0:00  
All right, everyone can see. Great.

0:03  
That's perfect. Thanks, Tovah. 

0:06  
Of course, I always have a backup pulled up just in case.

0:09  
That's great. Perfect, as well today. So I'll kick things off. Welcome, everyone. Build your brand with a nonprofit branding guide. And we're really excited to be here today. Thank you to Neon One for inviting me. I knew I had a great opportunity to work with Tovah, I'll introduce myself today. Again, I'm Claire Taylor Hanson, I use she/her pronouns. I'm Big Duck's, you can go ahead and flip to the next slide Tovah, in case people really want to, you know, read as well as hear. So I work as the creative director of Big Duck. So that means that I work with the creative team. I'm a graphic designer by training. And I also work on the actual building of designs and brands for client work. So Big Duck is a worker owned cooperative as of two years ago, which is an exciting development. And we work with nonprofits of all sizes, on their brands, campaigns, and even doing some teams consulting. We've been around for about 30 years. So I'm so excited to be here and walk through brand guides a personal passion of mine. I'll pass it over to Tovah.

1:09  
pPerfect. Hello, everyone. My name is Tovah Goodman, I also use she/her pronouns. And I'm the consulting manager here at Neon One. So if you are a current client, maybe we have talked or you've talked to someone on my team. And we help with all current clients, training, consulting, nonprofit strategy. And part of the reason I wanted so bad to do this session with Claire is because we hear over and over again, how much the it's so crucial for the brand to be in place in order to have donations come in properly, or have the website set up properly, and really engage an audience. So I'm really excited to the session and partner with Big Duck. And I'm excited to get started. So just a couple of things to keep noted, I thought maybe some people would share audio and video, if you are brave, and you still want to You are more than welcome to you do not have to. But if you do, just keep yourself on mute. It will help just progress it and then chatting questions. So we will use the q&a, we'll get questions. We'll also have some moments to use the chat. So if you want to use it, test it out now feel free. But we'll have designated moments to do so.

2:25  
Great. We also just wanted to make space for the fact that we're going to throw a lot of ideas out today, we are aware that nonprofits come in all shapes and sizes are at all different points of their budget cycles. And so ideally, we're going to share a lot and then you can take from it what you can. So we're hoping that every single person here will have something that can take away from this talk and implement within five minutes, or something that can factor into budgetary planning for five years down the road. So please don't feel overwhelmed. We're going to share lots of tools. We'll also share everything with you after the talk in a resource guide. So you don't need to frantically write down any links or anything like that. And we're just hoping that you can scale what we're sharing pragmatically for you wherever you're at.

3:17  
So the first thing we're going to just talk about is what is a brand? I think you'll hear that word constantly during the session. I was opening a notes page. Yes, we will send that all afterwards. But also a branding guide. So you'll hear the two things a brand and a brand guide. So we'll really go through what the difference is, what the similarities are and why or why both are important. But just to kind of gauge the room. If you had to describe a brand you can do keywords you can do a sentence go ahead and put it in the chat. How do you define a brand? What would that be?

4:07  
Familiar we got familiar from Danielle. Here identity in essence, Ooh, I love these answers a predictable unified aesthetic to help clients identify your work. Your perception of the company. visual assets, tone personality of an org thinking of a logo, visual and emotional identity. Yeah, that's great. Okay. Great. Okay, elevating Kristen's reputation. Yeah, so all of those are true. If we were gonna sum it up, this is a this is a definition Big Duck uses a lot which is, it's your organization's voice and identity. And so it's what your audiences literally encounter and experience feel when they interact with you. And so a lot of those things are in your control and some things are out of your control. So it's really like it's B, it's beyond the logo. And I'm going to explain a little bit more about that. So often, especially when you talk about brands and branding, if you go to the next slide, toga, I actually started my career working at Brooklyn Botanic Garden, it's a gorgeous garden over in Brooklyn. And when you hear the word brand, a lot of folks think, okay, that's your logo, those are your colors, those are your palette. But really your brand is those experiences and impressions. And so if you go to the next slide, it's it is the logo, for sure. And it's the colors of your color palette, but it's also the encounter that you might have with the security guard, it's the feeling of warmth in the conservatory on a cold day, it's maybe a cosplay festival, that you saw it that at the garden that day, the smell of the rose. So you know, there's, it's that whole constellation of impressions and experiences that ladder up to how folks engage with you and feel about you, and ideally, how they connect with your mission, and how they experience your work. And so really, the brand guide, and that's the focus of our talk today is how can you codify your brand? How can you build a tool so that you can be sure that those impressions and experiences are as aligned as possible? And how can you ensure that all of your internal and external partners and collaborators, your ecosystem of folks that help you bring your work to life, are portraying your brand in a consistent way and try and doing your best to make sure that those experiences are consistent for folks. So what we're going to do today is we're going to try and give you some basic ideas to bottle the magic of your brand. So occasionally dipping into your brand as a big, holistic, you know, thing, but mostly trying to figure out okay, what are some ways that you can very specifically either build a brand guide for the very first time in a quick and iterative way. Or if you already have a PDF or a brand guide tool, take a next step to making it a bit better or a bit a bit more consistent, so that you can kind of take one best next step towards getting more consistent with your brand expression. We're going to talk about logo, color messaging and your visual storytelling. Today, we wish we had another hour, if we had another hour, we'd probably go into brand strategy, which is things like your positioning and your personality and your goals and your audiences. And my personal favorite fonts, typography, you could you could build lots and lots of elements into your brand guide. But we're really going to focus today on the four pieces on the left, just to kind of get started.

