Welcome back to Branded: your comprehensive guide to creative branding.

In this episode, we're diving deep into the world of logo design and the importance of understanding the psychological elements that make your brand stand out. We will touch on everything from fonts and shapes to the powerful effects of color on human perception.

We're looking at what makes a logo not just visually appealing, but also psychologically compelling. We'll highlight how your choices in font, spacing, color, and shapes can evoke specific feelings and perceptions in your audience, making your brand more memorable and impactful.

We also explore some intriguing parallels between martial arts and logo design, focusing on the symbolism of different shapes. Sara gives us an inside look at the design of her own logo, while Larry offers his perspective on its creativity and relevance. We wrap up with a deep dive into the subtleties of color psychology, with colorful anecdotes and examples about how brands use different hues to alter perceptions and behaviors.

Key takeaways:

1. The Multifaceted Role of Color in Branding: We unpack how different colors can evoke a range of emotions—from excitement and trust to creativity and appetite suppression. For instance, fast-food chains often use red and yellow to stimulate hunger.

2. The Symbolic Power of Shapes: We discuss the meanings behind geometric and natural shapes in logos. Squares and rectangles often signify stability and dependability, while circles and curved lines suggest fluidity and creativity. We even compare these to the use of shapes in martial arts, where triangles symbolize power and energy.

3. Importance of Font Choice: We discuss the significant psychological impact various fonts have on branding. Serif fonts are generally perceived as traditional and professional, while sans-serif fonts lend a modern and simple look. Script fonts can convey anything from elegance to fun, depending on their style.

4. Personal Logo Insights: Sara provides an in-depth explanation of her own logo design, highlighting the creative use of elements like the microphone and specific fonts. Larry praises its creativity and relevance, giving listeners a real-world example of effective logo design.

5. Color Associations and Appetite: Colors like red and yellow not only grab attention but also stimulate appetite, making them popular in the food industry. Conversely, colors like blue and purple can suppress appetite due to their associations with unappetizing elements like mold or poison.

Whether you're rethinking your current logo or designing one from scratch, this episode is packed with valuable insights to ensure your branding efforts are both visually appealing and psychologically effective. Tune in and let's make your logo unforgettable!

What is happening, everybody? I'm Larry Roberts.

And I'm Sara Lohse. And this is Branded, your comprehensive guide to creative branding.

And on this episode of the podcast, we're gonna prop our legs up and lay back on the couch as we try to understand the shrinkology or the psychology behind brands.

This, I learned this stuff back in college when I was taking design classes. And it, to this day, is so fascinating to me. Just the how the different subtle choices that we make in creating the visuals of our brand.

Yeah.

Impact people. Like, subconsciously.

Yeah.

I'm gonna nerd out so hard in this.

It's awesome, because, I mean, I started figuring this stuff out, like, I don't know, preschool. When I was trying to decide which crayons to eat, there were certain that I preferred over other colors, and I didn't necessarily understand why. But as we dig into this a little bit deeper, maybe I'll finally be able to tap into that little preschool Larry, that kept eating the magenta crayon for whatever reason.

See, that one doesn't make sense because magenta is purple, and purple is one of the colors that makes you lose your appetite.

Well, not.

You were broken.

Well, that's not a news flash either, so.

But the psychology of color is the first thing with it. And different colors just subconsciously elicit different feelings and emotions.

Yeah.

And this is done really, really well, especially by, like, fast food restaurants. They are so good at this color psychology because there are actually colors that make you feel hungry.

And that's kind of interesting. I mean, if you do think about it. And I was sitting here as you were talking, I was trying to think of a fast food place. And now that I'm. Now that I am talking, I thought of one, but most of them have that yellow reddish color scheme.

Yes, yellow and red together, they elicit hunger, but they also have give you this feeling, like red is very abrupt and it's like speed. And yellow is happy. So it's like McDonald's is red and yellow because they want you to get in, get out, but be happy about it because they want. They have that nostalgia feeling at the same time. Yes. No, there really is. Every color has basically an assigned emotion. And when I was going through these, it was interesting because it was so accurate when it came to our colors.

