Atlanta. So when we came across Smith’s Finish This Book while on another branding adventure in Lawrence, Kansas this weekend we knew we had to pick it up. We didn’t quite realize the creative adventure this book would take us on as we road-tripped back home. My 11-year-old self would have flipped out over how cool Finish This Book is - okay who am I kidding, the creative professional I am today also flipped out (and learned a lot) over Smith’s newest book.

Here’s how it goes - on a dark and stormy night (the way all good stories begin) Keri Smith stumbles upon scattered pages from an abandoned instruction manual in a park. And now she is counting on you, the reader, to help her solve this mystery. Finish This Book is broken up into four interactive sections including Secret Intelligence Training, Documenting and Observing Methods, Artifact Examination Techniques and finally The Instruction Manual. You are instructed to complete an exercise on each page - it is up to you to populate Finish This Book with the necessary content in order for it to be a book at all.

What Keri Smith does with Finish This Book is give you permission (and resources) to be a creative problem solver while finding your own unique voice and creative authority. She facilitates a creative process that takes something huge - like writing a book - and breaks it down into small but powerful exercises. Smith holds you accountable and empowers you with the responsibility of making choices and putting them down on paper - so when you do get to the end you’re not back-pedaling or doubting yourself. And when you turn the last page you’ve not only finished the book - you have become a creator in the process. Through a series of logical steps you have found your voice and you have written a story.

I can’t tell you much more without spoiling the book. So I beg you - go out and buy it for yourself - or your creative department. And if you don’t have the time (or courage) to finish it please - pass it on to a brave and curious 11-year-old you might know.

Related posts:
• A Case For Brilliant Note Taking
• Draw More In Meetings and Get Others On Your Page

A Case For Brilliant Note Taking

Braid Creative — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 13:53:19 +0000

Renewing the art of note taking is something we feel pretty strongly about around here. So much so, that not only is our newsletter this month about this very topic, but we had to make a video stating our case as well.

Taking great notes, for one, helps you better capture ideas in the moment, instead of hoarding them for later. Uh, we know you think it’s going to magically get better if you stew on that idea for an hour (or thirty) – but taking active vs. passive notes, cracking the code as you go, is a way to help patterns emerge and creative ideas flow more readily.

Secondly if you actually share your drawings with others in the moment – it’s as simple as just turning around your notepad for a little show-and-tell (no, you’re not tipping your hand, it’s called collaborating) – you’ll find that people are able to better imagine your idea, get on the same page, and help you get way further down the road toward that magical place of perfection, or at least completion, than if you’d kept your doodles all to yourself.

Check out our newsletter subject, Draw More In Meetings And Get Others On Your Page. It features what we’ve learned from two expert note takers, visual thinkers and even more importantly visual storytellers – Dan Roam creator of The Back Of The Napkin and Keri Smith artist-as-scientist author of How To Be An Explorer of The World. We’ve got a few challenges in there that we dare you to try in your next meeting – and hopefully put even the artistic anxiety of the self-proclaimed “non-drawer” at ease.

All-American Quitters

Braid Creative — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 19:56:15 +0000

I mentioned in our September recap that BBC News called Tara to question her sanity for leaving a secure job as creative director vice president to start a new business adventure with me.

What I didn’t mention is that the BBC News journalist, Kate Dailey, found Tara through my personal blog. While I like to think reporters are following my every word to keep their finger on the pulse of what lifestyle bloggers have to say about any given topic, I think maybe in actuality the BBC reporter probably just Googled something like “AND WHAT ABOUT HEALTH INSURANCE?” and landed on my post about starting a new business with Tara in the middle of an alleged economic crisis.

Click here to read Tara’s story (in a nutshell) about why she, and others, are leaving good jobs to go solo.

Have you ever made any brave leaps when the conditions are seemingly against you? Let’s commiserate in the comments.

The Start Deck: Surprising Brand Answers From Root Juice

Braid Creative — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 18:20:29 +0000

When we begin The Braid Method with a client, right away we get into gathering and capturing mode. If we’re going to create a brand that stands for what it’s supposed to, we’ve got to get down to the real the story. So we start with, well... The Start Deck. This is a stack of cards we send our client-participants. Each card has a different ten-minute brand exercise for them to complete. One of the most surprising and revealing Start Deck exercises we conducted with Ryan & Paige of Root Juice was Card No. 6: Word Throwdowns. So now it’s our favorite. Here’s how it works.

