(slurping)
- I'm sorry that was obnoxious.
(laughs)
What's up everybody?
Peter McKinnon here, and today we're talking about brands,
and how to create one, and where to even start
and all of the shenanigans that goes along with it.
So, let's go.
(southern rock music)
So the best way to describe what a brand is
or how to get the point across is
when you think Peter McKinnon,
I'm associated with photography,
cinematography, coffee, YouTube.
Those are the things that come up when you think about me.
Or, Nike, for example.
Basketball, clothing, shoes, athletics, sports,
that's the brand that Nike's made for themselves.
So if you're gonna create a brand,
the first thing you need to do
is come up with what that's gonna be for you.
What do you want to be known for?
What do you excel at?
What are you trying to sell?
Is it a product?
Is it a company?
What's that company's name?
What's the logo?
What's the mission statement?
What are you trying to get across to people?
And then that is the brand you need to focus on.
But today, specifically, I want to focus
on the website portion of brand.
Because having a good website, and a home base,
somewhere for your fans,
your clients, your prospective clients
to actually go to is imperative.
And not enough people are doing it,
and I'm here to show you that it is incredibly easy to do
and it's the first thing you need to do
when creating a brand.
If Nike had this massive brand and no website
for anyone to go to and check out their stuff,
well, you know, eh.
If I'm trying to book clients
and I want them to see my portfolio
and be able to contact me
but they have nowhere to go to see any of it, eh.
The website is your identity as a brand,
as an artist, as a product.
It's the home base, it's the ground zero,
it's where everyone's going to go initially
to see everything and to learn about you
and to contact you, and to browse
what it is that you're offering.
So it's important that you have a website set up,
and that it's laid out properly,
because it's more than just
dragging and dropping some photos
and putting the contact info up
and being like, "Boom. I got a site. Peace, see you later."
There's a lot more that goes into that.
Now, I actually went to school for web design,
like way back in the day.
I never finished, but I think I'm
like two credits away from graduating.
I kind of think it's funnier to be two away
than actually have the diplo--anyway, it doesn't matter.
But we learned so much about the psychology of a website
and how to properly lay one out,
versus just the actual grunt work of making a website
which nowadays you can do in half of a day.
And here's a little fun fact for you.
Did you know, on average people spend
less than 15 seconds on a website?
So think about that.
You have 15 seconds or less to capture someone's attention.
To either draw them in with
whatever it is that you're selling,
or draw them in with whatever photos that you've taken,
or draw them in with a video,
or the music that you've written.
You've got 15 seconds or less to get that done.
So in this video, I'm hoping to equip you
with the proper tools and knowledge base,
and platform to be able to do that
so that you can book more gigs,
get photo jobs, book weddings, get gigs for your music,
sell your prints, sell whatever it is that you're selling
because this is where it starts.
This is the ground zero of your brand.
The website.
So throughout this video, I'm going
to use my dad as an example.
Now, my dad's amazing.
My dad builds acoustic guitars, he's a luthier.
He's got a little tiny cute little shop in the basement,
and that's where he spends hours, and hours, and hours
of a day meticulously making these guitars.
Attention to detail, the specifics,
the work that goes into this, the man hours,
the hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of hours
that go into making one custom guitar is incredible.
So with that being said,
I'm gonna head over to my dad's house.
We're gonna shoot some photos for him.
We're gonna shoot some video.
We're gonna pick a template,
and we're gonna get this guy up and running
so that he's got a brand and a website
that'll help best identify what he's trying to convey
and that best speaks to his products
and who he is as an individual.
(southern rock music)
So I'm gonna use that as the basis
to make my dad a website.
He doesn't have a website, he doesn't have a brand.
He doesn't have anything like that.
So I'm gonna go through this video,
and we're gonna set him up
so that you can see the stages and the steps
that I take in making a brand from scratch.
So one of the first things you're gonna do
when building a site is choose a template.
Choose a theme.
But before you just randomly choose one,
because, "Ah that's the one I want, it looks cool! Awesome,"
you gotta think to yourself,
what do you want to leave these customers with?
What do you want to leave these perspective clients with?
Your friends with?
Anybody browsing?
What do you want them to feel when they get to your site?
And what do you want them to feel
when they're done browsing the site?
Very much like putting together a film,
or a video, or a series of photographs,
this is the same thing.
It's just the online version
that's always running in the background
when you're not around to speak for yourself.
So are you selling a product?
Are you trying to book gigs?
Do you want to do weddings?
Are you trying to get more work with your photography?
And if you are, what kind of work are you trying to get?
What kind of weddings do you want to shoot?
And what kind of products, and what kind of customers
are you trying to attract with
how you're shooting the products,
and how you're displaying them?
So there's a lot of thought
that needs to go into these things.
To pick the right theme, to portray the message
that best reflects you and the brand
that we're trying to create.
Now, we're using Squarespace as the engine for this site
because, like I said, they're a sponsor of this channel
and they make an incredible product.
So it is incredibly easy to choose a theme,
choose a template and a layout,
customize it completely, through and through,
and the best part is, in two months from now
if you're bored of it, or if it's not working for you,
or for some reason it's just not exactly
the message you're trying to portray
you can change it in an instant.
That's the best part about it.
It takes no time at all.
So don't worry, these decisions aren't concrete
once you make them today.
It's not like you have to stick with them
for the rest of time.
I've changed my site, personally,
in the last year like seven times.
So it's OK to go back.
They make it really really easy.
So once you've got that template locked down
we're gonna calculate how many images,
and how many videos that we need
to fill up all the blank space
and once we get that list,
we're gonna go out and shoot it.
