Good design is the key to your business success with Jacqui Naunton

This episode is full of golden nuggets! I talk with designer Jacqui Naunton about why it's essential to build a brand and why good design is a must.

We talk about DIY-ing vs hiring a designer, we talk about business foundations and growing a business by using good design principles. Jacqui is also the queen of Canva so we dive into using Canva for your business to create an amazing brand.

If you feel like your business is lacking something, tune in today.

Connect with Jacqui:
https://whitedeer.com.au/

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Website: www.newschoolofmarketing.com
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Transcript

Bianca: Welcome to the new School of Marketing podcast, the place for smart, simple strategies that will amplify your business results. Sharing practical tips, insider knowledge and actionable advice. Because marketing is something that every business owner can do. Now let's get started. Introducing your host, Bianca Mackenzie. Mum lover of snow sports, camping, horse riding and in demand launch strategist and Facebook advertising knowledge bank.

Bianca: Hey, welcome to the podcast.

Bianca: In today's episode, I am joined by the amazing Jackie Norton. Jackie Norton is a graphic designer turned online design coach for small business owners. Jackie is the CEO of White Deer graphic design where she has helped hundreds of passionate business owners grow their businesses by giving them the skills and the confidence they need to create their own incredible visual brand and graphics. Jackie has helped the clients sell out workshops, gain followers and book out their businesses through the power of design. She is the host of the seriously in Business podcast, which is the podcast for all things branding, design, marketing and business strategy. And she also serves hundreds of thousands of viewers on her YouTube channel with branding advice and canva tutorials. She also leads a team in her virtual design studio to create brands, graphics and templates for passionate business owners. And she is a mum, cheesecake lover, and canva enthusiast. Let's dive in to today's episode.

Bianca: Hey Jackie, I'm super excited to invite you to the podcast. Welcome.

Jacqui: Thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited for this chat.

Bianca: Me too. I feel like I'm like a wannabe designer.

Jacqui: I feel like you can claim.

Bianca: Yeah, maybe I'll try that. I love doing design. I get to do a little bit of it for my clients Facebook ads, which is pretty cool. So let's get started. I firstly want to just open up with a mum question because I'm usually curious how people juggle. So how do you juggle being a mum, having a business and determining your priorities?

Jacqui: Yeah, so I've got a three year old and I'm currently pregnant, heavily pregnant with my second and it changes through different seasons. So she's just added kinder, three year old kinder for like two mornings a week, which has opened up a whole new world for me because we haven't done daycare. And so the main time that I work is on Tuesdays when my parents look after her for the day, which is so, so useful. And then on Thursdays sometimes I get like my mother in law to babysit or my husband because he also works for himself. And sometimes I get like a couple of hours on a Thursday. But other than that, I've been through her most of her life. I've just been working in nap times and in the evenings and then on those Tuesdays, which has been fine, I think it really makes you focus on what you really need to get done. There's not as much dilly dallying around anymore. I sometimes find by the end of a Tuesday, I'm like, oh, I'll just float around for a second. I'm like, no, I can't do that. I've only got this specific time, even though I've had all day for this. And so I guess this year, the end of last year, at some point in the last few months, I've finally worked out a good to do list system for myself. It's only taken ten years in business, but I got there and I'm so, so thrilled. I use Asana as my project management system, and I tried to use it for years, literally years, and then I finally found their calendar view for tasks, and that clicked with my brain, and nothing had clicked with my brain before. And obviously as a visual person, I could see all my tasks for each day ahead. And now I feel like I'm so organized on top of things and I'm finally using Asana, and I do have team as well. I need to mention that in the last year or two, I've hired a va, I've hired a video editor for my YouTube videos, and I now have two designers that also work for me. And so between all of those and me, then usually I'm just doing the thing that needs to get done next on my to do list. And if my daughter's playing happily, I'll just open up the laptop at the kitchen bench and work a little bit. Yeah. So it's kind of just, I enjoy my work, and I probably work a little bit too much sometimes for the amount of time that I'm like, oh, maybe I should be giving my daughter attention right now because she's just sitting there, but she looks happy, so I'm just going to keep on working. And, yeah, the work life balance is probably slightly skewed at the moment in terms of, like, I don't do anything fun in the evenings apart from work, which I find fun, so I'm enjoying it. And that's this season, so that's kind of how things look.