Well, with the pink and the blues and the greens.

No, separately.

I'm looking around our logo right now, the Brady bunch. What are our colors again? I don't even know.

Well, ours are pink, blue, green, and yellow, but mine is pink and yours are black and red.

Yeah. Yeah.

So pink is fun and youthful. And I. When I launched my brand, it was me. Shut up.

It was in red is old. Terrible.

But I chose, like, I built my brand coming out of finance where ever I felt like I had to. I was expected to be older than I was and more rigid and boring, basically. So when I came out of it, I made everything pink. And I did it because it was just my favorite color, and it was a stark contrast to more of the boring finance. But looking at it through the psychological lens, I wanted it to be fun, and I wanted to be able to, I say act my age, but it's probably a little younger than my actual age because I'm in my Barbie era right now. But it's. It's so interesting. And then black, because, I mean, you're the red hat guy, but everything is actually black.

You just have red accents.

Yeah, yeah.

And black.

Maybe that. What is it? That charcoal gray or that very. Not even charcoal? It's darker than charcoal. It's. Yeah, almost black, but, yeah, white. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, everything you do is, like, your website is like charcoal, but you're, like, in your logo and stuff. It's black.

Yeah.

And black is like luxury. And you, like, you talk about your brand wanting it to be very high end, very corporate, very, like, the highest quality. So that makes sense that you aligned with black.

Yeah.

It's so interesting.

Yeah, I mean, it really is. And, you know, I was thinking back to the fast foods, and I was trying to really think of one that wasn't yellow and red. And when I had that Eureka moment a second ago, I thought of chick fil a. Chick fil a is red. It's red. I know, but. But it's not red and yellow. And I thought, oh, there's definitely one that's not red and yellow, but it's.

It's still. There's still red there. So I started going down the list of fast food gigs, and I'm like, who is. Who doesn't know Taco Bell? Okay. Okay. Taco Bell. But I think maybe Taco Bell might not share that color scheme because there's also an inferred cultural reference there.

There's that. But also, purple is innovation. And Taco Bell, it's like, innovation, creativity. Taco Bell is known for having these out of the box ideas. They have the fourth meal, which is not a thing they come out with, like, the mexican pizza.

What's the thing?

But all of these, they want to be innovative. They even have test kitchens. Where they come out with, like, different weird things to test. They have the Taco Bell cantina because they're trying to turn fast food into a bar. All of these different ideas.

Yeah.

They want to be innovative. They want to be creative. So they are purple.

Yeah. Yeah, man. And I'm trying to think. Well, we have chicken express. I think they're red and yellow. They got definitely have yellow in there. I'm trying to go down and. And think of some of the more obscure fast food restaurants.

And even if I try to go obscure, I'm not. I'm coming up short.

I think panda Express is red.

Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Black and white because of the panda, obviously.

Yeah.

Um, man, I think it'd be fun if you're listening to this episode right now, and you can think of some fast food restaurants out there where their color schemes aren't red and yellow or. Or even just red or yellow. Uh, drop us a comment. Shoot us a note.

Subway is yellow. Oh, so subway, it's yellow and green, because yellow. Yellow is still part of the yellow psychology, is that it's also the brightest color, and it's the most. It stands out the most when you're, like, driving down the street. That's why we can see the golden arches from 3 miles down the road.

Yeah.

So they have the yellow, but green. It elicits a feeling of, this is very fresh and natural, and they want. They are subway. Eat fresh, which is total B's. But, you know, that's their thing.

That's fresh enough.

But so they are yellow and green. And that green has that psychological factor of it makes it seem like it's fresh.

Yeah, yeah. It's cool, man, to sit back and think about it. And I think you broke it down best when you were talking about red, yellow, green, and pink. They're designed to make you hungry.

Yes.

And then blue, brown, purple, magenta, even designed to have you lose your appetite. And.

Yes.

Where some of those come into play with brown, obviously, brown's not really looked at as a clean color. It has some negative connotations, especially on the food scale.

Yeah. With food, it's considered, like, it's, like, burnt or overcooked.