7:47  
And a big piece of it too, is especially as an organization, a nonprofit organization, it's displaying your mission. So it's really saying what am I trying to convey? What do I believe in what are my values, and using messaging using visuals using color all to display that. So you can see an example here, just at a first glance, I can tell they have something to do with nature, I can tell that from the green colors, I can tell that from the trees in the background image. And then I can also tell what their values are from keywords that come out, educate, conserve, connect. So it's really making sure that at first glance, we can really understand what your mission is and what you're trying to achieve with your organization. Right. So the first one we're gonna jump into is your logo. So this is I saw in the chat, a lot of the guesses were logo. So this is the most identifiable one, the one that people typically go to. So if we go, why does your logo matter? Right, so what is and you can even put it in the chat. What role does your logo play in your brand? Just think about that. So when you think of your logo, where does it exist? Why does it exist? How does it represent you? 

9:05  
Great. And then we're just going to, for the purposes of time move quickly into what we think. And so the logo actually has a simpler function than I think most folks think. So really, it's your identifier. It's a tag, it's a label, it doesn't have to be complex type and color can say a lot. So really, its principal role is simply to identify you and simply is the right word because they should be simple, iconic, memorable, highly visible, very adaptable, flexible. So you can see here we've got Big Duck on the left knee on one on the right, you can kind of see we're actually very different tone and style, but employing some similar leaning into typography doesn't it doesn't have to be have too many features in order for folks to instantaneously recognize you.

9:54  
It also reflects your brand so especially for the nonprofit if you look at a few of the brands that we worked on the logo, Big Brothers Big Sisters, they really wanted if you remember kind of the old logo, it was the purple people holding hands. They wanted to rebrand because a lot of it was they wanted to attract prospective younger mentors, and multiple stakeholders. So they wanted something that was more universal, they wanted something that was updated, more modern Agloe Nature Center the colors the tree represents who they are, Ulman Foundation is one that there was a long history, and they wanted to update and still keep who they were at their core. So the typography is more traditional, it's bold, it's very straight to the point, but gives hints of moving towards the future. So really making sure that it reflects who you are as a brand. So if you, you know, if you are a nature center, making sure that that reflects what you want to accomplish.

10:53  
Right. So when you're going to take your logo, whatever logo you currently have right now for your organization, and put it in your brand guide, you're really the purpose of putting it in your brand guide is to make sure that that simple vision and mission aligned mark is being displayed absolutely consistently and effectively, whether it's on an outdoor sign, whether it's on social media, whether it's on your website. So it's really about getting that most fundamental building block highly consistent. And so some examples of ways you can do that and build that kind of guidance into your brand guide. If you can go to the next slide. Tovah, is, here's um, we have some former clients and current friends Keshet. And it's a nonprofit that works for LGBTQ equality in Jewish life. And you can see that work, including things like what types of color variations are appropriate for the logo, and ideally, keeping those color variations to the fewest possible amount. So two, three, sometimes that's the most that often is three or less three or fewer, for the number of color variations for your logo. Do you have a grayscale, or a black and white version, because if you don't supply it, and you don't describe how you want that to appear, folks are inevitably going to turn it black and white, and it will be in a way that maybe isn't consistent. Also clear space. Do you have rules in your brand guide about how closely elements are allowed to be placed alongside your logo, if not, consider adding those in layering those in a lot of times, we've got a lot to say in the nonprofit sector. And we maybe don't give as much whitespace and breathing room as we should. So if you build some rules about how closely people can put elements alongside in your your logo, you're going to ensure that folks get that visibility to your towards that most important mark. Also, minimum size are you putting in guidelines, and a great way to do this is print out your logo or display it on your screen. And as soon as you can't see it. And then definitely folks with visual impairments aren't able to see it. So making sure that you're setting a rule for the number of pixels, or the number of inches or centimeters at which it should never be smaller than and setting those in place and putting them in your brand guide. And then finally, some do's and don'ts are really helpful. Often, if you're partnering with freelancers with web folks, with a constellation of people who are helping your brand come to life, they're going to be tempted to maybe put a drop shadow underneath your logo to rearrange it to make it fit better within a beautiful composition that they're working on for a video or what have you. So if you set some rules in there in place, so that when you share it with those partners, you're going to know that they're not going to be tempted to take any to make any discretionary choices that are actually going to erode your brand. And then finally, we understand that it's probably not in the budget for everyone to do a full rebrand and many organizations shouldn't do a full rebrand because they already have a lot of brand equity, a lot of brand solidarity. So a lot of this talk is about just taking the brand you've got and using it in a way that's more consistent. But one area where you may want to consider taking a look at your logo and taking a look at this part of your brand to see if you could benefit from an update is often a lot of logos are not functioning and performing as well as they could in digital spaces. And so a great next step as you think about those minimum sizes and do's and don'ts for the logo is you might want to take a look at your logo and see if it's overly complex if it could benefit from what we call an evolution rather than a revolution and kind of make some minor adjustments looping in a partner to make it perhaps have a new phase of life that's more usable and easier to keep consistent.

