Lessons
Introduction to Workshop
07:56 2What Makes Up a Brand?
09:39 3Why Are Brands So Important?
13:06 4Consistency & Setting Up Standards
17:51 5What Makes a Great Brand
07:34 6Your Brand Book: Story & Content Strategy
40:52 7Your Brand Book: Logos & Visuals
09:36 8No Brand Lives in a Vacuum
34:47Lesson Info
Introduction to Workshop
Whether you are a designer who's working with different clients, if you're a small business owner, or even if you're working in a larger company, a brand book is going to be essential to your success. And if you've been overwhelmed trying to get started, maybe don't even know what a brand book is and that's, okay, because you are in the right place. We have josh silverman here to help us every step of the way. And if you're not familiar with josh, let me tell you a little bit about him. Josh silverman is a designer, a serial entrepreneur and the eternal optimist. Now, josh's work has been featured in the boston globe, fortune magazine and the wall street journal, and we are thrilled to have him here on creative live. So without further ado, please welcome josh silverman. Josh express welcome thanks now I know you have lots to teach us today we're gonna get into all of it but I want to ask you a question to kick things off ok? I'm sure you've heard lots of excuses from people but I want...
you I want to hear from you what is the hardest part for people to get started with their brand book what do you hear is the biggest struggle internal alignment is everything like making sure your company knows that they need one for starters is absolutely critical but I'd say that the biggest difficulty is actually keeping it in use making it published making people aware that there is one and making sure that people are adhering to it because without use it's just going to sit on the shelf nobody needs that and that's not gonna be helpful no, no you're never done right it just keeps evolved no design work is never done that's that's absolutely so you're gonna get into all of that at the end of this people are going to be ready to get started with this so I know you have a lot to cover so take it away thanks for us. All right. Awesome. Cool. Well, thanks everyone for being here. I've got a lot of stuff to talk about today but just to go over like what this course is about were this is the first time I think that we're going to actually break new ground into the standardization of brand standards that is available for purchase in the course materials we relate to brands everyday we understand brands emotionally instinctually and having an awareness of what a brand guide khun do will help your company with its success um everyone can relate to brand and everyone will benefit from a brand guide so we're going to talk about how it was how to do that and I think it's great that I'm the person leading this course because I've been building brands and relationships for twenty years I'll get into that in a second I'm pretty relationship oriented I like to think long term and I like to think big picture and everyone relates to brand emotionally and instinctually on having a relationship with the brand is a really good way of making sure that you understand it really well so to his objectives were going to start with what makes a good brand learn learn why standards are important to making brands observe how small medium and large companies can create and maintain their standards here from other seasoned professionals about their work I've got a couple of guests one in person and then a couple of via skype later on and you can build confidence to get one started today so when I was a kid story time when I was a kid I remember being in the car with my mom going to the local grocery store which back in these coast was called shoprite and I remember looking at this identity and saying what's that on the side of the truck and my mom said that's a logo honey and I was like what's a logo and I've been really interested in identity and brands since I was a kid if I called up my brother right now and started seeing this background jingle for a company that I just created it I know where he would be able to help with the background vocals for that jingle I just I've been doing it for for decades and decades I don't know I don't know why but it's just who I am it's it's part of who I am as a teenager I used to go to cal door in stamford, connecticut and about five years ago I had a logo drawing contest with my best friend and I was like I bet I could draw them from memory those seventies rainbow colors absolutely easy to recall from them rain so fast forward to nineteen ninety seven when I started my first business called swat design the's days the methodology of the schwan model is lean teams fitting the team and the people to the product or service or to the company that needs to have the work done I ran that for eighteen years and more recently I've started another business called starting a ship which is product izing the design needs that common that are common to start ups and putting them into focus workshops so you can get more done in a short amount of time so not only have I been building teams that have been building brands I've been looking at how teams work with clients and work together so I'm taking a sort of meta level view on how teams and brands work together along the way I've done a couple things I've been involved in a j for almost twenty years and every guest that we have in class today isa referral from angela edgy is the oldest largest institution for designers and it's about a hundred years old it was founded as the american institute a graphic arts but that's sort of an outdated term because not only is it not american anymore it's no longer an institution and graphic arts is an outdated term however a j has been really good to me it's open tons of doors and I'm happy to plug it whenever possible rebrand started in providence, rhode island it's where I used to live it's we'll look at a couple of case studies that were mentioned in rebrand rebrand is a wonderful resource rebrand dot com for before and after transformations of brands I'm teaching a general assembly I'm very happy to be a part of the general assembly san francisco community I'm now their first visual design fellow, which is an awesome title, so not only am I looking at how the visual design course is taught in the san francisco market and other markets, but I'm also helping onboard new usual design instructors to g et on dh as jay started in new york as ah shared workspace for product code design on dh project management. I'm going to attempt to thread together those those disciplines again in the spring and gonna have like a g a is first hack a thon for the san francisco community, which is cool there's this course, creative life, which is fun does entrepreneurs is one of my many pursuits designer entrepreneurs like myself. I think I have a lot of content, but there's a lot that can be done with designer, entrepreneur and lgbt communities, so you'll see underneath this entrepreneurs is start out start out is the first national nonprofit for lgbt entrepreneurs and design tre preneurs is a serious that I brought to start out to help bring design and cbt communities together. I've written for medium I kick started this really great publication called jerry, which is about men and food and finally, hello, mr is a really cool other company that I kick started and wrote for on dh ah lot of that happened in san francisco over the last few years.
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase
Ratings and Reviews
David
This class has potential, but misses the mark for me. The first thing that I noticed was the fact that the video and the sound do not sync with each other. It feels like you are watching a foreign move with English dubbed over the lip movements of another language. It is often hard to hear the audience questions as they do not hand around the usual 'creative live wireless audience microphone' and I think that was a mistake. The topic is a good one and the speaker is appears to understand his craft but a lot of the 'talk' in the first few videos could be removed by a clear definition of terms in the very very beginning of the class. If feels like it is flowing on an off the cuff manner and is lacking the structure that Creative Live known for. Instead of spending so much time asking the students about their understanding of what brand identity is and way to many quotes... I would like to see some practical how to advice early on in the class. I would love to see more classes covering this topic from people like Sean Adams or Alina Wheeler :) I am sure this class will get better the further I get into it and I normally do not write a review before I have listened to the entire class. Also I purchased it at a deeply discounted rate so even with those issues factored it is is still work what I payed for it. :)
Yi Ji
WOW, really worth the money, information is real, up to date, the quality of audient also good, they ask really real question, not those kind of 'performance' course. Thanks!
Rifter
Absolutely relevant and interesting content, made through example classes. The way the material is exposed is very good. One single critic, since the headline is really precise on the topic I expected more on the "how" but the course doesn't really teach a "system" to create a brandbook, like choosing wich documents are to be included and how to make and expose them depending with the client needs. The course is all about the why explained through case studies, which is good but partly neglect the headline promise. Anyway this is still an excellent course but I thought it would be useful to point out this aspect.