Yeah. Or poop or that. Yeah. So, uh. But. But I I don't see where blue would make you lose. So that one gets me blue.

There are very, very few. I think there's only one natural food that is blue, and it's blueberries.

Okay.

That's the only food that is actually blue. So it doesn't, you know, to add.

On to that real quick, last night I sat down for my bedtime snack, and that's why I'm fat. But I sat down for my bedtime snack, and there was a pint of this. What is it? I think it's called snow bunny or something. Blue bunny, maybe. It's called blue bunny bunny. Where it's that they have soft serve ice cream. Okay. Buy in the store.

And it's amazing. It's love. Soft serve ice cream. This stuff is not good for you.

Sponsor us.

Yeah, but I sat down last night with this very creative pint of, of. What was it? Blue bunny soft ice cream. And it was, it was birthday cake.

Oh, yeah.

And I don't recommend it. It's really not that great.

Over sweet.

It's so sweet. And what's once I. Psychology. Right. Once I associated the flavor directly to that cheap, gritty birthday cake icing, that's really all I could taste. But I'm telling you this because at the same time, it's, it's a blue and white swirled ice cream, so. And it's not just blue. I mean, it is a, like, it's almost like our blue.

If you look at the blue in our colors, it's, it's about that same color blue.

Just bright, like almost neon blue.

Yeah. And when you look at it, you're like, it's a little off putting, you know?

Exactly. Blue doesn't show up in food. It shows up in poisons and mold.

Okay. Didn't realize it was in mold. I thought mold was green and black.

But a lot of times it's like, moldy cheese is blue. That's blue cheese.

Oh, that's blue cheese.

That makes sense because it's mostly mold. And then antifreeze.

Antifreeze is green. What are you talking about?

There's blue. And then, like, when you look at the, like, the warnings, like the little warning videos of don't let your kids drink the stuff under the sink. A lot of times it's bright blue.

Yeah.

And antifreeze comes in every color. This pink antifreeze depends on what you're trying to do. I know things.

You're just stuff from freezing.

Yeah, but there's different, like, temperatures and different for different things. I I was, I was a boat. I winterize the boat every year. I know things.

It was a what?

Boater.

Oh, a boater. Okay.

We would winterize the boat. There's different colors of antifreeze. One of them is blue. So is meth. Anyway.

So is meth.

Isn'T that why meth is blue, because they use antifreeze.

Man, I've made a lot of bad.

I know they don't use Windex, but.

Meth has not been one of the bad choices that I've made. So I cannot speak intelligently to the color of meth. Everything I know about meth, I got off breaking bad.

So, yeah, I've never actually seen breaking bad, but I know their meth is blue.

Okay, so.

So, yeah, blue makes you lose your appetite because it is not something that is commonly seen in food. And the same with purple grape.

Duh.

That's like the one thing.

Grape ape. Duh. Great kool aid. Duh.

But even grapes aren't actually purple. Like, the purple grapes are called red grapes.

Yeah. Yeah. I never got that either.

Like, yeah, yeah.

And grape flavoring doesn't really.

Does not taste like grape.

I've never.

If this, it tastes like purple.

If grapes tasted like that, I would eat grapes all the time.

Oh, no, I would not eat grapes if they tasted like that. Grape stuff tastes like purple.

I can appreciate that. Yeah, yeah. I can understand that. So we were, we, we went off on a food tangent, but, I mean, it really does, it goes right back to what we were talking about with the, with the psychology of the colors.

Yeah.

And it's not just in food, but it's in everything. And yes, the reason we're talking about it is because of how color plays into our branding.

Yeah. And the way that our brand is perceived, like, the perception of it. So a couple other colors that this works with is blue is seen as trustworthy and dependable, which is probably why Facebook is blue.

Well, I could see that. Sure. But they've kind of went, they've kind of went counterintuitive to their branding colors, haven't they?

But they, that they can still kind of bring that in as a, to counteract some of the untrustworthiness. Like, there's still blue. It still gives that feeling. The same with LinkedIn. LinkedIn is blue. And they want to be dependable.

