How Your Beliefs and Behavior Define Your Personal Brand

Key Takeaways

uh Samuel gay uh senior at C graduating this uh spring uh longtime fan firsttime caller uh so the question that I have for you is long time first time all right uh what brand do you most admire why and how do they influence your work why does that matter to you curious to see where you're getting your own thought process from and see how that's leading to and then also seeing your work ethic so for me it would be Beyonce even though that's technically a person to me it's a brand because she's a brand yeah she's a brand she's a hard worker and U there's like this hu like Meme and like Beyonce has the same amount of hours in the day as you so it kind of like kicks you in the ass and says work harder because if she has the same amount of hours so do you and you have more work to do okay perfect thank you very much so bran you guys all have a brand you know that do you all know you have a brand now a lot of people think I don't have a brand I haven't designed my logo yet your logo is not your brand okay um we all have a certain idea about what's your name what sh sh we all have an idea about what she stands for if she works hard if she cares about what she looks like everything that she does we have an idea and a brand is just person's gut feeling about a person product service that's all it is so you all have a brand now you've been not managing your brand really well maybe so you need to start managing your brand okay I have a brand too some people say I'm a little sardonic a little aurbic a little sarcastic I've got a little bit of an edge okay so when people first meet me in this kind of context and they don't know anything else about me and I start saying what I say they get weird like when I walk into seon and I start saying you guys need to learn to work harder people are whoa whoa whoa but at Art Center where I used to teach that's what they come to expect so if I throw them a softball they're like wait a minute is that all you have to say I'm like no I was just getting warmed up baby hold on a second let me get my butcher knife out and the scalpel and all my tools and the drill now we'll get to work this is what they expect so you all have a brand you need to start to learn to manage it okay everything that you do and say impact the perception that people have on your brand okay so brands that you admire you you admire Beyonce Super Famous living the life and working really hard for that life turns out a lot of successful people and companies work really hard that is a common trait okay brands that I admire what brands do you think I admire and there's different brands that I like but I have to think about about that a little bit Apple maybe I love Apple okay why do we love Apple cuz they're like the top of the top the corn Dilla blue or whatever they say or the cream of the cop the cream hold on hold on we're going to have the subtitle that cor the short words uh Aaron he speaks fren what the hell did he just say what did he say just a what what did he say all right let's not bust out French terms we're not sure we know oh well right let's talk about Apple as a brand yeah all right let's let's do the Apple brand Nike I think it's like that right okay let's say apple okay what is Apple stand for what do we think of them as a brand not what they make what they stand for what are their values think different okay sure what does that mean to you I feel like they would be the front line of new technology most of the time they are um I feel like so there's Innovation innovation in there okay from here or not all your answers have to be in French [Laughter] oh all right let's keep going uh I also feel like they they're not cheap because even in Black Friday they don't have cells so I feel like they have a sense of you know value value well there's the other word if not cheap is called premium right M some somebody might say they they have a very charismatic brand charismatic let me make sure I spell that yeah yeah and you could say lots of of other words yes um there is a reason why their products appeal to designers and artists why is that cuz Adobe Works in it well well besides that oh okay I'll just say works well they've made a deliberate move to play to you yes and they designed well um I had this professor one say that even the little things matter so if like you undo like the telephone or something like that everything inside the phone is designed perfectly so they're even thinking about the person who's going to see inside the phone and like fix it phone that's even designed okay I think that's like no details too small and that appeals to a certain kind of person right yes like an OCD kind of person but I think they're deliberately targeting and championing people that are in the creative space because they're the ones who go and change the world through ART through music through literature and their creative beings so they say we believe what you believe so the thing is we we trust people who believe what we believe this is from Simon cynic book start with why okay you understand that you guys yeah and he goes on to demonstrate have you guys seen his Ted talk or his Lector on 99 designs you guys know who Simon cnic is Simon cic well we'll include the link so you guys can check that later you definitely need to go check out his talk and better you know watch his talk and then read the book he says look I'll prove it to you right now I'll prove it to you that we trust people who believe what we believe more than people that are qualified for the job let that kind of resonate a little bit and kind of just marinate inside your brain okay now he says that what's the most valuable thing we have what's our most valuable resource he says our children okay okay so we have a kid and we're looking for a babysitter Who Are we more likely to hire Sally who's 16 years old grew up in the neighborhood we saw her