In the previous articles in this series I write about my experiences as a 50+ entrepreneur and advocate for boomer populations.
Half a year ago we invested intellectual capital in developing a brand architecture. We brought the full force of our advisors in on the effort. Some very smart brand marketers from Airbnb, DWELL, E*TRADE and other game-changers weighed in. It helped us formulate a comprehensive set of guidelines and guideposts for the brand we are putting out in the world. Read about the process here .
At the end of the process we settled on this positioning statement:
Next For Me is a catalyst for people in transition.
Finding Neo
As a long-retired graphic designer and former user experience executive it pained me to have our visual brand in waiting. Like so many choices, investing in the visual brand had to wait as we spent our resources otherwise.
I had the pleasure of working with Brian Jacobs the founder and Creative Director at Brick Design a few times. Brian came out of the iconic Pentagram Studio in New York. He taught me about the importance of simplicity in a brand mark. And then put it in a lot of different “settings” and see if it still holds its power.
Brick was out of our reach, but I learned enough from Brian to think about our visual identity in a big way.
A couple of years ago I hired a talented ‘fresh out of art school’ designer Neo Tran for a project. Something about his portfolio showed a seasoned sense of composition and simplicity well beyond his years. He was great and did a bang-up job on the project. We became friends and stayed in touch sharing professional connections and visual inspiration on Slack.
Over the summer we spent a day together going through the brand architecture and a Pinterest board I had been throwing inspiration into. For several months we went through some seriously great iterations and directions. See a few below.
Then one day he sent me this:
And it was an electric minute, and I knew he had nailed it.
We walked it through some more refinements and I started introducing it in our presentations at our event in San Francisco. It was a surprise to our partners and everybody in the audience who have been supporting Next For Me. My co-founders and I had been having backchannel critiques on Slack, so we were generally in agreement.
It’s worth noting that I really minimized the sources of feedback. I didn’t need a survey of colleagues to make a decision about something that we know so well now. I’ve witnessed and participated in cycles of excessive iteration and feedback that only muddied the thought process. The final blessing came from Pam Kramer our advisor, CMO at Cadence 13, and a collaborator for 20 years.
Rolling It Out
For the past few weeks I’ve been experimenting with uses for the mark. Dropping it into our social profiles and into articles, etc. Today Neo is handing over a set of images and we will begin work on the mobile and browser experiences. Our email template is also critical since it is often the only view our readers have of us.
It is another great milestone in the steady creation of our brand as a catalyst for people in transition. Watch as we transition too.
Previous articles in the series:
- A Conference Talk Leads To What’s ‘Next For Me’
- The Story, The Advisors And The Team
- Putting A Legal Structure In Place
- Spreading The News And Early Investments
- Testing The Facebook Ad Waters
- The Modern Elder Academy
- Can Your Startup Start A Movement
- Meeting Matter.vc
- Becoming A Caregiver Statistic
- Talking To Our Audience
- Making Assumptions And Forming Hypotheses
- How To Cope When You're Alone Again On The Startup Journey
- Developing The Brand Architecture
- Raising An Angel Round and Perception
- A Fellow Entrepreneur Offers Guidance
- The New Pitch
- Gracefully Radio Interview
- Ready For Anything, Even Wait And See
- Always Be Publishing
- Getting Out Of Your Head
- Activating A List Of Investors
- In The Details Of Subscriber Growth
- Interview: StartOut
- Keep On Connecting
- Backing Away From Facebook And Twitter
- Sell Your Product, Not Stories To Investors
- Building An Event Business
- Finding Comfort With Agility
- The Zen Of My Company
- I Got This
- Mapping Our Business Plan
- A Coaching Session and Going Bigger
- Meeting The Competition
- How Writing Boosted My Confidence
- Attending Jason Calacanis’ Launch Scale Conference
- San Francisco Here I Come
- Notes from Launch Scale Conference Part 1
- Notes from Launch Scale Conference Part 2 - Next Door and Network Effects
- Notes from Launch Scale Conference Part 3 - Craig Newmark's Philanthropy, Founders for Change
- A Hometown Premier
- Our One Year Anniversary