I promise.

Yeah.

We only sell it to the most reputable companies out there.

Yellow is optimistic, which is helpful with the fast food is supposed to make you feel happy, but then it's also attention grabbing because it's the brightest color you can find. Orange is friendly, which, like Nickelodeon and Nike. Nickelodeon was a little too friendly. If you've seen the documentary a little too friendly. Yeah.

They should tone down the COVID And I know you're gonna get me for this because I know no politics, but ironically, orange man is perceived as bad, and if he's orange, he should be perceived as friendly.

Who's orange man? Oh, gross. So red, right? I was thinking like, an actual. Oh, no. Well, he has an actual villain. Anyway, red is tricky because it can go two ways. It's excitement and passion, but it's also danger and intimidation and bad business. Like, anytime there's a sale or going out of business, sign all of that, it's red.

Yeah.

And then red is. Stop. Red is. Don't. It's very abrupt.

I'm feeling personally attacked at the moment.

You know what? I didn't pick the color. Blame Alex. But a lot of brands still use it, but they have to use it with other colors. So, like, Netflix is black, red and white. You're black and red. YouTube has used to have other colors. I think they've now basically just red. Yeah, there used to be other colors in their logo.

I mean, if you look at mine, too, it's. It's white. It's black. Red and white. Well, you just said black and red.

Well, okay.

Yeah. So let's not forget the white.

Knocking off Netflix.

I'm trying to balance it when Netflix is knocking off me, I'll tell you that. Right.

Okay. But before they were Netflix, it was blockbuster, which was blue and yellow because you could depend on getting hit with late fees. Ridiculously very dependable.

I got a few in my time.

Green is health and freshness. Like subway or whole foods or like, hello, fresh. But it's also money. So that's why it's very. Blue and green are some of the most common finance colors because blue is trustworthy and dependable and green is money.

But we have a client right now where their colors are, what? Blue and green. And it's.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

You're like, we really do. We really.

I think finance. I automatically think women share, and I'm like, that is pink. But yes, no, we have it. We're working with a mortgage company, so they are blue and green. It's so common. I even. It's even a joke that I make all the time when I talk about getting out of finance is I had to get away from the blues and greens, and that's why I went full pink.

Yeah.

Like, it's so, so common, but it makes sense because it makes you think of finance and it makes you think of trustworthiness and dependable.

Yeah.

Purple. Creative and innovative. Like Taco Bell. What other brands are purple?

Yeah, what other brands are purple?

Oh, one of the phone companies.

Purple mattress.

Oh, yeah. And they were super innovative. They're like a grid system in their mattress.

Yeah. I never bought a mattress, but I did buy a purple, like, seat cushion for my office chair. And that was interesting to say.

I didn't like it.

That's why I said interesting. I was trying to be. I didn't like it at all. And it reeked of chemicals. It was very chemically smelling as well. And it's just, like, not a. How would this be a mattress, bro? I don't.

Yeah, that's. Well, that's a very common thing with all of the, like, memory foam mattresses that come in a box. Yeah, you have to let them air out because they all smell like that. But I laid on a purple mattress at one of the stores when I was mattress shopping, and I could feel the squares.

Okay, interesting. I could feel the squares when I was sitting on the cushion as well. You know, it was. Yeah, they made for a unique sitting experience.

SpongeBob.

Never sat on SpongeBob. I mean, I probably wouldn't. It's just there's so much I could say there that I'm just not going to, because.

Anywho.

Yeah, you were lead us down that path. Speaking of the path, in addition to colors, we also tend to look at the shapes and the symbols that are associated with our brands, and that can have an impact on the perception of our brand, not just the color, but how that color is shaped as well.

And the shape part is really interesting, because then I go full psych. Nerd. And the psychology of perception and Gestalt's principles.

Who?

Gestalt? I don't think it's. It's not a who, because it was developed by, like, three guys.

Wasn't that the bad guy in beauty and the beast? Wasn't that, like, he was the big, strong, muscular dude.

No.

That wanted to date Belle, and Bell's like, no, get away from me. And then he decided to go kill the beast.