grow up we know her parents she lives in the community or Mary a nanny from the UK professional qualifications went to this school went to that who Are we more likely to trust or it's a rhetorical question you don't have to you see what I'm saying so we are going to bring the person in from the neighborhood because we know her she's not some creepo the problem with Mary is we just don't know we got to look into her records we got to do due diligence but Mary is ultimately way more qualified than Sally Sally's going to be texting with her friends on Snapchat that's what's going to be going on and if the kid gets hurt she doesn't know CPR she doesn't know first aid you see what I'm saying so this is about understanding trusting people who believe what we believe so it's very important too that you communicate what you believe this gets back into your portfolio most people just show the work we don't talk about what we believe in and that's very hard for you to do and you guys are just out of school or not yet you're you're not even out of school yet and so you're going to be focused on the work but if you want to get into real branding now you have to start thinking about what you stand for now one brilliant commercial to study and analyze and break down is uh the one where they launched a think different campaign when he talks about hears to the crazies and you see Albert Einstein uh the troublemakers and you see Martin Luther King Jr the rebels Dylan and he goes on and on and on he tells you who we're for and what we believe in because the ones that are crazy enough to change the world were the ones that actually do it resonates within your soul it's like that speaks to me they believe what I believe that's what makes them special I I want to ask you U about uh character character right so how do you demonstrate character right does that we know how important character is right and how do you demonstrate that and and what does that fit in with the context of design okay this is perfect I love character character you guys don't want character means what's character you want to say something as far as character sure but get to my closer to your face okay thank you as far as character I think it's what it's who you are and what you do and demonstrate to other people it's what your character is because what people see and how and how you react and how you what you do to other that's your character I think that's what it represent I like that so I'm going to draw a human head or my approximation of a human head okay there's your head right there so here's your eyes okay there's your head okay now there's this idea um I think it's I want to say Freud that there's different parts to our psyche okay okay and I I I'm I didn't study psychology so I'm not going to pretend to tell you what all those parts are but if there's a fractured sense of self we are not whole when the different parts of our brain are fighting with each other and we think and what we say and what we do are not the same or or out of Harmony okay just want you to think about that and he goes on to talk about how there are parts of us that we hate if you guys searching your mind right now there are parts of you that you're like if anybody found out I I I I took their kid's ice cream you know I took money from my Mom's wallet when I was seven I'm not saying I did but you know these are things you're not proud of or you have certain kind of Parts like say for example within a group like this you're going to want to pretend like you're hard working you're really passionate but maybe deepen downside you just want to watch TV and play video games and eat popcorn that's okay too so what we want to do is we want to make sure what we think what we say and what we do I got to get another marker are in harmony okay because you could talk a good talk and I'm glad that you guys said what we do so we strive for Harmony and when you do when you really gain a sense of self-awareness that's when you start to put all this stuff together and so your character it's kind of out of balance so right now you you mostly just show people what you do what's your thought process like and you have a voice so start using that now is that the I'm not sure that's what you wanted to get into when you say talk about character because you're talking about passion right and and how do you demonstrate that you have passion and talent because when someone like Chris you you've said earlier that you have portfolios coming in from all over the world literally right and yes and one of the questions that I always ask questions looking at it is that how do I know this person actually did this how much time did did he or she spend doing this you know kind of following up some of the things you're doing there and so drilling it down a little deeper with passion how do you then so if you show someone I mean if you see someone work you know that they're really passionate about it because they show Rain of the work right and and and they show range but that that range also reveals story a narrative you know the process that's passion you know and and that's very that's very literal right but I guess that could I don't know if that really translate into being character from a business owner right and running a studio bottom line is that you have to have a certain individual it's like for example it's like creating a sports team I when I create something I would love to create a sports team almost being a coach you know because why those pieces needs to fit together to do certain objectives right and so character plays a big role because sometimes as a team you may have to lead a team right or sometimes you have to take a back seat let the others move forward with that right right so that's mentorship that's coaching that's evolving constantly so character plays a big role in the context of you know what we're trying to do right and from a Studio owner so the companies