“Word Throwdowns” starts with pairs of words that might best describe the purpose or personality of the business or organization. Another way to think of it is as words that describe what other people should either a.) know or b.) feel about the experience, product, or service.

Between each pair of words the one that’s more “true” is circled. Different people within the exercise might have different answers once they are revealed, so we have to arm wrestle that out together. And from there we created a bracket to narrow down the top picks. I mean, who doesn’t love a bracket?

Ultimately you end up with the top two words. What you want people know on one side and feel on the other. Kathleen and I went into this exercise assuming what the outcome would be (a brand that was more adventure/hipster culture) and we were pleasantly surprised when it wasn’t what we anticipated (actually more about local roots and neighborhood). Which just goes to show how important it is to go through a method to uncover an authentic brand story versus just making one up.

Can you describe in just a couple words the purpose or personality of your business? What do you want your customers to know about your brand? What do you want them to feel about the experience, service or product you offer? Share your thoughts in the comments below or let us know on Twitter what you think.

Root Juice

Braid Creative — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 18:36:32 +0000

After a Branding Adventure to Austin, one baby longhorn, a long backpacking trip through Europe, and a few name changes, we have finally landed on a name for Ryan & Paige’s juice truck endeavor.

Root Juice: Rooting For The Pursuit of Happiness, Health and Juice!

After completing The Start Deck with Ryan & Paige (more on that tomorrow!) we learned that this enthusiastic microbusiness is all about nourishing their customers on a neighborhood level. So the new name, logo and tagline not only declare the philosophy Root Juice stands for but also rallies others to feel a part of that shared philosophy.

Tomorrow we’ll share more on how we got to the “root” of Paige & Ryan’s brand story with The Start Deck. In the meantime, let us know what you think about their new look!

The Brand Starter Kit

Braid Creative — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 15:16:07 +0000

Before Tara and I started Braid I was working as a freelance art director with a passion for designing brand identities for microbusinesses and artistpreneurs. I wasn’t sure, moving forward with Braid, how these creative entrepreneurs and teeny-tiny businesses would fit in with The Braid Method but I didn’t want to forget about the little guys. That’s when Tara and I put our heads together to figure out how we can work with this growing demographic. What we came up with is The Brand Starter Kit for microbusinesses and artistpreneurs.

You Might Be A Fit For The Brand Starter Kit:
• if you are committed to your start-up business, but your brand lacks the same conviction
• if you have plenty of vision, but struggle channeling it into a consistent, clean, concise brand
• if you cringe, or even apologize, when you give someone your business card, “logo shame”
• if you want to self-promote more aggressively but you don’t have a clear “brand story” to tell

A Brand Is Showing And Telling
Your brand is what people see but also what they understand. You should be proud to hand out your business card or display your logo on your door or website. Likewise, you should be able to tell someone in just one or two sentences exactly what it is your business does and stands for.

Arriving There Step-By-Step
The Braid approach helps you take a big deal, like creating your brand, and chunk it down into small but powerful decisions, so you’re not running in circles of self-doubt or wasting valuable energy back-pedaling on your brand choices. Plus, you are involved in the steps, so there are no surprise unveilings at the end, only logical steps toward a final brand design and story.

The Brand Starter Kit will give you a key brand component, your logo, but will also serve as a guide to keep your brand in line with the truths of your business – what you want people to know, do and feel – and how those “strands” weave together. It’s like a look, feel and messaging roadmap that helps you ask yourself whenever and wherever you self-promote, “does this fit my brand?”

For more information and pricing for The Brand Starter Kit email me at Kathleen@BraidCreative.com.

30 Days Later

Braid Creative — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 13:48:00 +0000

It’s been a month since Tara and I launched Braid. September has been chock full of to-do lists, calendar appointments, the sound of tap-tapping on keyboards, and tall Americanos with room for cream. We spent September honing in on our vision and constantly pushing ourselves to say what we mean in the most concise way possible. And every day, in between setting up photo shoots and writing blog posts, we documented new ideas - from tweaking our website to make it more efficient to writing our first book.

