Branding Resources for DIY Artists and Entrepreneurs: A Guide to Inspiration and Mood Boards

Transcript

Hey, hello, it's Jules and welcome to The Pool Party. We are continuing our series on branding, effective branding, and design for DIY artists, entrepreneurs, and people who want to create an artist's alter ego. So we've talked a lot about the tactical specifics of branding, getting into brand values, picking your name, and then what I think your first logo should be.

All those episodes are up on the podcast, and today we're going to dive deeper into resources for inspiration, making mood boards, and websites for collecting inspiration, because i'm going to give you a little bit of a secret So Being a designer and having refined taste is just honestly knowing what is out there, who made it, and the reasons why they chose it.

Being a designer is a little bit of selecting inspiration and finding ways to whittle down and hone your client's desires into a good product. So whether or not you are a designer or you're someone who works with designers, you're going to want to know What you want, and you're going to want to know how to describe that to the people you work with.

I'll give you an example. You wouldn't go to a hairstylist and tell them that you wanted anything, like whatever they think is good, you like their style somewhere between an afro and a wolf cut. If you're just saying things like that because you heard it online hate to break it to you, an afro and a wolf cut, are two very different hairstyles, and sometimes I see people wanting to work with a designer, and they just don't know how to describe what they want.

We spend, honestly, days and weeks even getting into the nitty gritty of what they want and how to choose it, and I think it's wasted time that people could just spend looking inspiration on their own, not paying a designer, and it saves us both time and frustration.

Let's go ahead and get into an overview of resources for inspiration.

I'm going to talk to you about a few different places to look for resources and inspiration. The first category of websites is going to be websites for collecting inspiration, mood boards and seeing what designers have out there. And then there's a second category of websites, which I consider to be not websites where you would necessarily create a mood board, but where you would find inspiration for websites seeing what kind of websites are out there.

And the reason why I think this is a big category is because your website is typically The first point of entry that people find your work online. And if it's not that it's a portfolio. So maybe you meet someone and then you send them your website. You want your website to succinctly describe showcase who you are.

And there are a lot of great examples online. So we can take inspiration from all these websites. And then there are a few places that I like to look in order to find good inspiration. The next category of websites I'm going to recommend to you today are the. color, stock photo and icon websites. And these are websites where you can get basically photos experiment with colors And get a variety of different visuals in order to experiment with your own brand.

And then there's a fourth category of websites I want to talk to you about . And these are the websites where I feel you can source high quality creatives and also find a good mix of creatives to work with templates and educational tools. There's going to be a lot of overlap between 📍 these websites.

Let's go ahead and get into the first category, which is websites to create mood boards this mood board category. The first website is Arena. Arena is geared towards designers, artists it's more of a bespoke Pinterest, and it can get a bit artsy fartsy, but Arena is a great place to essentially collect whatever visual inspiration you like online.

What it's good for, a lot of artists and designers think of like your Brooklyn tattoo artists or interior designers online. I would actually say maybe more graphic designers than interior designers use Arena. And so if you want to take a look at what they're using and what inspires them, this is a great website to find folks like that and take a peek at their mood boards.

Another website I will recommend is Pinterest. This is a pretty popular website. obvious one, I think, but I use Pinterest even as a designer and I think Pinterest has just been around for so long that it's easy to collect different mood boards for inspiration. I think their mood boarding tool is pretty advanced and you're going to want to create a lot of different varieties of mood boards for your font, colors.

image types, etc. And so I think Pinterest is great at this and they have some pretty advanced tools for organizing, which I find is most important. Thirdly, Behance. Behance is mostly geared towards, I think, digital designers, graphic designers, folks who use Adobe, might use the Adobe Photoshop suite in creating, but they have a pretty good mood boarding tool where you can create categories of inspiration that you find and the quality of work that you find on Behance will be top tier because a lot of these designers are industry designers and so it's a great place to look for inspiration but just keep in mind that this is going to be at the higher end of design and if you're starting out your goal as an entrepreneur or an artist may

not exactly match these people where they're at. Remember for this category of websites, we're just looking at places where you can create an account and collect inspiration. And I think this is important because it's going to help you find overlap and visuals that you like. Going back to that hairstyle example, you want to know if you want bangs or if you don't want bangs.