15:01  
So now we're gonna test your knowledge a little bit, we're gonna do logo superpowers simple and consistent as we talked before. So we're gonna play a little game, and we're going to see how fast you can guess the logo that we're going to present. Go ahead and just type in the chat what you think it is, this is going to be kind of lightning round. So typing really quick. Because chances are if one person gets it, everyone will know. So the first one, what do we think this is? Those are quick Netflix. That is correct. Next, we're in may be a little more difficult. Who can guess what this logo is for? Awesome. We have people really quick Habitat for Humanity as correct. Maybe this will be a little more of a challenge. Oh, there's some there's some variety. Denny's is a big one coming up. Actually, we have funny enough. We thought it was Denny's at first too, but it's actually Lipton Lipton tea. The next one. This was a really quick one as well, Planned Parenthood is correct. Anyone on this one? It's funny that someone said target because Target is very similar except it is red. So that's where color comes in. But it is HBO. That is correct. Last one.

This is a non for profit. There we go. Amnesty International is correct. Thank you everyone for playing.

16:39  
Yeah, so I think you can see there that consistency is very important. The reason that those were so easy to get is because they are replicated identically, time and time again. So again, when you're going to compile guidance into your brand guide, fewer is better. And it and it often just even if you maybe have elements of your logo that you don't like, it has equity. So the power of repetition is important. Also, I think from that game, you can see the power of simplicity as well, fewer elements, highly recognizable, especially for digital contexts is incredibly powerful. Great. So now we're going to talk about color and bringing color and your brand guide and some of the roles that color plays in your brand. So same kind of kickoff question. It's more of a question, open ended question. Feel free to chat in if you like, but we're going to move along. Why does it matter? And what role do they play in your brand? What role does color play in your brand? Well, again, kind of like the logo, a big piece of what color can do is differentiate you. So if someone says the word red, if I say red, and all of you think of the color red, we're going to have however many folks are on the call today, that's going to be the number of reds that exist in folks imaginations. Red is not red is not red. And so if you see on these two examples on Netflix here, if you see red on your device, you know, it's not Hulu, you know, it's not Amazon, you just gotta have subtle, quick wave of recognition purely from the color alone. And part of what that helps with is that particular code that E50914. And for our client, Blue Engine, 1414 F four. So not only can it differentiate you from competitors, it can also suddenly signal things. So if we go to the next slide, you can see it can kind of communicate, personality, tone style, it can tell you a little bit about what type of organization you are about how you you're even connect to your mission. So on the left here, Blue Engine, this is an organization we really love that's in the education space. And they're really reimagining what public education can look like in America, and have a really fresh, innovative approach. So you can see by this like monochromatic, sophisticated, very digital four palette, you're thinking of education in a new and different way versus on the right. That's true, Tiffany's egg color is very well known and is highly recognizable, just elevating a chat. On the right, we've got the Girl Scouts, and you can see there we've got a very wide palette, very playful, very use forward. And so immediately, you start to get a sense of how they what their mission is all about even from a simple the simplest elements of a color palette. So here's a client Keshet again, we've already looked at some of them. So in their brand guide, we're showing how those colors can be used and how they can come to life. Here for example, showing how a fresh interpretation of a rainbow can show that Keshet has their own unique spin on the LGBTQ space and what equality looks like for to them.

20:02  
And also, when you're looking at maybe developing colors going, I don't know what my colors are, or I need to really dig down and say what colors I need to put in thinking about what they mean. So Neon One just did a rebrand. And within that we thought, well, what represents us? And we'll go through creating a palette of different tools in just a minute. I saw that in the chat. But when you look at your colors, really say, Okay, what is my value? What is my mission? And how is a color when I think of a color? How will that reflect it and elevate it. So if we're thinking about, you know, this Noble Navy, right, if I'm thinking of a color that really wants to say leadership, innovation, transparency, that's the color that came to our mind. So that's the color we chose. But if you're thinking, you know, I want outreach, what color reflects that to you. So this is a great place to start as far as starting with your values and meaning and then assigning colors to them. This can also go as far as your website or donation forms, really having your colors in place to reflect who you are. So you can see the consistency between the website, the donation form and the nature center, you know, lots of browns, blues, reflecting water, earth, some greens for trees, and having that consistent across all the different platforms.

