Marvin Pierre is Executive Director of Eight Million Stories, Inc., a nonprofit founded in 2017 to support disconnected youth in Houston, Texas. Building upon the success of Eight Million Stories, he is founding a new school in Houston’s Third Ward. Marvin chose Jill B Gilbert to create a brand for The Justice Hub School that is attractive, edgy and has an urban feel. This project also included development of a brand guidelines document that will grow with the organization.
Your website is an important part of your organization’s identity. A well-designed website reflects well on your organization, and a poorly-designed website can damage your reputation. I know this is hard, but spend time planning your website before you build it. Understand your audience and design your site accordingly. Make the site attractive and easy to navigate.
Whether you plan to redesign your website or are in the enviable position of designing a new website from scratch, take the time to find answers to the following questions to set your website project up for success. You will be glad you did!
Granted, 30 questions is a lot to answer—but take the time to find answers to every question if you want a website that addresses the needs of your audience and yields business results. If you are not sure how to proceed with your website design and build, please consult a professional that understands the technical, marketing, and business aspects of website creation. You will be glad you did!
“Jill was wonderful to work with. She responded positively to our initial feedback on a design and came back with an update that accurately met our needs and vision while incorporating her professional expertise in PowerPoint and graphic design. She is prompt, communicates efficiently, and pushed the project along at times when I felt overwhelmed. We now have a well designed, branded, and functional PowerPoint presentation that will bring cohesiveness to all our presentations. Thank you Jill!”
–Callie Sacarelos, Communications and Marketing Manager, Mississippi Park Connection
A brand is how your customer or audience views your business. A brand includes your organization’s brand identity—a logo and other assets used to convey your message; a brand strategy or blueprint; and brand marketing to spread your message via different digital, print, and word-of-mouth channels.
If you need a new logo, you can work with an in-house graphic designer or hire a freelancer. Follow the eight tips below for a greater chance of success.
Why do you need a new brand? If you are just starting out, you may want to brand your products or services. Maybe you are launching a new product or service within an existing company. Perhaps you have a brand, but feel it is outdated, or it no longer reflects your organization’s mission, vision, and values. Do a majority of stakeholders share this need?
What do you want to accomplish with your new brand? What benefits do you expect, for example, the ability to reach larger audiences via new digital and print channels, greater market share, easier brand recognition, or other?
A brand is how your customer or audience views your business. A brand includes your organization’s brand identity—a logo and other assets used to convey your message; a brand strategy or blueprint; and brand marketing to spread your message via different digital, print, and word-of-mouth channels.
Do your homework before working with the graphic designer. With graphic design projects, it’s easy to express what you don’t like, but not always so easy to express what you do like, and what you really need. Talk with your stakeholders to get a feel for their needs, wants, style, and color preferences. Do a little research and find 3-5 examples of brands that inspire you; be prepared to talk with the designer about how similar aesthetics might work for your organization.
Creating a brand is a project that should follow a process. This process typically includes the following steps:
The designer should set expectations upfront regarding the project schedule and specific deliverables, such as the number of concepts and rounds of revisions.
You will use your brand in digital and print formats, maybe on signage, T-shirts, and more. Apply your brand consistently in multiple applications such as full color, all black on light backgrounds, and all white on dark backgrounds. Make sure that your brand looks great and reads well in different sizes, from an inch or two on a business card or letterhead, to a 12-foot banner at a trade show. You might need a horizontal layout on your web page or a large banner, a vertical layout on stationery and business cards, and an icon only for a website favicon.
If you do not have Brand Guidelines or a Visual Standards Guide, this is a good time to create one. Such a guidelines describe your organization’s official colors for print and web materials; your official logo/brand layouts and color combinations; logo/brand placement; and typography for web and other marketing communications. A brand–even when it consists only of letters or words–is artwork that must not be altered in any way, such as changing the aspect ratio, colors, or typography. Make sure that your staff is aware of the standards and their use.
A brand is one of your organization’s assets and becomes more valuable as it becomes widely used and recognized in the marketplace. Protect your brand like the valuable asset it is—stick to your Brand Guidelines/Visual Standards Guide—always! Add a trademark (™) or service mark (SM) symbol to your brand, and apply for registered trademark status (®) as appropriate.
When Eric and Nancy Raup needed a brand for Eric’s craft furniture and decor business, they immediately thought of Jill B Gilbert.
After identifying Komolova Log Works’ needs, Jill created three design concepts. After further discussions and iterations, Komolova revealed that they wanted to include an owl.
Here is the result—a playful owl standing on a tree branch. The logo, tag line, and color palette work together to communicate the brand, as well as the rustic setting for the business.
If your organization’s website needs a major refresh, you can hire a professional or build it yourself. After all, thousands of free and paid website templates are available, and website building tools are better than ever before. TV and social media ads make it look so easy to build a website! Let’s look at some of the questions to answer before you make a “build or buy” decision.
What are your objectives? Why do you want to change your site? You may want to refresh your site because it is outdated, because your company is growing or adding products or services, to start a blog, to add the ability to sell products or services online, or for other reasons. Think about the technical and financial objective you want to achieve.