in in businesses they talk about brand attributes right does the brand attribute right does it does it align with your personal brand which is character right as you develop your personal brand how do you reveal how do you demonstr your character because in the core of all the thing is that we're dealing with human beings it's about the character issues if you work with individual with very strong character you could build something from that I believe you're saying a whole bunch of different things that was good you know as as as a professor that's that's what I do I we try to do whole bunch of stuff right yeah so I'm trying to figure out how to Wrangle all the different parts that you brought up on very good things that you're talking about Dave and how we can talk about that in a way that we can understand the first thing that you were talking about a little bit was the depth of exploration showing your passion now if you guys haven't done so I would love for you to go watch this episode when one of my designers she still works here today her name is men and she did these layouts for a magazine that we're working on and people on the internet were freaking out they're just saying like how much time did you give men to do this how much time and they cannot believe the amount of work that she did in the amount of time that I said now I wasn't literally like clocking her every time she worked on it but I know the project span was about two weeks and she probably did something like 35 different covers not iterations but different covers and then I have even shown the people on the internet how many different layouts and spreads that she did she probably did at least five complete spreads of probably four to six pages each for every design that she came up with then we went into the iteration mode when we're like really refining then we went deep again and so this is what I'm saying like you guys when you have 10 weeks to work on a project and you come up with one logo and one application that's in my opinion kind of sad maybe design isn't for you that's my thought there so that's just about proof of your passion and that's that's what we're talking about right the other part you were saying is like and and a brand has all these attributes now we we know this you guys brand say all sorts of things they make all kinds of promises but when what they do isn't in alignment with what they say it's kind of disconnected and it's inauthentic that's the biggest problem there so you guys understand that like there's a big thing that's going going on right now with United Airlines what's going on with United Airlines right literally grabbing somebody in bloody face pull somebody off well that's what they do and what you do says more about what you think and I heard on the radio today on the on the way over that their stock dropped 4% that is about $800 million problem they got going on and I think that's just the tip of the iceberg see the unlike Lots things we have a lot of choices that we can make we can choose to fly in different airlines and I'm not advocating you do one thing or the other but you're going to act your conscience right your conscience is going to tell you do I believe in what they believe in and that seemed so weird I don't know much many details about this thing but just to pull a person out of random who didn't want to leave and to use that kind of force it's disproportionate to me I don't understand that at all and in this day and age with that many cell phones smartphones oh boy that is a disaster so who knows what kind of impact long-term short-term impact it's going to have so what you think Sayan do they have to be in alignment there and without turning into this long psychological probe I think Dave mentioned one other thing do you guys remember what the third thing was I should have written it all down it was pretty deep and this is not a choreograph thing that Dave and I had planned ahead of time to beat you guys down this is not like the season finale of The Walking Dead last season where there's like a dead body on the floor and we just don't know what happened um yeah he said he talked about like being a part of the team oh yeah yeah yeah thank you very much I did write that down boom right there it says teamwork somebody's paying attention but U knowing when like take back seat also no want to take a back seat I'm not sure this is in relationship to to character per se but there is Team Dynamics for sure when you have a bunch of individuals then they have individual goals they have yet to find and Define a common purpose when you have a common purpose you can work towards that goal so right now if you guys have ever done a group project it's a total cluster F everybody wants to do what they want to do and kind of rightfully so because at the end of the day you need to take care of number one in that sense that you need to walk away with something that's going to get you a job so we can't always align with the people that we're working with because sometimes we're assigned teammates that don't share the values that we share that don't want to achieve the same thing and often times Team Dynamics break down when one or two people wind up doing the work of the remaining five team members because there are people who want to lead and there other people who are just content writing their code Tails that's a real problem I think in the sense of a teamwork I think it would be better better to have clearly defined strengths of each person you don't necessarily want to have two writers two logo designers all in the same group you want to program for diversity personality styles that kind of thing you don't want two Alphas in the same group doesn't work well okay so and then you could change the role you can say okay so we have clearly assigned roles and we'll flip them so everybody gets a chance to try different roles but that's really really tough thing [Music]