Hey there, welcome! It’s late 2014, december, the holiday season spirit along with the Coca-Cola trucks have arrived. An idea was formed and after a lot of thinking, researching, brainstorming I was finally ready to get it started.
The road towards LearnFromMe.net
I had countless ideas, re-workrs, tweaks, trial and error until I finally arrived at this particular name. I was certain that I need one solid and consisten branding across all my work, courses and overall online presence but there were so many ways to approach it. A few months ago, I already had a prototype of my branding which was completely different and I called it “PowerPoint Junkie”. I already had a logo and youtube icon present:
The PowerPoint Junkie Logo:
The PowerPoint Junkie Youtube thumb:
However I was not certain that people will understand that I work with all possible programs, media platforms and design, which in this case would limit myself to only one program output which would be PowerPoint – and as a designer just like in real life you crave to explore all there is to explore. Therefore I had 2 options – work on the Powerpoint niche separately, and establish another brand for all-round or other design related stuff. I came to the conclusion that it would have no sense to try and grow several Youtube channels, websites, hostings, as it already is pretty time consuming ! I still think this is a great idea, niche and a passion of mine, but for the time beeing a more generic branding will be more suitable and comprehensive.
The domain problem in nowadays industry
Having a good idea is simply not enough. You have to make sure it is catchy, it looks good, it covers up reasoning and intentions behind it – it REINFORCES everything you want to show, build, present. If you have done such research Yourself You most certainly ran into the same difficulites, all domain names already taken (yeah sure they can resell you the shabby domain names for your yet-not-established startup for $5k more or less (ah the beauty of the domain business). Especially in 2014 / 2015 when new TLDs streaming in like .online .me and similar there are new possibilities for branding, but for now they seem still not attractive to me, and it’s possible that the good ones are already strongly reserved and taken. In late 2014 my brain still enters up .com, .net and similar automatically (yes, that’s how conservative my brain seems to be). This is just an excerpt of a few ideas I had:
[slogan title=”Brand ideas I had and considered for this website:” animation=”true”]
Consider this TLDs:
*.online
*.academy
*.graphics
*.design
Naming brainstorm:
DesignConfidence.com
DesignAdventure.com
ActiveDesigner.com
Guiltyasdesigned.com
Possible tagline: Online courses | Video Editing & Animation Tips | My Fiverr & Freelance Experience
Shorter: Teaching | Animation | Online experience[/slogan]
The Yourself approach
There is always the possibilty to brand Yourself as …yourself. Name + surname. That is always a decent if not excellent option especially when you already bring with you some experience and positive connotations there may be. It is however different for EVERY single person out there. Of course I already had the YouTube channel and website branded with my Name and surname present but didn’t know if I really want to start and work on that. Reason ? Simple, my name and surname doesn’t sound like an all-rounded design, seo, Internet Marketing knowledge-bomb. Don’t get me wrong here! I love my name (Hi, I’m Andrzej Pach!), but I just feel like neutral people starting to read and learn the things that I do will not immidiately subconcious catch the intentions I want to share. Secondly, I had no great photo present of me embracing the whole concept – that’s where I finally got the idea I felt good about. LearnFromMe.net
Trial and error
A lot of testing, color variations, editing, but I think I sew it together. I wanted to get something simple, straightforward and very very on-trend (coloristic wise). I didn’t want to go for a clinical white, grey Internet Marketing style, I am rather aiming right in the opposite direction. Ballsy, colorfull, flat, typography oriented branding with total focus on website appearance and overall design. I would like to make a great impression the first time you enter this website and show that my tech skills and sense for design are on a high level and something You would like to learn about Yourself. I like what I have prepared and the little problem I and I think many designers, entrepreneurs and business people stuggle is is actually taking mattersin their hands and start working instead of tweaking, tuning and cowarding out. So for here to come I set the goal for me to establish my brand and website by regular posting and content releasing in 2015!
Great initiative Andrzej! Brading is very important and in your post you explain the tribulations that one must go thru when creating a brand that helps promote your business and what you do. Looking forward to read more postings from you.
Cheers.
Thanks German! Great to hear from you and always appreciate the input, we have a long way to go but that’s the beauty of the journey 🙂