Bianca: Why not? Exactly? Well, I hear you on the seasons. It's taken me until baby number two to figure that out because I fought it so hard, because, like you, I love to work. It was like, oh, if I can just do this one more thing. I'm getting better now. I'm like, no laptop stay shut. Mostly because otherwise I have little people there either trying to touch my mouse pad or wanting to watch a video because they know that video is play on the computer now. So yeah, I'm totally hearing you on that. And I might have to go and check in Asana as well. I use it as well. But yeah, I have a trusty notepad with each day and I just list.

Jacqui: It out because I mean, if it works, that's what I tried. That's the thing that worked second for me. But yeah, going into the my tasks and then viewing the calendar section and then I just drag tasks. If I don't get a task done today, I just drag it to tomorrow and it's all just there and it brings in all of my other things from all my different other projects. I can just add in a random to do at the same time. I love it.

Bianca: That is good.

Jacqui: Right now.

Bianca: I think the dragging will be good because, yeah, I just have to write it all down again. Sometimes I feel like a bit too ambitious in what I'm trying to get done in one day.

Jacqui: I hear that this week I've been surprised at myself. I've been mostly ticking things off for each day and I'm like, this is honestly the first time this has happened.

Bianca: Amazing. I'm getting better and more realistic, but I also get sidetracked sometimes. I need to not. Maybe Asana will help with that. And I guess nothing better than to have a deadline because if you're working with other people and you need to get stuff ready for them, that is a good deadline. See, I don't have that at the.

Bianca: Moment.

Bianca: But yeah, nothing better than that. All right, let's talk about design because honestly, anyone who's listening, if you're not familiar with Jackie's work, go and check it out because it's like amazing. And this is why I'm saying I'm like the wannabe designer. I would love for you to explain to the listeners why good design is important for a business, but maybe also explain a little bit more about branding, what a brand is and why it's important for your business.

Jacqui: Yeah, so brand is such like, it's one of those words I feel like are thrown around so much in the business world, but it's really hard to actually understand tangibly for us as business owners. So I like to describe a brand as kind of the intangible attributes that kind of make to separate your business from another business. And this could be anything. This could be the way that you talk. This could be the kind of brand message that you have. This could be the quality of your product or service. This could be your visuals, this could be your tone of voice. It could be so many things. And so obviously, as a graphic designer, I focus on the visual brand side of things. But then inside that, people usually just stop at logo and it's like there is so much more to your brand than that. And to be honest, depending on what your business is, sometimes your logo is the least important part of your brand and the least used part of your brand. Like, my logo is a little dear line drawing thing. And I don't know that most people would even know that that's what my logo looks like because it's the rest of my brand. That is what actually shines and what you actually see. And so by rest of your brand, I mean things like your fonts, your colors, your brand elements. So just the little graphics that you might use in your business. Like are you using block colors and really dainty square boxes, or are you using really cute doodly kind of illustrations? Or like, if you're like me, I use pictures of clouds and bubbles because I kind of want it to be really playful and whimsical. And so having those kind of things decided for a business is what your visual brand kind of does. Because it means that every time that you're showing up online or not even online, every time you're showing up visually, whether that's a sign or whether that's a flyer or a business card, or an email, or a Facebook ad, or a social media post, or a website banner or whatever that is, all of those things are consistent. And if you just have a logo, then your graphics could look like anything because you're not putting your logo on absolutely everything. So it's more about what fonts am I going to use every single time I design a graphic, what colors am I going to use, what this and that am I going to use and then doing that really consistently? Because that's where the power of a brand comes in. If you do like with any part of a brand, if say, say one email that you send out with your brand voice is really like playful and cute, and then the next email you send out is really structured and corporate, you're not building a strong brand. People are just getting confused because you're chopping and changing all the time. So like any part of branding, for it to actually be powerful and to connect with people, it needs to be consistent. And so that's I think the power of good graphic design is in this consistency of, oh, hey, I'm actually going to nut out what my audience likes, not out what I want my business to represent and then represent that visually and then use that consistently, even if it's not perfect. Like, some people are like, oh, but this branding isn't perfect. I'm like, if you're chopping and changing all the time, that's going to do worse for your business than sticking with a slightly imperfect brand.