21:23  
Great. So we're just gonna throw show three examples from an actual brand guide, here's blue engine, and all of these tools. In this brand guide, we're going to show you some actual tools to make your brand guide and to make color palettes. So hang tight. But these three screenshots show actually the values that are useful to have in your brand guide. And I would argue that arguably the top line is in this day and age for most nonprofits, the most important now that can be different if you lean a lot on in person experiences. But the first line up here, the hex value, which has a hashtag in front of it is your digital value. So that's the value that's going to be displayed on all your devices, all your computer's anything that's electronic. And so making sure that that value is consistent across the board so that folks aren't just guesstimating. That's something that folks can copy and paste is a really essential tool. And then also hierarchy, you can think about okay, your brand, really colorful and doesn't have a lot of whitespace is your brand serious and has a lot of black and colors just uses accents, how colors are used and in what quantities really impacts your brand. So thinking about can you give some guidance in your brand guide about how much each color should be used and in what proportions? Again, we'll show you the tool that can make you easily allow you to generate this type of visual display. And then finally, accessibility is really important. We're going to touch on this in a moment again, but thinking about especially for typography that you're using for type is it legible for all audiences? Does it pass universal metrics for what is acceptable for accessibility. So there are easy ways now or you can use online tools to check all the different colors in your in combination with each other in combination with white in combination with the black and ensure that they have enough contrast that they're easily legible.

23:33  
So now we're going to play a quick game. So this is about color superpower, so differentiating based on personalities. So I'm going to show you two different colors with hex values. And go ahead and just type in left or right. We're going to say Amnesty International who saw their logo previously, if we had to choose what color was that logo, which one would you choose, go ahead and say left or right left is going to be the ED1B2E. We are split. All right. We're we're we're actually very split. I don't think I have a consensus. So we will reveal.

24:13  
Okay. All right. So I'm gonna if you go back to the yellow. So I think it's really interesting that you're split, because that's going to show the limitations of color. So the right answer is the color on the left, but they're both yellow. So the color on the left, you could argue feels more urgent for Amnesty, that maybe it is closer to the caution tape color versus the right which is maybe like egg yolk. And so you know the value on the left is ED1B2E so it's really important that that is displayed consistently. But something to acknowledge here that we just elevated in the chat is that even if you define your hex values and pantones and make sure that they are consistent across The board. Not all audiences are going to experience brand colors in the same way. We're all unique individuals. And we experience color in different ways. And some folks have things like color blindness or different ways of seeing the world, which means that color alone can't be the way that you're distinguishing and identifying your brand. Oh, yeah, printers, all different colors. Print differently. It's just paper color. Even if you are printing offset, and you are professionally printing the color of your paper. So you can't you can moderate things, you can do the best that you can. And the best first step you can take is to get consistent values across the board. But you need to make sure that your brand has a variety of elements. So be they a signature typeface be they in approach to photo, a way of talking and speaking. So we're going to walk through a lot of those today. Color can't be your end all be all because folks are going to experience color in different ways. So I think being sure that we're reaching all audiences inclusively, we need to think of color as a consumer, it's important to keep consistent but can't be our only tool. So speaking of those tools, Tovah, I'm going to ask you to walk through this really exciting. First one, and then we'll share a few other color tools with you. 

26:18  
Absolutely. So with color tools, this is actually one we use on our consulting calls all the time. Colors by photos is a extension on a Google Chrome. And you can just add it. And then what it does is if you go to a website, say you find a nonprofit, like I love this color palette, you can actually click on it and it will scan the entire site and then give you the hex values that are associated, it can give you all of them a you can use a dropper to get an individual one in case you're like this really stands out to me. But what it does is it identifies those values. So you can have a more organic experience to say, Oh, I love these colors, and then actually understand what values are assigned to them.