That would be Gaston.

It's close enough. Okay.

Very close. Very close.

Yeah.

So anyway, this is a great movie. So the different shapes can show different things, and then the gestalt principles are how we perceive shapes and patterns and stuff.

And stuff. Is that the technical aspect to it? Is that.

Yes. Scientifically speaking, mathematically, medically speaking, it is stuff. But so circles are unity and wholeness, which is, like, the Olympic symbol is the five circles, but colors, yes.

Countries.

Yes. Because. Oh, did you know that the five colors are the five colors that are found at every single flag that it competes in the Olympics.

I did not know that.

Yeah, one. At least one of the colors will appear on every single flag of every country that competes in the Olympics.

How is that possibly true? Because there's yellow. One of the rings is yellow. And I can tell you right now that the United States doesn't have yellow on their flag.

No, no. There has to be at least one color that is in each one. So, like, red and white and blue, I think, are all in there. So then us is good. China is red and white. So if as long as red or white, all five.

But they represent at least one.

At least one.

All right, all right. Yes, I'm with you. I'm with. Yeah, cool. All right.

Exactly.

All right.

But there's, like, Gestalt's principles of, like, simplicity and symmetry and proximity and all of this stuff. So when we look at that logo, we don't actually see five separate circles. We just see one logo.

Yeah, one unified logo.

Exactly.

And whatnot.

Yeah, because it's like, they're similar. They're close together. We want to close it. We want to see the patterns and all of that. It also, like, these principles are also why we can see when logos are, like, using negative space. We can still see it when they have, I think, like, the IBM logo. It says IBM, but it doesn't actually. It's just a bunch of lines.

Right, but we see it as IBM. That is continuation or no closure. It's the guest thought principle that if we see something and we don't see all of it, our brain will automatically close it so we could see the whole thing.

Oh, okay. All right, I dig it.

Like, if you see it like a dog, that's, like, halfway behind a wall, you don't think there's half a dog, your brain knows the other half is there.

You just make that assumption that the dog is behind the wall.

Yeah, yeah. Those are, like, the principles of perception. I'm such a nerd. This stuff is so fun for me.

We're getting deep here, folks. Squares, triangles, lines, curved lines. There's all sorts of different shapes. And very similarly to the colors. They all. They all bring with them certain feelings, emotional. The emotions that they're designed to elicit. How's that?

Yeah, so, like, squares and rectangles are stability and dependability. So if you look at LinkedIn, it's a square. If you look at American Express, it's a square. Also, both of them are blue. Triangles are power, energy, and trust. Adidas is triangle, which is probably, like, the power and energy delta. They want to be the trustworthy one. But even Google Drive, it's like that triangle of, like, the Google colors.

Yeah, the trifecta.

Yeah, yeah. They want. Because they want to be, like, dependable. Oh, no, wait. No, that's squares. They want to be trustworthy. That's the one. And powerful.

Because it's power to have everything in one place.

I dig that. I love.

Yeah.

I probably only like it for the logo.

Probably.

Yeah, yeah.

And then there's, like, the difference between straight lines and curved lines. So, like, lines in general are, like, innovation and movement. Like, IBM is, like, all lines.

Right?

Sprint is the raising the bars. So lines. But then curved lines are more fluid and creative. Like the Adobe logo.

Yes, but.

Oh, going back to triangles, look, because energy, that's a little, like, recycle sign, too.

It is, yes.

So that's kind of like the sign for green energy.

You. You being the, uh, the. The latest, uh, BJJ practitioner out there. You'll notice that the. The logo to Gracie Baja is also a triangle. And it is.

But it's a triangle. That's a gym.

Yeah, exactly.

For Gracie. And it's inside of a circle, because we are. It's United. It is. We are a team.

Yeah. And if you continue down your martial arts path, you'll see that triangles and circles are dominant in martial arts.

Oh, yeah. Because when you triangle is how you choke someone out with your legs.

Well, that's one way. Yeah. That I'm way too familiar with, but.

I haven't done it right yet.

My very first fight, I lost a triangle choke. So that was. That was fun.