It wasn’t until a BBC reporter called Tara for an interview about her “obviously bananas” decision to leave her 14-year steady job as an ad agency vp/creative director and start her own business in this kind of economy that we got a little freaked out. We started referring to September as “Scary September” - but those fears were quickly nipped in the bud after we looked at what we had accomplished in just a month.

Let’s recap:
• Our Branding Adventure in Austin, TX inspired Tara’s son Charlie to make a video of his own
• We developed The Braid Method and started sharing it with a few really great companies we think could benefit from a little bit of brand therapy
• Kathleen was a guest lecturer & instructor at the University of Central Oklahoma for a Design II class studying non-traditional invitations
• Tara interviewed Keri about her experience with employee brand training at Starbucks & Disney
• From there we recreated 3 Brands on a Desert Island, you can try it yourself in 5 minutes here
• We taught you how to Pinterest
• We got Michael Stelzner to read Tara’s review on his book Launch

Some other things that caught our attention in September:
• The King of Leon’s documentary Talihina Sky
• Twitter: Your Tool To Surviving The Zombiepocalypse
• A series of beautiful EF Language Center videos that always imply a hook-up at the end
• This “Classy Velociraptor.” Random, yes. But getting repinned like crazy

Stellar Content for Small Business. A Review of Launch.

Braid Creative — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 14:50:39 +0000

So say you’re in “must-grow-business” mode and a new book titled Launch: How To Quickly Propel Your Business Beyond The Competition pops up in your browser. The author is the creator of the most popular social media marketing web site around, and to top it all off the cover art looks like an intro to Star Trek. If you’re having a rare non-skeptical moment like me, you say “yes, click, buy.” Or in the words of star ship captain Jean Luc Picard “make it so.” While Launch author Michael Stelzner would simply say “release the content.”

On a scale from one to ten, I’d give Launch a solid nine. But it might just be because my timing – reading Launch while actually launching a small branding business. Plus, already being an active content creator and sharer of articles, photos, and video in places like Blogger, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Vimeo – made Stelzner’s book more like clarifying advice.

Stelzner’s book is as much about creating great content as it about going where – well, actually thousands of people have gone before – the final frontier of social media marketing. He uses case studies, tips and personal experience to prove that making your content as helpful, engaging and far away from advertising as possible is what will make the difference between going warp speed and being stuck in space dock. By the way, Stelzner has much less, if any, actual Star Trek analogy in his book. I just can’t help myself!

Stelzner’s Launch Theory At A Glance
Make Your Own Rocket Fuel: That’s your useful, original, helpful, and non-salesy content that you write, create videos about, or have someone create for you.
Make Fuel With Experts, Too: Collaborate with experts that compliment, complete or just plain jive with your expertise. That means interview them, or write for them, or vice-versa.
Avoid Gravity Drag: Apparently the “drag” is in-your-face, old school marketing that can actually slow you down because it puts people off your content, which is bad since ultimately...
People Push The Pedal: Other people will determine how fast your fuel can take you. They choose to consume your fuel (a.k.a. content), share it, and propel your rocket ship forward.

Now, I just have to say, in Star Trek there wouldn’t be a pedal or even fuel, more like a lever thingy with all these multicolored blinking lights and some giant core down in engineering powered by, er, awesome sound effects. So feel free to imagine that, too. Either way, check out Launch, it’s a fast read and can help give your content-creating strategy some focus.

What’s a small business or branding book you’ve meaning to read but just haven’t gotten around to? Or, more importantly, who’s your favorite Star Trek captain?

P.S. Subscribe to our Braid blog RSS feed here or by entering your email address in the toolbar above.

3 Brands Recreated On A Desert Island

Braid Creative — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 18:36:47 +0000

We asked you to tell us what items you would bring with you to recreate your brand on a desert island. And from the two-man shop to the hundred-plus employee organization, no one got a bigger boat. Three objects, one special ingredient and a single critical skill were all they could choose. Here were the survivor-style answers from five very different brands.

The Artistpreneur’s brand. Pip & Estella: vintage-modern interiors and styling. The single most important skill to Pip & Estella brand survival? Resourceful styling. So creating lovely castaway digs to lounge around in is never problem.

