Let’s Find Your Swag
I want to share with you the working methods we’ve developed over the past few years in The Family’s Swag room. We came up with these methods to increase our efficiency. We also wanted ways to help the entrepreneurs that we work with to better define their visual identity.
Defining that identity is a crucial step that lots of entrepreneurs take for granted. A strong visual identity is what lets us easily identify a brand or product. It’s a universe that shows off the product in a way that boosts the overall experience. It lets you distinguish your company from all the others, to be truly memorable.
Below you’ll find the 3 steps to arrive at a visual identity: the Swag Doc, the moodboard, and the brief.
What is swag?
Having swag is about being the real you.
Swag expresses who you are. If you’re a founder, it should be present in every level of your company. It should become a global experience.
It reflects your values in your choice of colors, your tone, your logo, your website. It creates coherence, content and form resonating together.
It won’t make your product better than it is, swag highlights a product.
Swag isn’t about following trends, but is instead is being truly bold!
Alice Zagury
When we talk about swag, we’re talking about a visual identity but also a certain approach to design.
I often tell entrepreneurs to demystify design, it will evolve over time. The choices that you’ll make today aren’t carved in stone.
Swag is guided by the founders. One of them needs to be responsible for swag, it’s way too personal to be delegated to anyone else. Execution, on the other hand, can be handed off.
Our method in 3 steps: Swag doc / Moodboard / Brief
The Swag Doc
This questionnaire lets founders put their values down on paper, together with the startup’s problem and solution. It’s an opportunity to bring everyone together and take the time to think about who they are, what their big picture is. It’s not about them personally, it’s about their crew and mission.
The 4 main parts of the Swag Doc are the founders, the values, the product and the lightning questions.
Once the founders have answered all the questions, it’s time to take a moment and interpret the responses.
Everything starts with values. I really emphasize this part, because they’re the foundation of your entire project. If you don’t have strong values, your project will always be empty at its core.
When I look at a startup’s Swag Doc, I start by pulling out keywords.
Keywords and values are a great way to start looking for early inspiration and images.
Moodboard
What’s a moodboard? It’s a selection of images that lets you see the direction in which you’re moving. The images should be an inspiration, helping you to define the graphic identity of your company. It can include colors, photos, fonts, artwork…
The moodboard is what will let you properly brief an agency or graphic designer. With just one glance, anyone should be able to understand your intent. You should be able to justify your choices. A good image is not just beautiful, it’s meaningful and expresses something about your product.
All the choices that you’ll make — all those colors, images, sizes, page layouts — will say lots more than even you may realize.
How do you build the moodboard? Inspiration is everywhere, in magazines, on the street, on book covers, in music videos. You need to push things further and further at the beginning, so that you can then narrow them down later. Follow your intuition, be open and curious. There’s no such thing as good or bad taste, the most important thing is to create something COHERENT.
Look into the history of art, look into the classical world. When you like an image, go look for what inspired its creator — hunt down the origins over and over again.
You can look everywhere for the elements that will make up your moodboard: Pinterest, Google Image, Behance, Instagram…
Here’s an example of a moodboard we did for Pathfinder. It was put together by Laura, who’s also part of the Swag Team.
Pathfinder is a product that builds bridges between entrepreneurs and big corporations. Pathfinder has to find ways to align the interests of big corporations with those of entrepreneurs, letting them invent new market possibilities.
The keywords are: invention — exclusive — bold — combative — subversive — radical — hybrid
The brief
The brief combines the Swag Doc and the moodboard. It will let the designer understand who you are, what you’re selling, and what artistic direction you want them to go in.
When the brief is absolutely clear, it will save you both time and money in the creative process. If the designer knows exactly what direction to go in, there will be less back-and-forth and the results will be much better.
Choose the designer you want to collaborate with carefully.
Look at their portfolio and see projects they’ve completed. You’ll have to transpose their style into your project.
Ask around you for recommendations. If you love an artist’s portfolio and feel a real affinity for their work, ask them for an estimate.
In the end, you must:
- Use the Swag Doc to come up with a crystal-clear brief (values, product, target, inspiration)
- Write up the list of everything you’ll be asking the designer to do (logo, graphic identity, slide templates, landing page…)
- Fix a deadline.
The Kymono Example
Kymono creates quality personalized outfits for entrepreneurs who want to give their employees branded clothes.
To see how their identity came out, check out https://kymono.co/
Here I’ve given you the method that I use at The Family and that I think can be useful for you in developing your project.
You don’t always need to go to a designer first to create your visual identity.
If you don’t have the money to pay for graphics, that’s ok.
It’s always better to have a visual identity that may be a little off but that’s authentic instead of a professional logo that’s done fast but doesn’t actually show anything about your startup. Remember that the graphic decisions you make today aren’t the last decisions you’ll ever make, and that the visual identity will evolve alongside your project.