That's one decision, but if you want bangs, you're gonna have to decide if you want sideswept bangs, you want blunt cut bangs, you want razored bangs. There's a lot of different styles, and then so what I find these websites are good for is then, once you've made that baseline decision, okay, I want bangs What style of bangs are out there?

and then I would basically create a mood board for that and then collect all the styles and Photos of a specific type of bang that you like so then you could take it to your hairstylist And we can take this example on to designers where you might find that you like this really specific type of book cover and you see it used a lot, but in different styles.

You want to take that to your illustrator or your book cover designer, but you're going to need a place to store all these images. And rather than just keep them on a folder on your computer, it's nice to have it online so you can send it to a lot of different designers get their thoughts and that's why I like holding mood boards on websites.

It's easier to share.

All right, so beyond mood boarding, the next category of websites is solely for finding inspiration for websites and these design materials. The first two website recommendations I'm going to give you are for mostly digital design. That's Dribbble. Dribble with three b's, D R I B B B L E, and Dribble is a website that a lot of user experience designers who work with apps, websites, they showcase their work, and I would say that A lot of the work here tends to be a bit more startup and corporate focused, so keep that in mind.

That is going to dictate what kind of work you see. there are also a lot of freelancers and folks out there who use this website to showcase their UX work. And I think if you're making a website from scratch, if you are a startup, this is a good place to look at design. I don't think this is the only website you should look at, however, because you are going to see a lot of startup and corporate style design.

And I think sometimes that It causes folks to feel like their products should only look like the things they see on this website. So this is just one resource I think you should use. The next website I'm going to recommend in the vein of user experience and online website design is godly. website.

That's g o d l y dot website. Regular way you spell website. And godly. website has a lot of websites, landing pages for designers, production studios, creatives. And I like this website because they're beautiful websites with fantastic motion design. If you want to work with a motion designer or someone who's really good at creating adding in motion into landing pages.

This is a great website for seeing what those interactions look like. I'm throwing a lot of terms out here in this podcast like, interaction designer, user interface designer, and all of these designers basically work with digital So if we're talking about the experience of a website, that is user experience, and then there is some user research that goes into understanding what kind of experience people want.

These are just more specific categories of designers, so keep that in mind and don't get too caught up on it. All right, another website that I would recommend for Design Inspiration is Designspiration. And Designspiration, I'm going to tell you why I like this website. It has a lot of different design inspiration from, I would say, mostly print products, so graphic design, type, this is more classical design focusing on design.

your print deliverables, but even tote bags. One great thing about this website is that you can break down the design inspiration into categories of color. So if you're trying to experiment with what a certain color would look like in reality, on your tote bags, on your books, you can search for a specific color and then get a look and feel for how that would expand across all these different.

mediums. So design inspired is good for that. And then basically what I recommend is like looking at these websites, the first two websites I recommended dribble and godly. website are mostly going to be Your website examples. So if you're working with a web designer ideally you already have a branding package done.

Your branding is done, you can just send it to your web designer, and then you're going to pick a couple of websites that you like as inspiration, then talk it over with your designer. Okay, there are a few more websites to go over, two more categories.

In this next category, we're going to talk about websites for finding stock imagery, and I wanted to mention this because you might be familiar with a few, but if you're getting into creating content online, blogging, you're going to want to use imagery and photos that you're allowed to use. And the best way to do that is to take your own photos or to use imagery that you can use for free just by accrediting the artist who shot the photos.

And the first two I'm going to recommend are pretty well known. It's Unsplash and Pexels. Unsplash has a lot of photography that is shot by photographers who don't mind having their work used for stock imagery. This is one of the ways I would say that photographers can also get their work out there.

And if they don't mind their work being used for free, someone might use your work in a website and then they'll credit you. And that is free exposure. And I believe in that type of free exposure, more than I believe in working for free. And then there's also pexels. Pexels. Also, it's shot by studio photographers, but I would say that these images are a lot more evergreen.

So they're the type of images that you could probably cut out and then place in an ad and it looks as though it's studio shot photography. So you'll find like plain pens, you'll find Playing studio images of different types of people from let's say senior citizens to young teen students.

So if you're looking to find stock photography on broad categories of people or products, Pexels is great for that. Alright, third website stock photo recommendation is Death to Stock. Now, Death to Stock is not free, it is a subscription service, but I love this website because the creatives who make this work put a lot of attention to detail into creating work that you might actually want to look at.

This is a type of stock photography that I feel is like made by content creators, people who might have a background in cinematography or storytelling. I feel these are the types of videos and images that you could put a really good poetic voice over on top of. And if you're creating a podcast and you have a very specific emotional storyline, Death to Stock is great for this.

Death to Stock might also be good for selecting. Vibe y videos that you want to add to an e commerce website. So let's say that you have a Shopify that sells sunscreen brands to people who like to go to the beach but care about the ocean. You can find a lot of really great imagery of people hanging out at the beach here, and it's going to create a really nice vibe.

And you do have to pay for these videos and images as a subscription, but it's definitely going to be a lot cheaper than buying them. paying for content to be made bespoke for you, and I really don't think you should pay for bespoke content when you're just starting out. I think it's more important to cheaply and efficiently nail down a sense of vibe in order to start out.

Because ultimately It's most efficient, it's gonna save you money, and it's gonna save you 📍 time. Alright,

let's say that you are looking for colors. This last website I'm going to recommend in the Inspiration category is Coolors. That's C O O L O R S, Coolors. And Coolors is really great for showing you Palettes of colors and honestly, I'm going to tell you something. If you listen to the branding episode, you know how I feel about colors.

I think that you should pick one color and it needs to really make sense for your brand and then that color can be paired with black and white. Easy, simple, done, recognizable. Sometimes you're going to want to create more complex artwork and Coolors will show you different palette schemes. So that's going to be like multiple colors, at least more than one, like three, six, seven colors that look good together.

Personally, I think this is overkill, but if you're an illustrator and you're creating complex artwork, you're going to want to see what these colors look like together. You can get the Color codes for digital work, and I think this is a great website for digital illustrators to use if you want to experiment with different color palettes.

Let's say you need to have all those colors because you need a highlight, a shade, and more. You can't just create your work with one color and you don't want to. Coolors is a great website for that. Again, you're going to see a lot of different colors, though, and so be mindful of why you need multiple colors all together and you need this inspiration.

It's a good place to start, but again, I'm going to tell you if you're just starting out with branding, just choose one color, make it so simple, and then only use coolers if you're working with someone who works with a lot of color and you need to decide together if those colors are going to look good.

It'll help you decide really quickly which direction you want to go in. And it's also helpful for seasonal work that probably deals with more colors. For example, a winter palette versus a spring, summer, and fall is probably going to take a lot more inspiration from colors that change naturally.

And that's another reason why I'd recommend coolers. It's good for seasonal brand campaign 📍 colors.

Alright, we are on our last category of website now, and this last category is a good place to find designers, artists, creatives, and templates. The first website I will recommend is Creative Market.

If you are DIY Daniella, and you're looking to make your own branding package , let's say that you already know what you like, but you just don't have the time to curate all the resources, you can buy a template off of a designer, and with that license, you're allowed to create your own pitch deck from their work.

And I think this is a really great way to get started. Yeah. Especially if you don't have time for a larger branding exercise, I would say at least know what you like. And creative market has a lot of examples and naming for like certain vibe types. There are a lot of trends these days. And I think creative market is really good at nailing the trends.

But one thing I would say to be wary of is try not to choose something that is too trendy. A lot of times I think people who Don't know what their branding is or what they want to represent. They just try to go for something trendy And I think when you go for something that's trendy you're going to Appeal to mass market to mass audiences based on that trend immediately But your longevity and that style is going to be really low Honestly, that style of design might only last you a few months And that's really not ideal if you're trying to create a body of work that lasts longer I would say, however, if you do like a specific style of design that you see from a creator on Creative Market, this is a great way to get connected with designers that maybe you want to work with and then you could pay them their by project rate or their hourly rate to continue working with them based upon a style you like.