Bianca: Yes, I love it because this is why I asked the question, because I know that a lot of people think, oh, my brand is my logo and it's not. And I know that that's why I wanted you to explain it, because it is so much more. It's almost like it sounds a bit, like, *****, but it's a vibe. Yeah, honestly, it really is a vibe. And even when you're explaining it, if your visuals are really cutesy and whimsical and playful, but your tone of voice is super corporate and it's completely not in line, it's like, hang on, there's like this massive disconnect. Who's this person and what are I trying to build? So, yeah, I love that you've explained that. And, yes, good design. So why is good design important for a business? I guess to stand out?

Jacqui: Yeah, there's so many reasons. And so one of them is that consistency piece. Because when you have that consistency piece, not only are you making sense to your audience, because things are actually connecting and feeling like, even if I was meeting a new friend and I was getting to know them, the first time they met me, I was wearing bright purple and not much makeup, and I was wearing this really whimsical skirt. And then the next time I went to meet them, I was wearing really heavy eyeliner and I was wearing really black and black hoodie and black pants and black everything. While someone can be like those two different parts and we're quite multidimensional human beings, they will probably be like, is that the same person I just met yesterday? Like, this isn't making sense to me. And so having a brand that is consistent helps us to make sense to our audience, it helps us to connect with the right people. It helps us to stand out, because people often think that you need, like, a bold, bright brand to stand out. And while that does stand out to one aspect, that's not the key to standing out. The key to standing out is that consistency. Because when you get to recognize, like, I've had so many people say that when they see that my purple that I use in my Instagram posts pop up on their Instagram feed, they're like, oh, what's Jackie doing? I recognize that purple. Like, that's Jackie's purple. Well, I haven't trademarked the purple. Like, had retrademarked their purple. I'm still using it consistently enough that people recognize it. And so that's what helps me stand out. It's not the fact that my colors are bright, it's the fact that I'm doing something that is consistent enough that people can relate to and connect with. And so there's that part of the reason of good design, but there's also the professionalism and communication side. So design isn't just about looking pretty, it's really about communication. It's about what is my message and how can I communicate that visually? And so many people either don't know their message, so they can't even communicate it visually, like, even just for a social media post. If you're wanting someone to join a master class, this is helpful for Facebook ads a lot, too. If you want someone to join a masterclass, you don't have the biggest text of. Usually, if the text of the date of the masterclass is the biggest, for example, that's not going to draw anyone in, or even the text free masterclass, that's probably not likely to draw someone in because there's thousands of those. What's going to draw someone in is what that masterclass is about. So you want that piece of text, for example, to be the largest piece of text on your design. And then taking people on a visual journey, like, oh, then they might see that it's a free master class, then they might see the date. And if they saw the date first, they're not going to stop and notice that. But if they see that what the master class is about first, then they're more likely to stop. And so using design really strategically to communicate what you're trying to share with your audience is so, so important. And so there's that strategic communication. And then there's also this part of looking professional. Because if you have graphics that just look like a five year old made them on canva, then while it's probably better than having no graphics at all, like, do something, do something better than nothing, you don't have to have everything perfect all the time. But that will determine how people look at your business. And if they think that you're a trustworthy professional worth spending their hard earned money on business and while we kind of wish as humans, that we didn't judge books by their covers, we do. We have to, because there is so much that we are seeing as human beings that we need to make discerning decisions around what's worth my time? And is it what's worth my money? And if I see, if someone posts an ad, for example, and it doesn't look professional, then my brain automatically thinks maybe their services aren't professional and maybe they're just kind of going to waste my money. And so having professional design, whether you've actually hired a professional or whether you're just creating it in a way that it looks professional, that doesn't matter. As long as the outcome is professional, then that's going to make a big difference to how people perceive us.