Now, one of the things I like to do
is shoot all the photos for a website,
all the branding for a website,
all the self-portraits, or all the product shots,
I like to do all of that at the same time.
Because keeping a specific and consistent aesthetic
is very very important for that brand integrity.
If you're selling products,
you don't want a picture of a guitar on the floor,
and then a picture of a guitar on a couch,
and then some random guy holding a guitar and strumming.
You want all the pictures to feel uniform.
You want it all to feel like meticulous attention to detail
was put into each and every aspect of this website.
You don't want a shot from three years ago,
and then a shot next week when your hair,
and your face, and everything looks completely different,
and you're in a completely different setting.
You want all of the shots to be relevant.
They want to be within the same day,
or within the same week
so that you look the same.
So it carries this theme.
It looks updated.
It feels updated.
And it's a consistent aesthetic.
I like that word, "aesthetic."
It's fun to say.
So if your store is white,
you probably want your product photos
to be isolated on a white background.
You don't want a big mixed bag
of 18 different surfaces across 12 different locations.
It's just gonna look messy.
It's not gonna look uniform.
If your site's white, you want to match the photography
to match the theme of the site.
Same goes for video.
And when we're doing this theme we're talking about
templates and aesthetic, fonts are another big thing.
You don't want to mix-match fonts.
You don't want a giant, ugly impact font
next to comic sans that's bolded
and 16 different typeface sizes.
You want to keep everything consistent.
Consistency is key.
Keep that in mind across the photos,
across the videos, across the text,
across the text size, how many photos are placed on a page,
all of these things are taken into account
when you choose the template
and when you go to actually shoot
the content for the template.
Now, lastly, when it comes to templates, simple is better.
If you can break down your website
so even a ten-year-old can follow it
and understand what the message is
or what the feel, or the vibe is,
or how to find certain things, that's what you want.
Because you'd be surprised how many people land on a site,
and if we've only got 15 seconds,
and they can't find what they're looking for, they're gone.
If they can't find where to check out and buy a print,
if they can't find where to contact you
to book you for a job,
if they get lost in all the tabs you have up front
and they can't find your social media,
they're gonna leave.
So making it simple is key.
Now Squarespace is really good at being able
to focus attention to certain areas of your website.
So if yo want a banner that has a moving video
that you're just gonna have on a loop that has no audio,
that's kind of muted in the background,
you can do that.
If you want your entire website to be just one page,
like a cover page with just your social links,
a really powerful video that's looped,
and your contact info, you can do that.
So they make it really easy to place focus
where you want it to be
so that your customer is going to be focused
on the exact place that you're intending
them to be focused on.
Now here's a pro tip for you.
Just because you might have six favorite photos
that you want to feature on your website
when you first start it,
doesn't mean you should use all of those six photos,
because they might not necessarily match,
or look good together.
Now my friend, Chris Ramsey,
has a great analogy for this kind of thing.
And he says, if I was to travel the world
and buy my favorite piece of furniture
from every single country that I visited,
when I got back to my house,
and I put all of the furniture into one room,
it would look horrible.
It just wouldn't look good.
So I need to pick what looks good
out of those pieces of furniture
to make it look the most aesthetically pleasing.
Just because it's there, and I have it, and I like it,
doesn't mean I should use it.
Being a good editor, being a good photographer,
is sometimes knowing when not to use things
even if they're good and you really really want to.
Now this whole process is made very easy
using Squarespace and their platform.
Now obviously they've sponsored this video,
and I've talked about them before.
And the reason I agreed to do this video
for them and for you guys
is because I do think it's a super important part
to taking that next step in your career.
If you want to be more serious about your photos,
and you want to sell them, and you want to book gigs,
and you want to sell yourself
this is a crucial step.
So instead of having to pay someone to do it,
instead of trying to learn all the code,
and the flash script,
and all the different ways to build a website,
being able to pay a small monthly fee,
have that 24/7 customer support that they're gonna give you,
and be able to get a website up and running
in like half a day,
even if you're someone like my dad,
that's a massive benefit.
And time is important when you're a creator.
Wouldn't you rather be spending your time creating,
making videos, making photos, painting, cooking food,
than trying to build a website
that's just taking you days and days and weeks and weeks
or pouring tons of money into paying
a firm to do it for you?
Now huge corporations that have massive websites,
you're not gonna build the next YouTube on Squarespace, no.
But for my audience and the people that watch my videos,
and for people like me, it's absolutely perfect.
If you guys do want to get started,
head over to squarespace.com/mckinnon,
put in code McKinnon at checkout,
and you'll save ten percent off your first purchase
so you can get up and running, have a website today,
save some money, and start that brand,
instead of just thinking about starting that brand.
You know, building a website and creating a brand,
it all seems a lot harder than it actually is.
And the first step is just doing it.
Just go do it.
Sign up, get a website, get some photos on there,
have a place to send people,
and that is gonna motivate you to continue.
It's gonna motivate you to keep going,
to keep trying to build that brand.
Now you've got the website,
now you want that channel,
now you want that Instagram account to be matched
with the content on the website.
Now you want to start booking gigs,
then you want to showcase what you've done for those clients
and it just keeps going, but you've got to start.
So that's it for me today, guys.
I hope you liked this video.
I hope you got something out of it.
Hit that like button, if you did, smash it,
if you so desire, like I've said in the past,
I won't hold it against you.
Subscribe if you aren't already.
And, and, the last thing, before I go,
is we will be announcing the winners
to the Canon 80D giveaway contest tomorrow,
so stay tuned for that,
thanks to everybody that's participated.
It's just been absolutely incredible.
So, I love you guys.
I will see you in the next video.
(ambient music)