What types of changes do you need? You might be thinking of a total new look and feel, a change to the website structure, or both. Maybe you need a media library to easily store and retrieve images, videos, etc. You might need entire new features, e.g., a blog or e-commerce capabilities. You simply might want a new website that is easier to maintain in-house, rather than hiring a web professional to make changes each time you need them.
How is your current website built? Is it written (coded) in HTML + CSS, or is it built on one of the new platforms like WordPress, SquareSpace, WIX, or other? If it is an HTML site, you will need to know how to write code. If it built on one of the newer platforms, you may be able to build your own site; it may look professional but, depending on your HTML know-how, the site can be a mess behind the scenes. Yes, you read that right! This is because you cannot refresh these sites just by applying a new theme. Many of the current “drag-and-drop” website themes have widgets, code blocks, and other complexities. These site elements may not work in the new theme without a lot of tweaking.
How tech-savvy are you? If you are a lover of things tech, and the first of your friends to get the latest electronics, and you are committed to doing site updates yourself in the future, then building a website may be for you. If you use computers, social media and smartphones every day, but rarely update your electronics or software, this is a warning sign that you should speak to a web designer. But read further…
What is your timeline? If you need it quickly and can effectively plan and build a website, then do-it-yourself might work for you. Just keep your project objectives in mind, spend adequate time planning, get advice as needed, and go for it! If you need it quickly, don’t even consider slapping something together quickly to get a new, improved website up and running. This will do more harm than good. If you have a reasonable timeline, then you have plenty of options, both do-it-yourself and professionally-built.
What will it cost? First, think about the value that the website updates will bring to your company in terms of new clients, more business, and better market penetration. Second, consider the total cost to your organization. This is a cost-benefit issue, not the price tag to get the site up and running. If web development or computer coding are not your core business, you may find yourself spending hours updating the website yourself, at a significant cost to you in terms of lost revenue, missed marketing opportunities, missed new clients, etc. Third, what are the ongoing maintenance and update costs for the next three to five years?
Congratulations! If you have read this far, you now have more questions than answers! At the least, you understand some of the “build vs. buy” issues, and the many choices available to you. If you still have questions about what is best for you, please consult a professional. A short discussion could save you hours of time and a stack of money.
Each year, Pantone selects a Color of the Year that establishes design and fashion trends. And the Pantone Colors of the Year for 2021 are… Illuminating and Ultimate Gray. This is the first time that Pantone selected two colors.
The bright yellow and the medium gray colors signify a fresh start, and together are bright and cheery. Last year, the color was Classic Blue–which, as it turns out, describes 2020 well.
I used the Pantone Connect app to discover different color harmonies for the 2021 Colors of the Year–analogous, complementary, triadic, and tetradic color palettes. I selected fourteen colors plus yellow and gray to create art in the style of Damian Hirst. Here is the colorful result.
Note: you can use Pantone Connect online in a browser, as an extension to Adobe Creative Cloud applications, and as a smartphone app.
Since I live in the Southwest and like desert plants, I followed a series of tutorials to draw watercolor cacti. The resulting drawings were abstract and I wanted more realistic watercolor images. Working with photos–including some of my own–I created a series of cactus and succulent drawings.
Like any series, these cactus drawings have evolved–I learned a few tricks along the way to improve my drawings.
A high school friend who now lives in the Phoenix area paid me the highest compliment; she said that my rendering and color choices look like the scenes she sees every day.
Procreate is a Raster (pixel) drawing app with many features not found in other drawing apps available for the iPad.
In 2019, my “go-to” tools for making quick–and detailed–graphics and illustrations were Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop on my Macbook Pro. My setup included a Wacom drawing tablet, a wireless keyboard, and a large monitor. My iPad was a secondary tool, hardly part of my graphic design workflow. I dabbled in the different Illustrator and Photoshop apps for the iPad, but they seemed awkward.
Then I traded in my iPad for an iPad Air (3rd Generation) and bought an Apple Pencil. I kept hearing about an app called Procreate, designed for the original iPad Pro and the Apple Pencil. A blog I follow had lots of Procreate tutorials, so invested a small sum of ten dollars (!) and got started. Read on to learn the ins and outs of Procreate.
Procreate offers many features not seen in competitors’ drawing apps. I recommend it as part of a graphic design workflow and use it almost daily. It is a true gem, and well worth the money.
On April 20, San Jacinto College Vice-Chancellor Laurel Williamson, QEP Director Ann Pearson, and the QEP Committee announced that it selected Jill B Gilbert’s design to represent the program for the next five years (see the QEP page here). The college’s Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP), Thinking and Beyond, promotes student success through critical thinking.
Gilbert’s design addresses the “right brain” creative and “left brain” logical aspects of critical thinking, as well as the San Jacinto Monument, topped by a star, and a USB connector to symbolize how students are always plugged in—the connection between critical thinking and technology.
Viewed another way, the symbol depicts a launched rocket, shooting for the stars, with puffs of exhaust parting as the rocket travels upward. This is an homage to Houston, aka the Space City; Jill’s Dad, a rocket scientist, and her little brother who followed in his Dad’s footsteps.