27:01  
Great. There are also tools out there, here's one of them. coolers.co, where you can generate a whole new palette. So maybe some folks on the call already have a palette. And so it's just about in the brand guide, making sure that you've got that hex value in place, making sure that everything's consistent. But for folks that maybe don't have a brand palette, maybe you use your website as an inspiration point as Toby just shared, but maybe the way your website is right now, you wouldn't want to use it as your color palette generator, maybe that's on the wish list for 2024. So then what you could do is take your primary color, which maybe it's the color that's most prominent your logo, use that as your first color, your base color, your primary color, and then generate use one of these tools online to generate a power a palette of complementary colors that work with that tone. So we had a chat earlier, I think from Robert about complementary colors, adjacent colors, there's different when you go to these websites like coolers.co, you can see color palettes that are trending in the space you can play around with what does it look like if we have colors that are more complimentary? What if we have colors that are more monochromatic, and you can play around with different palettes, even apply them to different infographics and different visual displays, to maybe come up with a collection of colors that you can use right now to get yourself and your brand more consistent. And then finally, that eye that visualization that I showed you from Blue Engine's brand guide that was used with this tool, which is called use all five.com talking about using all your senses. And it really is a great there's many tools out there to make sure you're ADA compliant. But this is one that we find to be really effective and fun to use. And you can input your palette and easily see which one's going to check which means they're okay a double check which means their stellar path all ADA guidelines and which ones get an x which means that they are not going to be inclusive choices and are going to present problems for folks that have seeing impairments. So finally, with colors we find in the nonprofit space especially fewer is going to be easier to implement. So keeping it a minimal palette is probably best. Consistency is key. So making sure that all of those values are used and are clearly in a communicated in your brand guide and use colors with meaning that connect to your mission that reflect your personality that say something to folks. Yep, all the tools that we're sharing today are free.

29:58  
So the next one we're going to talk about is your messaging. So this is what are you saying? And if we just think about it, why does messaging matter? What are you trying to say storytelling is a key strategy in this. So your personal stories, your interactions, people who engage with you, what are their stories? Why are they engaging with you? These are all ways that messaging does play into the brand. So there's a few different examples of messaging that are really effective, especially in organizations. One is the origin stories. This is the why did this even get started. There's a client Twist Out Cancer. And Jenna, who created the organization at 29, she was diagnosed with a rare cancer gray zone lymphoma. And so one of the pieces of that treatment for for that cancer is that she had to be isolated and isolated for a while. And so because it left her really lonely, she engaged to an online community, and dance being a passion of her, she asked everyone to do the twist, and she would do it and have other people dance with her. In order to feel a sense of community. What that turned into is engaging lots of people in the arts, who were also either going through a cancer diagnosis, or had people in their lives were caregivers, and so really created this arts community within the within the cancer world. And so her origin story really makes people get involved and align. Another one is impact story. So impact stories are people that are engaged with you. So why are people participating in the nonprofit? Why do they care, so it's why you care and why they care. So there's a our community page on twist out cancer, and it's different people having videos about why their stories, why they got involved, why it means so much to them. One of the stories actually was on Ellen for her, she has a few different people that are been on different TV shows. And this really drives the participation and the giving to this organization.

32:11  
So when you're thinking about well, how does this connect to your brand guy? Well, a lot of times folks think about your brand guide as a visual communications tool. But it's also where are those messaging components, those powerful impact stories, that origin story that Tovah just walked you through those things that really matter when you're in connecting with folks, they can live in your brand guide to in a variety of different ways. So really, we like to think of the messaging portion of your brand guide as that kind of aggregation, that single resource that single repository, where you know, that everyone's communicating the same messages in the in a consistent way. So we think about this part of the brand guide as really an exercise an aggregation. So taking your mission, taking your vision, taking your values, do you have a tagline? Do you have that about us origin story? Do you have an elevator pitch something a verbal tool? Do you have those stories? What about your organizational messaging, so you might not have all of these in place right now. But whatever verbal elements that you do have that play a really pivotal part of communicating your brand, put them together and put them in your brand guide, so that everyone's going to the same place, whether it's to grab a logo, or whether it's to grab a piece of writing. And then after you've grabbed all those pieces together, you might want to take a moment to look at them as a whole. And think about how are they connecting to your brand? How are they laddering up to your brand? Are they in the right tone and style. So ideally, all of those different messaging components are reflective of your brand, in that they share the same tone and style. So is there an opportunity to look at that origin story and make it a bit more informal, or friendly or serious, maybe your your, it's more appropriate for your brand have a serious tone. So this is also a wonderful moment where in codifying your brand, and in aggregating it onto that brand guide platform, you could kind of take a moment to make sure that you're making those consistent impressions for folks. So a couple of examples of what this actually looks like in a brand guide. Circling back to cache it again, thank you cache it shout out to cache it. So here are some key messages. So we worked on developing these with cache it but you could easily just grab what you have currently in place, whatever boilerplate or about us copy you have these happen to be cash. It's we call them key messages. They're like the most fundamental building blocks of their story. For example, how would everyone in the organization describe the change that they're making? But having them all in the brand guide means that folks when folks are grabbing and copy and paste a passage of text for maybe a speech, maybe an email, there's familiar refrains and familiar and consistent ways of speaking Even verbal pieces of messaging. So here's what we call the elevator pitch. So this is something that's never written out. It's just something that staff use when you're training new staff. When you're having a when folks are doing an in staff retreat or training module, they circle back to using this elevator pitch to practice describing the organization. But kind of putting that in the brand guide is a very powerful tool for consistency. And some, again, some some free online tools to help you up your game that you may want to even link to in your brand guide or use when you're grabbing those messaging components for your brand guide. The first one is the Hemingway app. So here's a little fun game. Could folks chat in what grade level Do they think that the average American audience reads at?