The Two-Man Shop brand. LuckyDog Audio: sound design. The microphone is a “duh,” but the stopwatch serves a double-function. It helps them tell writers their scripts are waaaaay too long (I confess, I’ve been a guilty party). Plus it symbolizes a frequent client compliment, that LuckyDog’s got “the fastest editor in the west.” But ultimately their ears are their greatest tool so listening to those clients is the true secret of their survival.

The Resourceful Machine brand. Heritage Solutions: print, promotion & fulfillment company. You’d think their inks would make the list, but this one-stop ultra-resourceful shop can make those out of mud, blood or coconut oil in this castaway version of a well-run machine. That chemical-wonderful-whopping ink smell, though? A must-have for the complete experience.

So tell us! What 3 things would you bring to recreate your brand on a desert island? What's that extra ingredient and single critical skill?

"Like" us on Facebook to find out what Tara & Kathleen would require on a desert island.

Your Brand On A Desert Island

Braid Creative — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 15:49:27 +0000

We’ve all played the desert island game – pick one type of food to eat, or one song to listen to while forever stranded on some castaway shore. But what if you had to recreate your brand on a desert island? If you could only choose a few items to represent your brand experience, what would they be? And what one skill would be the most valuable to you?

Next time you’re planning an all-staff meeting or you’re just a two-person shop that’s feeling a bit unsure if your brand is reflecting how you want to be perceived, try this exercise with each other. It’s a revealing way to strip down to your brand essentials. The answers might surprise you – are they completely different from each other, or is a common pattern emerging?

Your Brand Survivor-Style:
1. What objects would you take with you to recreate the brand experience? Object A, B and C.
2. What one extra special ingredient would you add to the mix? Could be music, a smell, a mood.
3. What one skill would be the most critical to the brand’s survival?

In our newsletter article, Branding Training Cultivates Smarter Employees, we asked our friend Keri, a former employee of Starbucks and Disney, to take a stab at the desert island exercise based on her employee brand training with these big-timers of experiential branding. Here were her recreations of both:

So what would you bring along? Tell us your objects, your special ingredient and your one most important skill to recreating your brand experience on a desert island.

Pinterest as an Idea Vault

Braid Creative — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 16:17:36 +0000

Earlier this week I talked about how to set up your very own Pinterest account, and today I want to go a little deeper as to why you should be pinning.

Michael Stelzner, of Social Media Examiner, says in his book Launch (which is a fantastic read, by the way): Ideas are out there, right in front of you ... You simply need to grab and store them. There’s a time and a place to execute great ideas. Likely, however, it’s not when you first discover them. And be forewarned: When ideas come your way they won’t stay for long … That’s why you need an idea vault – a place where your ideas can live and be easily fetched when needed.

Pinterest is just that - a visual, easy to access, idea vault. It’s not a file full of magazine clippings from 1995 that never sees the light of day. And it’s not a good-intentioned, but often neglected and unorganized, folder hanging out on your desktop weakly labeled “Inspiration”. Pinterest is a perfect tool for marketing directors, freelancers, in-house designers, microbusinesses and artistpreneurs who are looking to capture ideas and organize the inspiration they come across in a digital, but not disposable, way.

The social media aspect of Pinterest keeps you engaged and coming back for more. And your pins patiently hang out, never collecting dust and gently reminding you they are there, until you’re ready to execute that delicious pumpkin muffin recipe, that chic monochromatic outfit, that crazy wall color (or two) and /or even your brand identity. And I bet, because of Pinterest, that execution happens sooner than later.

Follow Braid Creative's Pinterest boards here.

How To Pinterest

Braid Creative — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 15:23:01 +0000

Last week, we posted the top five ways we use social media. But today I want to chat about Pinterest. A lot of you are already fans but some of you might still be curious about how to use it. Pinterest is a handy online tool we use at Braid Creative to capture and curate all that inspires us when we’re surfing design blogs and websites.

Prior to Pinterest, I was doing a lot “right-click saving” of images that would pique my interest while surfing some of my favorite design blogs. These images would then go into an unorganized folder on my desktop labelled “Inspiration” - never to be seen again. Sound familiar? I joined Pinterest about a year ago when they rolled out their new social media tool with a big launch supported by bloggers like myself. I was really excited to be an early adopter of Pinterest and at the time, had no idea that it would not only get me so organized but that it would also serve as a way to connect with other likeminded tastemakers.