Bianca: Yes, 100%. There's so many examples that I can talk about. I come across ads every so often. I'm like, oh, do I email them? I'm like, no, I'm not going to be that person. They should have paid attention to that part. Yeah, I'm pretty sure you see it as well, actually. Can you tell us what kind of mistakes you see people making most often, apart from not being consistent?

Jacqui: Yeah, that's a big one. I've probably gotten less fussy over my time. Like I used to be. Like, it used to annoy me so much, all of the things, but now I probably got to know business owners more, that I'm more kinder in my thoughts. But in essence, it's usually just a big practical one, is just spacing and balance in a design. So many times people say you've got a picture of yourself and then you've got the text. Sometimes the text is just too close to the picture of you or it's too close to the edge of the design. Or maybe you've put a white box in your design and you put text onto that white box, but then the text is right up close to the edge of that white box and it just feels really cramped and uninspiring to look at most of the time. If people were just to create more margin in their designs, it would instantly make it look more professional. Like, it's such a small tweak for such a huge result in our business. And so leaving balance and leaving space, sorry, is a big one. Balance is another one where people just haven't stopped. They've popped everything in and they've gotten most of the way to an okay design, but they haven't actually checked that this piece of text actually lines up with the heading that's on top of it, or there's too much white space over here and it feels really awkward to look at. So there's different little pieces like that. I find people kind of accidentally stuff up, and then other ones are just making designs the wrong size. Like, they just make a real cover that's a square. And so then Instagram stretches the real cover to being really weird, or they don't consider how Instagram grid will chop your design, your real cover, into a square. And so then their head is chopped off when you look at their Instagram grid, and that looks really awkward. And so just fiddly things like that, I usually notice.

Bianca: Yeah, one of my backbears and I always take screenshots of it is when people have ads and it's, like, just text and you can't read the font because of the color and the background. I'm like, I can't even read this.

Jacqui: That one's just a given. That one's just like. Because I think what happens is because we, as the person have just designed the graphic, we know exactly what that text says. So one of the tips I always give to my students is stop and look at the graphic you've just made as if you don't know what you've literally just typed out. Just check that. Yeah. There's three mistakes you can make here. Like you said, the font is, like, the wrong color to the background. I've seen people do yellow text on a white background that's not going to be visible unless you got, like, ginormous, thick yellow text and it's dark yellow. And then the sizing of the text, like, often we're creating on a computer screen, so it's really large. But people most of the time are going to view this graphic on their phone. Is it readable on their phone? Like, don't go smaller than size 20 text and then choosing the wrong font as well. Like a big bugbear I used to have was people using cursive fonts. It's slightly getting less and less prevalent now, thank goodness. But they'd use, like, cursive fonts for a whole sentence of text, and they'd do it small, and they'd do it in this horrible color. And cursive fonts, they're not easy to read. So if you're trying to capture someone's attention when they're scrolling really fast, they're going to scroll right past because they're not going to work hard to read what you have to say. We have to make our audience and the people that are seeing our graphics their job easy. We have to make their job easy to read our graphics because otherwise they're just going to scroll past. Because they're not invested in us like we are invested in us. We need to just make it snap easy. That's why we need to make sure the most important thing is standing out to capture their attention. And that important thing is actually readable.

Bianca: Yes, 100%. I love that you just touched on that because, yeah, I design stuff on my 27 inch screen. I'm like, woohoo. And then I make it all smaller. I'm like, okay, how long can I actually still probably see this for? And I normally wear glasses as well. Not when I'm on the computer. But yeah, most people do it on their phone. And just that color thing bugs me so much. But yeah, also the sizing. So I always have to make sure that when I design for my clients, because I do design a lot of the ads, images, you need to be able to read it. And it used to be, thank heavens that Facebook got rid of this. But yeah, with Facebook ads, for a long time, the text was not. You couldn't have it bigger than a certain.

Jacqui: That was annoying. That's the 20% text rule.

Bianca: Yes.

Jacqui: And that wasn't even that long ago, but it just made it anyway. If you don't know what we're talking about, be grateful.

Bianca: I'm glad that that's gone. Yes. So we're talking about designing online materials, but how do people, because there's so much more, right? Like, do you also talk about designing offline materials like flyers and business cards and brochures and all of that? Do you have any tips for that?

Jacqui: For people, print stuff is harder. That's just what it is. Because there are a few different things to consider with print things. Firstly, you really can't go too small. Because if you start going too small, people can't zoom into a piece of paper on a flyer. Like, it really has to be there. So some things to consider are, firstly, who is your audience? So, for example, if you are targeting a slightly older audience, your text should be easier to read than if you were targeting teenagers, for example, because their eyesight is usually better. So making sure that text is the right size that it needs to be. For example, if you're doing a flyer size eleven for your body, text is probably great. If you're doing a business card, it can probably get down to size nine or ten. You wouldn't want to go much smaller than that, but for a poster, you need to make sure that it's like 20. So it's really thinking about where is this print material going to be displayed and where. And if it's a poster, people are viewing it from far away, so it needs to be large. But if it's a business card, they're likely holding it right up next to their face. So it's allowed to be small. So thinking through things like that is important. Another thing to think about is color printing. Color is a whole other kettle of fish, and it is. Even as a designer of ten years, I still get tripped up with it sometimes. And so, for example, when you're viewing something on a screen, there is light coming from behind it. White is a lot brighter, and so it's a lot easier to have a black background with white text on it. But if you're printing something, for example, then there's no light coming out. And so you need to make sure that everything you're doing is bright enough and that it's going to be clear enough. And so, for example, I rarely do body text with light text on a dark background in print. One because it takes up way too much ink, and secondly, it's going to be a lot harder to read. And so just thinking through things like that, and the best thing you can do is just do a test print if you're going to get 100 flyers printed, even if it's just going to your local officeworks or using a printer at home, and just saying, can you just print this out just so I can double check the sizing is okay and double check the color is okay. Just double checking those things, that will save you a lot of tears and a lot of wasted money. Test printing is just, I live off test printing things the amount of times even my studio made a box package for someone recently and we did it in our heads, like what it would normally be for a box package. But then we printed it out and realized that it was actually reversed. Like the bottom, what we normally thought would be the bottom was actually the top. And I was like, I'm so glad we tested that because otherwise she would have got 1000 boxes printed and have this wrong. So even as designers, we still need to do that test print. That's really important as well. And then if I was to go even further, there's things like if you're getting professional printing, usually a printer, you know how professional printing, they don't have the white edges around the pieces of paper like they do when you print at home. Yeah, it's not because professional printers have a special printer that doesn't have white edges, it's because they actually print on bigger pieces of paper and chop off the white edges. But to chop off the white edges, sometimes the cutter might move. And so you need to have extra bit of print so that it doesn't have any white slither when you print things. And so there's whole things like bleed marks and bleeds and you kind of just need to know. And so talk to your printer. If you are doing this alone, you're doing a ginormous print run for something fancy.

Bianca: Yes. And definitely get a test print done. Definitely recommend that. So I want to also ask you, when someone's just starting out or even like a little weigh in, do they invest in a brand designer or do they go diy? And what's your take on this?

Jacqui: Yeah, so there are a plethora of things to think about when you're trying to work out if you should DIY versus getting a brand. The first, the first and obvious thing is obviously budget to do it yourself. Could be free. I don't recommend doing it by yourself, totally by yourself, because there are things you need to know. Like with logo design, you shouldn't just use canva elements and graphics that you find you can design your logo on canva, but there's things you need to know around making sure it's the right file type. Things you need to know about copyright. Yada, yada, yada. So, for example, I have a course that I teach people how to do their own brand online. So it doesn't become not online, just in general. And so in essence, it doesn't become free, but it's still cheaper to buy my course, for example, than it is to hire a great brand designer. And so budget is your first consideration. If you've got a big budget, like say this is your fourth business and you're starting this business and you've got a big budget for a designer, just hire a designer. You might not have the time to be doing that yourself, but if you have the time and you have less money, diying is a great start and a great thing to do. Because the benefits of diying is especially at the start of your business. If you're really brand new to business, you probably don't know to a t who your target audience is yet. You probably don't know to a t what your business's main like. There's so many things you don't know yet around your services, your quality, your tone of voice, your audience the way that you want to work, where you want to show up all those different things. And so say, in my course, I teach you how to think through those things, but if you don't get it right because you've diyed, you can kind of tweak things and change things as you go. You can be like, oh, actually, I thought I really wanted purple, but it's turning out that my audience hates purple, so I'm actually going to tweak that. And because I diyed it, I can do that myself. Whereas as someone who's also designed people's brands for brand new businesses, I've usually had people have to come back to me six months later or a year later and pay me again to do their brand again because they've finally got the clarity on what they need. And so if you're feeling like you've got zero clarity, then maybe diying is actually a good thing because it helps you to actually think through that process for yourself really intentionally, and it gives you the ability to change things if you need to. So there's that budget, there's that clarity, and there's that time piece. They're probably the three most important things to think about. But yeah, I don't recommend diying totally alone because chances are you're going to miss thinking about something important. You might do something and save the file in a way that looks quite unprofessional or that isn't actually going to stick with you for the long run. Therefore, your consistency isn't actually going to be great. Probably going to forget about some things you need to design. So those are kind of things to think about.

Bianca: I really love that. So, yeah, definitely get some help with some of it. And I love that you talk about that clarity piece because thinking back now, I started more as like a general social media and general marketing. I wasn't a Facebook ads person. And not that that's in my brand or anything like that, but really that clarity of what your business is actually going to be, sometimes it does come later, not straight away. So, yeah, if you create something and has an element, like a logo element in it, and then that kind of makes no sense later on for your audience or your business or the kind of clients that you work with. I don't know, I'm just coming up with something like if you had like a little penguin in your branding and then you start working with corporate clients, bit of a misalignment, and you probably won't attract the corporate clients because they're not really going to want to work with the penguin. Not quite working with a penguin, but yeah. So I love that you really touch on that clarity piece. Okay, I'm going to ask you two of the questions that I ask everyone. What are you curious about right now?

Jacqui: Oh, gosh. I'm going to be honest. My brain doesn't have much time to think about much more in life right now, other than work, thankfully. I've just set myself. This is totally a different topic. I've just set myself a finished date for work before the baby comes. And I'm so excited for that. I thought I'd be working right up to the baby, but I'm like, no, Jackie, have a couple of weeks off. So I think my brain knowing that I'm this close to having a baby, my brain's probably just anything that's not work is really just curious around birth and raising two children and doing all that kind of thinking. So that's probably my brain at the moment.

Bianca: Yeah, no, totally understand. Been there, done that. Still half there, to be honest. And if you had $1,000 in your marketing budget, what would you spend it on? And you don't have to say Facebook ads. I'm always just curious, what would you spend it on?

Jacqui: It'd be such a stressful thing to have to decide. I probably would actually put it towards because I am doing Facebook ads at the moment and I'm in that stage of trying to work out, is it going really well or do I need to change everything, or do I need to put more money into it to make it work better? So I think if I just had that $1,000 to do whatever the heck I wanted with, I might consider just putting that $1,000 into ads for a couple of weeks more than what I'm currently spending and seeing if that makes a difference. Either that or I'm also looking at learning how to do data better in my business. And there's this course that I'm looking at that I'm like, that's around $1,000 that I'm like, should I invest in that course to help me get better at looking at my data?

Bianca: Yeah, well, data is super important. Thank you for that. I like that. All right, well, that is it. Thank you so much for joining me on this episode. Everyone will have to follow you along. Can you share where people can find you? Because I know your name and business are different.

Jacqui: Well, if you search my name, I think I still come up because my name's not super common, which is helpful. But no, my business is called white deer, like the color white and the animal deer. And you can find me@whitedeer.com au if you want to watch stuff around design, you can go to my YouTube, which is my name, Jackie Norton, or you can go to my Instagram at GD. And between those three sections, I reckon you'll be able to learn a lot about some design stuff and branding for your businesses.

Bianca: Totally. And they're all over the amazing brands that you have created.

Jacqui: You can have a sticky bee at my brand and see if it aligns with you. And if it does, maybe we can work together sometime. Yes.

Bianca: Well, I love it. All right. Well, that's it. Thank you so much and see you soon.

Jacqui: Thank you so much for having me.