Yeah, fifth, sixth grade, fifth sixth grade is or is the is the zone. And so really, now it could be, it depends on your audiences, if your audiences are technical audiences, and you know that, it's not going to be a barrier to them to write in a reading level that's maybe higher, well, then that's okay. But if your audience group is really a large group of people, and your goal is to be as inclusive to folks as possible, well, then you might want to use a tool like this, the Hemingway app, or the Hemingway editor, which is a playful nod to the way Ernest Hemingway would write. You can copy and paste pieces of text, like your mission statement, or your messaging. And it will identify phrases that are overly complex, it'll identify ways to make the voice more active ways to integrate pronouns like you, rather than more complex ways. It gives you suggestions for shortening sentences and paragraphs, and using everyday language so that your most fundamental pieces of messaging are going to resonate with the widest group of folks. It's a very fun tool. So here's another one, this is one as a visual person and a graphic designer is kind of a pet peeve of mine. There's also, this would be great to put in every brand guide, an optimal line length for print and web, they're a little bit different for print and web, but roughly for all it's 50 to 75 characters, and keeping an eye on accessibility. Again, for folks to actually be able to read those wonderful pieces of messaging, it's very difficult for the eye to follow, if it's overly long. Also, if it's a really short, so making sure that you're actually defining the right whips of text so that folks can easily read your messaging is a really great step. So finally, tell stories that connect like tell powerful stories that connect your mission, and make sure that they're written in accessible ways. So in plain English, and using optimal line length, and then put all those things in your brand guide. Okay, we're on our fourth piece, and we're gonna try and hustle a little bit so that we've got time for questions and answers, visual storytelling. So this one is also one that folks immediately think of when they think of brand, which is imagery. And when you think about what role it plays in your brand, it's again, like the messaging it's a way to connect with your audiences, video images, it's an it's an amazing tool to connect to the mission. And so as you're making that brand guide, it could be an opportunity to think about how are you using images? Do you have a branded way that you're treating images, especially for places like your staff page, they're simple, the graphic devices that can connect to your brand can do a lot to transform an image to feeling more aligned with your organization. This is an example for a brand that we developed for access justice Brooklyn. Another example for a client that we worked with on community change whose tagline is power from the ground up ground up is a simple move of putting a photo of color gradient on top of their photos, connects all the different touch points of their brands together. And then also provides an easy way to connect to infographics to other visual develop devices. So that way, everything that they're all the visual ways that they're telling stories are connected and cohesive. So bringing that into the brand guide gives everyone the tools that they need when they're making a pie chart when they're making a photo, treating a photo when they're working on a video intro or outro to make sure that those are consistent and brand aligned.

39:55  
Also when you're thinking about initiatives, so a big one coming up is GivingTuesday. It's Not just your brand in general, it's how do you brand your initiatives? How do you brand your outreach for a specific goal or a specific occasion, as you can see with GivingTuesday having that consistency between a donation form and an email, or the place on your website, or a donation receipt, all of it having that brand consistency, let some lets everyone know that this is associated with us. But this is all aligned for a specific purpose, a specific campaign or a specific mission that we're also serving.

40:34  
Great. We also, we also wanted to share an article that we wrote a Big Duck about some of the pitfalls that can be you can fall into when using images and how to be more inclusive and representative with images. So we're going to link to this article in our resource Roundup. But it touches on a few things about inclusivity. And also like the opposite of inclusivity, which is about not being performative or tokenizing of folks. So both thinking and thinking very carefully about how you use images. So are you accurately representing your community? Have folks given their consent to have their image use? So thinking about a lot of these ideas and themes and thinking about? Do you want to put any guidelines in your brand guide? About Do you about how you approach imagery, and what is your philosophy and responsibility as someone who tells stories, so read that at your leisure, but at the bottom of the article, it also includes a roundup of a lot of amazing new stock photo resources. It used to be I've now been in the branding game long enough, if you can go to the next slide Tovah, where I say when I started my career in the nonprofit sector, our mantra was no stock, avoid stock, don't use stock. But actually, that's shifting, because I think as we're becoming more sensitive to making sure that folks are giving their consent, making sure that we're being inclusive with how we use photos, we're and also just folks are becoming great storytellers, better storytellers than they were five or 10 years ago. So increasingly, it's becoming actually an effective and powerful strategy to use stock, if it makes sense for your organization. And there are amazing resources out there of folks who are collaborating and Co creating their their stories and offering images and have been fairly compensated for images, where you can turn to two, if appropriate for your organization to get some great photos. So for example, we've got a roundup of like 10, or 15, different amazing stock photo partners. But some of them here are disabled in here. So folks that are trying to create a wider range of folks from the disability community, body liberation, stock, different sizes of bodies, tonal, there's all sorts of different kind of niches in the stock photo world that are now alive and an exciting new place to think about partnering and using different ways of telling images using images. Yeah, so to round up the visual storytelling part. So we encourage you to think about putting in your brand guide, any branded approaches, you have to use the images and video thinking about whether or not you want to show real people from your community or using stock and thinking about how you're using images and if they are being used in ethical and inclusive ways.