So to break it down:
Pinterest is used as a place to gather and organize inspiration you come across online. It’s a collection of visual bookmarks.
1. Set up an account with Pinterest (or request an invite).
2. Establish your pin boards. Here are some staff favorites.
3. Start pinning! We recommend using the Pin Bookmarklet.
4. Make friends and browse other pins.
5. Install Pinterest on your iPhone!

For more FAQs on Pinterest go here.

In the meantime, start your own Pinterest account and follow our boards & pins here. Let us know in the comments below what kinds of boards you’re creating for you own curated collections of pins. Read more on using Pinterest as an idea vault here.

Lego Apprentice: A Lo-Tech Training in Visual Storytelling Skills

Braid Creative — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 13:02:03 +0000

What did we do over Labor Day weekend? Created a homemade Lego video, of course. The launch of our Braid site has stirred up lots of attention over the past week (thanks guys!) and Charlie, my seven-year old, is no exception. His favorite part of our site is the featured video. When I told him we shot it on my iPhone (a gadget that already inspires fierce brand loyalty in Charlie) he was stoked about making a lo-tech video of his own.

We had already built these Lego houses the weekend before. So after holiday barbecue and hammock lounging, I thought it would be cool to shoot me and Charlie taking apart our Lego creations, and then run all the clips sped up in backwards order to tell a simple visual story of how they were constructed. This was just a quick afternoon project for fun, not for professional use (since Legos are highly trademarked and The Office theme music, Charlie’s own idea for the soundtrack, is dangerously unlicensed.)

But it reminded me of a TEDx OKC talk I attended earlier this year, where Jeff Sandefer, named by BusinessWeek as one of the top entrepreneurship professors in the United Staes, spoke on “Rethinking Schools, Genius and Heroes.” He posed the question of why we no longer apprentice our own children in our trade or craft?

I know that working in branding, design, writing, communicating – all those fields take a lot of creativity and sometimes there’s not a lot left for our offline and off-the-clock fans – but those are the very same skills that are the most fun to pass along.

So I promised Charlie that every time I make a video for Braid (be the lo-tech variety or our next beautifully-produced client brand video) that I would always make one with him, too. I might not always share here on the Braid blog, but you can probably catch one or two homemade creations on our Facebook or Vimeo page. Wonder what he’ll pick for the soundtrack next time?

We know a lot of you reading our blog right now are creative types too. Comment below with ways you are sharing your craft with interns, colleagues or apprentices of your own.

Top Five Ways We Use Social Media

Braid Creative — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 16:16:47 +0000

Social media can be a bit overwhelming. When you're faced with a landscape that includes (but is not limited to) Twitter, Facebook, Linked In, Myspace, Tumblr, Blogger, Digg, YouTube, Vimeo, Google+, Flickr it can become downright paralyzing.

Here at Braid Creative & Consulting we want to share helpful content, cultivate connections and inspire conversation using social media. So here are the online tools we've adopted so far:

• Our Blog: The Braid blog is the best way to see how we capture, shape and share what we’re up to. You can expect it to be updated 2-3 times a week. And we expect you to comment (okay, we don't expect it but would love it if you'd share your ideas with us too). You can subscribe to our blog RSS feed here.

• Facebook: Our Facebook page is kind of like our online office. Here you'll get sneak peeks at the Braid culture and what's developing in our space - from our rubber band ball to a new braided rug – and what we’re up to behind the scenes.

• Twitter: Twitter is one of our favorite ways to connect with our mentors, peers and fans in less than 140 characters.

• Pinterest: Pinterest is a tool we use to "pin" visual inspiration for ourselves and our clients. Check it out for yourself, but be warned, you may get lost in the sea of genius that Pinterest has to offer.

Filling up our Pinterest boards with inspiration has become a bit of an obsession.

• Vimeo: This is where you can watch our “branding adventures.” We use video (sometimes just simply shot on our iPhones) to share our client stories and case studies, so you can come along on a branding work-in-progress.

What are your favorite ways to use social media? Do you have any questions or challenges using social media tools? Let’s discuss - comment below.