I. I'm like, when in doubt, cross collar choke.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, we're really getting off tangent here onto the beat. Yeah.

But I also think it's really interesting when we look at, like, geometric shapes versus natural shapes.

Yeah, yeah.

So, like, things like flowers and stuff like that, like, they feel more natural. But we also will have a symbolic meaning behind them. Like, there's no real symbol behind circles. There's no real symbol behind squares. There's just those feelings that they elicit, like, wholeness and all of that. But with natural symbols, they do have a meaning behind them. A lot of times, like Evernote, I don't know if they're still around, but they were this, like, note taking platform elephant, weren't they? Yes, they were an elephant.

Yeah.

And elephants have the best memory. They never forget. Makes sense, but, like, everyone knows that.

Yeah.

So it's instead of, like, everyone knows a circle means united. No, it's like, everyone knows like elephants never forget. It's like, it's so interesting. And like, when I made my logo, I wanted it to be very curved and flowy and everything because I want, like, it's creativity.

Yeah.

And I wanted, like, I have it as a microphone, but I wanted it to look even a little bit more like a flower than a microphone. Like, have it. You have to double take. You can't tell which one it is because it's floral, it's feminine. It's like.

About your favorite daughter? Logo.

Yes. Favorite daughter.

Yeah. Which is really cool because I'm typically not a fan of microphones. Microphones on anything podcast related. But your logo, because of the way that microphone is, it's not just a microphone slapped on a logo. It's creatively drawn and it does have a flow to it. And it is. It's not necess, it's not overly implied because it's pretty obvious what it is. But there is sort of an implied relevance to the way the logo is drawn.

So in that regard, I dig it on your particular logo. And I think if more people were creative in that way, then we could see more and more headphones and microphones and content related items on content related brands. But I thought you did a really good job there.

Thank you. You know what I actually just realized, too, is in my logo, because I did not design my logo. I bought it off, like, I had a girl on, like, etsy. Design it for me for, like, $12. But in, like, the stand is kind of like the. The wire, but it has a little loop, which could almost be like a leaf off the stem.

Okay. I'll have to look at it closer. Might want to include that in the show notes so people can take a deep dive into your logo.

Everyone, go look, everybody.

Everybody. Right now. Go to favoritedaughtermedia.com and take a look at Sara's logo.

And while you're at it, by my book. But it really is the way that.

Brought to you by. Open this book.

Yes. The art of storytelling for aspiring thought leaders. So when. When you're creating your logo, these are things you really want to think about, is the shapes that you're using and the colors that you're using for your brand, but also you want to think about the typeface, like the fonts that you use.

Yeah, I thought that was a great transition to go from lines and colors and then plug your book and then go into. So I thought that worked out really well.

Openthis book.com.

Yep, yep, yep. But no, I mean, you know, there, there's a variety of fonts that are out there. And me personally, I've got the fonts that I like, and if you look at my shirt and you saw my logo, you can see that it's a San serif font.

Don't start this.

That's. That is there. And you have san serif. You have.

Don't start this.

You have scripts. Don't start what?

It is serif.

It is. It's not Sara. If it's serif.

Sara Alsrith.

Right.

If.

It is serif, your clapbacks are usually better than that.

I know. I'm tired. I have not had coffee. But when we look at fonts, they. It's the same thing as the colors and the shapes. They all have their, like, implicit value, like meaning serif fonts. The ones that have the little, like, lines and the little chickas and the. Yeah, those are the traditional ones.

Those are the ones that are very kind of old school.

Yeah. Like a tiny Roman.

Yeah, those are very commonly in book print. Almost every book is gonna be in some kind of serif font. And there's different brands that use serif fonts. I don't know why I can't think of a single one right now.

Because it's serif. If you were thinking of serif fonts, you'd be like, oh, this company uses that and that company uses that. New York Times uses a serif font, AfCP.

Oh, yeah, that's a good one. The AFCPE does, because I just looked up trying to find an example and they sent me a card. So that's the association for Financial Counseling and Planning. Planning education.