Okay, so we're almost at the end here. And then we're going to open up for q&a. But a really important place that we need to end at is okay, so we talked about color logos, messaging, visual storytelling, but the top the title of our, of our talk is brand guide. So it's like, where do I put all this stuff? What do I do with it? So you need a brand guide, that's for sure. But don't feel overwhelmed. I think if if you're an organization that's smaller, lower capacity, and you currently don't really have a brand guide, you just have some links and folders. A great way to start is small, easy, maybe just as simple as a Google doc dropping some resources, it's great that you have things in folders. If you just simply aggregate it. If you think of a brand guide as literally just your tool or resource to promote consistency, well, then it's just like, what's your next best step? And that could be as simple as a Google Doc. But the biggest push should be I think, for nearly everyone is moving towards accessibility for your partners to grab those resources and use those resources. So PDFs, maybe aren't the best tool like can we move to online tools where your assets are housed in the same place where you're getting education about those assets. So we're going to share two tools with you that are really powerful and free and easy. That would be kind of the next step beyond a PDF or a Google Doc. The first one is Canva folks probably love have folks here have heard of Canva or even are using Canva. But a good thing to make sure that is on your radar is that you can use the pro account of Canva for free, you have to apply. Thank you. Yes, Roger, I love Canva as well. So you have to apply if you're nonprofit, you have to show your nonprofit status and it takes a little bit of time, but then you have access to the pro account. And when you have access to the pro account, you can upload your brand colors, make sure that hex values accurate, you can upload all the different variations of your logo, then you can yes it is it is totally worth it to get it. And then you can auto generate designs and start creating that consistency. Because I think a big pitfall with branding and nonprofits is often folks get to bespoke every communications feels different than the last. And there's power actually in repetition. And so Canva actually can unlock some of that kind of branded repetition purely because it kind of auto generates using your fundamental brand building blocks. Yet increasingly, it'd be is becoming a go to for everything. It's especially a great tool if you do not have in house designers in house communication staff. If you do have in house designers in house communication staff, often they can, you know, do even more things than Canva Pro can do. But Canva Pro is a really amazing resource and free for nonprofits. And then finally, Frontify is not the only tool in this category, there are several tools on the internet. But Frontify is one that is free at the base level. And also I find it to be very easy to use. You can think of it as the Squarespace for brand guides. So it is a drag and drop tool that is specifically designed for brands. So again, when I said start small, it could be as simple as start with one page on this website. But the advantage of this is once you can upload those all the visualizations of the brand guide I showed you were built using this tool, and the advantages instead of when you're emailing a videographer, when you're emailing a freelancer when you're onboarding staff, instead of sending them a PDF and a bunch of links to folders, you can send them a URL, and then a website. And then on that website, the logos are there they can download directly from the website. So the same place where you're reading the rules and not how to use the logo is the same place you're getting the logos, that's really powerful, you can link to specific pages. So if you're working with just a writer, you can link straight to the messaging page. It's just an amazing way to kind of democratize access to your brand and get it to be used in a more alive way. And then finally, internally. Too often in nonprofits, we're too busy to make updates to our own brand guide. So you'll have a brand guide, that's an old PDF with stickies all over it that says, hey, don't use this mission, use the one that's on our website. This tool allows you to easily and instantaneously internally make edits in a very quick and easy way. You don't need to use specialized design software like InDesign to make updates to your brand guide. So you can make sure that it is a living, accurate document and it really is that go to resource that is going to help you have a consistent brand expression.

48:21  
So what we're going to do is after this call this session, we will have a resource available, I believe there is a resource piece in the platform that you can go to, I saw Sam just left. But Sam, if you're here, you can verify that one. But we have these resource sheets. So everything we said as far as we linked out to with the URLs to give you those resources. That's all going to be here. And just a checklist to have the different pieces we talked about and doing a checklist of updating where you need to update them what you need to develop versus what you have. So this will be a great place to get you started.