Hooray! Hooray! We Launch Today!

Braid Creative — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 13:19:25 +0000

It’s the first official day of Braid Creative & Consulting, so we say “hooray!” We’ll be sharing some posts in the next few weeks about our website, how we use social media and how our methodology colors everything we do.

But for today, we’re just happy to let those colors loose out into the world – all willy-nilly like an escaping bunch of balloons, but with intent nonetheless – to catch the eye and the minds of people who like what they see, and the idea of a bit more authenticity. Yes, that rhymed. But today’s our birthday, so we say, “what they hey?” And in case you didn’t hear it, we shout out one more “hooray!”

Branding A Juice Truck

Braid Creative — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 21:00:27 +0000

Our adventure in branding a juice truck started with a road trip that took us to a rugged ranch in Austin hill country that we would share with a very pregnant longhorn. And from there it was just a hop and a skip to South Congress, the center of activity & creativity and a thriving food truck culture. That’s where we met up with Ryan and Paige - two world travelers who needed a brand for their brand new adventure - starting a juice truck.

We captured the work (and method) in progress on our iPhones - and now with a little bit of lo-fi shaping, editing and scoring we’re ready to share the story of our Austin, Texas road trip with you. Stay tuned for more branding adventures from Braid Creative. And check out more adventures from Ryan and Paige at their travel blog, Pushpin Diaries.

UPDATE:

Braid: Our Name

Braid Creative — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 19:09:32 +0000

We get asked “Why Braid?” a lot. It’s a single word that best describes what we do and how we work.

Our method helps find and classify distinct truths, or “strands”, within an organization and then we intertwine, or braid, them together to create a more authentic (and useful) brand.

Plus, it almost sounds like “brand” when you say it too fast. Hey, some subliminal association never hurts either. So every once in a while you might see one of us sporting a braid in our hair (a fun little nod to our name), or a retro braided rug might welcome you into our office (with every color possible, please). Because weaving our own personality into our brand is just a small example of how we practice what we preach.

Learn more about The Braid Method here.

Braid: Our Website

Braid Creative — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 19:08:52 +0000

Welcome to Braid Creative (dot com). You will find our website a constant work in progress - that’s because we’re always capturing and shaping original content to share with you. As we grow, so will our site. For now here’s what you can find:

• Blog Posts - Here we will share our thoughts, ideas and work with you at least twice a week. We’ll keep these brief and digestible. Feel free to join the conversation by commenting on our posts. You can navigate these posts by topic or archives, which you can find in the sidebar to the right.

• Newsletters - Our newsletters are kind of like our blog posts but go a little more in depth on a single topic. You can enjoy our monthly newsletter here on our site or you can receive it directly to your email by subscribing (on the left sidebar).

• About Us - Read about our roles, our experience and what gets us excited around here at Braid Creative & Consulting.

• The Braid Method - Here we give you a little insight on how we work. It’s our way of weaving together these distinct and sometimes separate "truths" you find within an organization. Our method helps find and classify those "strands" and then intertwine them together to create a more authentic (and useful) brand.

We hope you will take a minute to explore - and feel free to say hello.

A Star Employee’s Perspective on Branding

Braid Creative — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 02:02:27 +0000

Keri just got a new job as an events coordinator assistant at the Oklahoma City Civic Center, where she helps manage the many details that go into planning concerts and weddings, so they run without a hitch. We recently interviewed Keri for our newsletter where she told us about the employee brand training she experienced when she worked as a Walt Disney World cast member. Even though it's been years since she's put on the mouse ears, one aspect of the Disney brand-in-action really stuck with her.

Keri was influenced by this idea, that even though she might be repeating a task she's done a hundred times as part of her job, to a family that may have been saving for months or even years to have this experience, her interaction might be a one-and-only moment to them – a takeaway for Keri today, that especially comes in handy when planning with brides for their big moment.

Little details, even if part of an employees daily routine, can make lasting impressions. Smaller organizations who can weave those kinds of positive customer/employee interactions into their brand strategy, are onto some pretty magical stuff.

Read more about Keri’s experiences from "It's A Small World" to slinging coffee for Starbucks - and how some of those employee experiences with two of the biggest brands around, might apply to your own brand.