These folks are also really good at creating assets for a wide variety of online platforms, mainly because that's what they do. They sell these templates, and I'm sure some folks would not mind creating a bespoke template for you. With a price attached to it, but that's for you to negotiate and figure out.

All right, the next website I'm going to recommend to you is ILoveCreatives. It's all one word and ILoveCreatives does a lot of different things. They have an online job board they have a directory of jobs. Creatives, that's designers, copywriters, content creators for TikTok and Instagram.

And a lot of folks who are freelancers who do a lot of different things this is another great place to hire someone, let's say if you need like an all in one marketing person. I Love Creatives is really great for finding folks like this. If you're finding that, You actually really love creative work and you want to do more of this as a freelance job or You need a little bit more training, but you don't have time to go back to school I love creatives has courses that you can enroll in on square space design photography Content creation copywriting and I think these are good ways of getting curated content But I will also tell you I pay for courses.

I do. And I have paid for, I love creative courses on how to use Squarespace and customize it more. I think that helped me create more bespoke websites for people who only want to create on Squarespace. But I think, only people. Pay for a course if you actually decide that's what you want to do for the next three to six months because There is a curve of time to where you need to acquire a new skill So you're going to be spending maybe 30 percent of your time learning that skill or 20 percent depending on how you allocate your time and After that, you're going to experience a startup period where it's going to take time to advertise that you have this skill in order to get clients to work on those projects.

So starting a course is not necessarily an efficient use of time if you're trying to include a new category as a service. For you as a freelancer, that's just my belief. I think that If you want to be a freelancer, and this could be like a whole other podcast, start with skills that you already have, that you're good with, and so one thing I will say is just do not get distracted remember your mission, remember your brand values, your reason for being, and if you're Go on these websites, have fun, take a look at all they have to offer, but inspiration at the end of the day is just inspiration.

Inspiration will help you create more refined branding, it'll help you communicate with other designers and artists, but it is not your work. Staying stuck in mood boarding and inspiration is not you doing the work that the brand represents. Okay. So we talked about four broader categories of resources for inspiration today, and this is a hefty episode.

We're going to talk more about mood boarding in another episode. I considered including it on this one, but I don't want to overwhelm you with all the information that is out there. So let's just go ahead and review the four categories of websites. The first category is websites for collecting inspiration, making mood boards.

That's Arena, Pinterest, and Behance. Second category is website inspiration and general design inspiration. Those websites are Dribbble, Designspiration, and Godly. website . Third category of websites is places to find stock and color inspo, and that's Death to Stock, Pexels, Unsplash, and Coolors. And then the last category of websites is for the all around freelancers, creatives, DIYers, and that's Creative Market and I Love Creatives.

Go ahead and take a look at these websites. I would encourage you to break down each category into a 30 minute browse, just so you can see what's out there. You'll be able to know what these inspiration websites are, and a lot of artists, freelancers, creatives work with these websites, so now when you talk with them, you'll know what these websites are.

You won't just be racking your brain trying to figure it out. Understand what they're saying, and I think seeing is understanding. So look these websites up and again, don't spend too much time on these websites. Use them for their intended purpose, but give yourself some guardrails. Maybe 15 minutes per website and choose your categories wisely so that you do not get distracted.

Alright, so that has been our episode on resources for inspiration. If you are further along in your branding process, I hope this helps you to narrow down where you want to go with your aesthetic look. I hope it helps you keep your Inspiration organized and furthermore, if you need more help with beginner branding tools, you can listen to the big episode on effective branding for entrepreneurs and DIY artists.

And if you find that you might just need a little bit more help with values, name and logo, there are episodes on that as well. Thank you so much for listening today. My name is Jules, and this has been The Pool Party. If you need more help with branding, if you have any questions, you can contact me on my portfolio website.

That's juliaspero.me, J U L I A, espero, E S P E R O, dot, that's a period, me. Thanks for listening, and I'll talk to you next time.