49:05  
Great. So I'm just elevating some, there's a couple of questions here. So Lisa says I don't see where the resources are. We're going to share them out. That's a Google Doc, we just kind of made a visualization. So you can see that they're coming. So every single URL, we've got it every single section, we've got it so it will share that out. We got a question. There we go. Thanks, Laura. There's the resource folder. So we got a question, what is the difference between Frontify and Canva? So Canva is a tool to create materials. So it creates social posts, flyers, stuff like that. Frontify is not a tool to create materials, although they're trying to get into that game. So that's probably the future of Frontify. But right now, Frontify is if you think of your brand guide, you think of like a PDF, a 50 page PDF, instead of a 50 page PDF. It's an interactive website. So there's Gonna be a page on your logo, a page on your colors a page on your messaging. And it has all sorts of tools like color drops, where you can upload your Pantone, upload your hex values for color, it's got 50 or 60 different tools. So to make a visualization of clear space for your logo, to make a visualization of do's and don'ts for your logo, it can make some of those things for you. So you don't need a professional designer to build the actual brand guide. So it is a tool to build your brand guide in a way that's more robust. And that used to be you would need, you know, more time technical prowess is to pull off. So it is a brand guide creator and Canva is a communications materials producer.

50:46  
Claire saw another question come in, do you have a resource for identifying color meaning?

50:54  
Oh, well, I mean, that's subjective. That's that's subjective to cultural contexts. You know, what red means in China is going to be different than what red means to an American color is subjective colors, highly subjective. So that being said, colors powerful. And color does have strong meanings. So you can kind of go online, I don't have one that's the go to, I usually look at my audiences look at where I'm located in the world, my geographic zone, are we an international nonprofit? Are we a domestic nonprofit? And then trying to think about what colors might mean? Where to the audiences that I'm communicating with? Because your audiences are really you can make some generalizations about how they might experience color, but it's not going to be universal.

51:41  
Another one that popped up is why did you choose Big Duck? As a company name?

51:46  
Yeah. Okay. So we are 30 years old, our founder, did some freelancing for Disney. And I think they changed some sort of a rule where she had to become an LLC. And so she quickly thought of a name. And she thought, Oh, I'm working on Daffy right now. So I'll be Big Duck. And then she then she founded her own agency the next year. And that was during a time in the design world were kind of funny, brain thoughtful in the 90s. That was kind of a trend at that time to come up with evocative names. And so it kind of worked. At this point. Again, circling back to the subject of our talk, we've got equity people know the name people like Blaine, it's kind of fun. So we're not changing anytime soon. But it's kind of a funny origin story there.

52:30  
Well, I'll look out for any other questions that are coming in. In the meantime, that's all we have today. On this sheet, you'll see a QR code that will take you to a survey for the session, please give feedback. This will help us see how we did but also help us for next year and many more conferences and what kind of material you're looking for. So please go ahead and fill that out. And I'll look at any other questions coming in. We have a couple more minutes.

52:58  
We've got a question here. Can you store accessibility icon descriptions to go with the logo, I'm wondering if that's in Canva, or Frontify. In front of VI, they actually have a beta feature right now that I think that they're rolling out, like now ish, where there's alternate text for all images. And so that's something we didn't cover in the talk, but everywhere in your brand. This isn't really about your brand impression, except that it's just being about accessible, which is I guess, a huge part of your brand, is alt text. So even for your logo is thinking of a short, descriptive way, it's actually not so important that it reflects your tone and style, although it could, but it's really about being accurate. So just scribing the visuals throughout your brand so that folks, if they've got a visually assisted device, it will read that alternate text, or if they've got a feature where they've turning off the images on their device, it will display that text instead. So Frontify does have that feature. I don't know if Canada does. Thanks, John. Thanks, Robert. Thanks, Suzanne. We appreciate you joining us. I'm very passionate about brand guides, and Tovah, we were connecting on the fact that it makes her job so much easier when folks have one. So we're hoping that this will be a wonderful moment where folks that can either improve the one that they have, or switch the platform on which it's housed or even maybe start one for the very first time.

54:32  
In Neon, we just developed themes to which if you know your color is if you know your messaging, all of that comes into play. Perfect. Well, thank you everyone. Please look at the resource please use that branding guide, cheat sheet. Use Frontify use Canva for nonprofits, all of these things are going to help you tremendously moving forward.

54:59  
Yeah, Welcome, Carlos, we wish we had more time because there's you know, there's so much you can think the more almost the more if you're on an easily and easily navigable platform, the more you content you have in your brand guide, almost the better. So all right. excited to hear folks impression. So I also encourage you to please take the survey, not afraid of critical feedback. If you've got any pointers for how we could do this better. Please share them.

55:34  
Yeah, I Suzanne, how to do this in Neon CRM. We're actually that's a great point. We actually just had a conversation about how do we take this to a two part webinar where we talk more about brand as far as donor cultivation or donation forms, and then show you how to actually apply it in the system. So that's something we just thought about. Great to hear the feedback and we will look at presenting it soon.

56:04  
Amazing Hey scrolling back through our chat, I'm gonna go Google the Denny's logo after this to see how much the minute and I'm curious. I think the colors are similar. Now was that made that mustard? Ketchup combo really gets us ready for lunch. Okay, all right. We're at time. So thank you again for joining us and looking forward to hearing your feedback. And good luck with your branding Guide.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai