Graphic Design for Marketing
In this lesson we are going to:
Learn how to create branded templates
Explore a fantastic branded templates hack
Create and resize our first set of branded templates for marketing
The Good News
Guess what? If you have completed your brand guidelines, then you have already done a bit of the leg work for creating branded templates. To create said templates, which are basically a blank slate for adding business and post information about what we are talking about or services/offerings/events we are selling, we need to us:
Our brand color palette
Logo & logo variations
Supporting visual elements and themes
So there are two ways to go about this, you are welcome to do one or the other, or all of the above. The first way I will demo, is creating your own branded templates from scratch, using the visual language map and your brand guidelines. The other, is finding a batch of 'canva-ready' templates on Creative Market, and changing them to fit your branding. The latter option works really well for busy solopreneurs, who also want to have streamlines, beautiful templates for use on their platforms.
Exercise #1: Canva Skills Lab
Action Steps
Create 3 brand templates in Canva
Resize your brand templates to IG Stories dimensions (1080X1920 px), then rework the graphics to fit that size template
Using your 4-Pillars Worksheet, create one square post and one stories sized post, using a content idea from one of your 4 pillars.
For example: I might make a post about "speaking for what's right", which is under my "purpose-driven pillar". It might be sharing a personal story about a time I spoke for what felt right or how to include what you stand for on your website, which would also fall under my "web presence pillar". My post image might be a great quote about speaking up for what you believe in, or an image of me with a note over my mouth that says "SPEAK UP", with a graphic or two in one of the corners of the image to brand it. Note that you certainly don't need to and shouldn't brand all your image posts, I only want you to for this exercise to play around with what that's like.
Optional Post Challenge: either post your branded square, IG Stories post, or both... and tag me! Alternately, you can post them within our group feed, if you aren't ready to go public.
Final Thoughts
Amazing! I am so proud of the work you have done up until now. I know it's a lot and no matter where you are at in the process or how masterful you are feeling, you should still feel proud of yourself for taking these steps and keep coming back.