It's interesting too, because I named New York Times, you name the AFC PeaBC. And if we think of both of those companies, they're very, very corporate, very professional organizations.

Yes.

And that could be. I don't know why they're using the serif type fonts.

Yeah, they want to be seen as traditional and trustworthy, but then sans serif is the modern and simple. Like, they're very clean.

Yeah.

Like I said.

Or Montserrat is a. Is a very popular one.

Or Poppins is my favorite.

Love poppins. Poppins love me and poppins. All the ebooks that I've written, I think they're all in poppins. I just. It's just a very versatile fun, but at the same time professional looking fun.

Yeah. Like Roboto is another popular one.

Roberto. Roberto. No, Roboto.

It's Roboto.

Domo arigato. I understand, Mister Roboto. It is Roboto. But I said, roberto, for some reason.

I don't know, those ones are the modern and simple ones. Things like Google uses that because they are so modern.

Yeah.

And when you put Google, it's like those clean. They're clean colors. It's a clean font. It's very. Just clean.

Yeah. Yeah.

And that's what they. They want to be seen as that. So it works like, yours is a very bold serif San serif font. And then is it poppins?

I think it's poppins.

Is yours poppins?

It's either poppins or, believe it or not, red hat. I think we originally. I think when we were designing the logo, we were going poppins and then discovered red hat. We're like, I gotta use the red hat font. I mean, it's just, you can't go another direction if that's the name of the brand, to have your own font. That's amazing.

No, I think your logo was in Poppins because we discovered that later. So your website is in red hat.

Okay, there we go.

Yeah, your. Your website font.

And. And they're very similar. Very similar. But the red hat has a little bit. It's a little bit wider. If you look at it. Compare poppins. Poppins is more dimensionally balanced.

You know, the perspective is a little more balanced from vertical and horizontal views. But the red hat, I think it's just a little fatter on the horizontal scale, which is very appropriate.

And then there's the script fonts, which are the elegant and creative ones. So what, like, what brands use a script? Look it around again.

I know. It's like, oh, let me find a book.

Like, I'm seeing, like, my sister's card asking be our bridesmaid is in script.

Yeah. Maybe we should have done a little research before we talked about scripts.

Right.

I'll look it up right now. Huh?

Mine was going to be my original logo. I love the Britney font.

Oh, like spears?

Yeah.

Okay.

No, there's a font on, like, canva and stuff. It's called Britney, and that was my brand font. I use it in a lot, like, I was using in, like, headlines, and I use it in a lot of my graphics still. But I had that as my, like, in my logo. But that was the first thing that I changed, I think, before I even published it. What is it?

Good Lord. I mean, only brands like Barbie, which we've already got. Disney, Coca Cola, Johnson Johnson, Cadillac, Ford, Sharpie, Kleenex. It goes on and on and on. So there's a ton of them out there. That use the script.

Yeah. A lot of those, like, I mean, Disney Barbie, those are creative. They want to be very creative. And even, like Barbie, even a little bit of elegance, because it is very feminine.

Yeah, it's a very feminine font, a very feminine script. And that's the cool thing, too, about using scripts, because, I mean, they come in, there's so many. There's thousands out there. And, I mean, there's aggressive scripts, there's elegant scripts, there's fun scripts. There's the penmanship type script that we have at the bottom.

Like calligraphy.

Yeah.

Oh, no. Okay.

Yeah.

That's like a handwriting font.

Yeah. Yeah.

But then there's calligraphy, which looks like it was very, like, handwritten cursive. Those ones are supposed to look very expensive.

Yeah.

Because you paid somebody to handwrite it.

Yeah, I would. I would need to do that. My penmanship is not great. Not great.

Oh, God, mine is so bad, I'd never write anymore. But when I, when I first did my logo, it said favorite daughter media across the bottom in Britney, which is a very, almost chaotic cursive. Like, it is a, it's very, like, big.

Wow.

And loopy and stuff. And I. I purchased it that way.

Yeah.

And then I went in and changed it. I had her send me the edible file so I can change it. And I went with Poppins.

Did you eat it editable? You said edible.

It was delicious.

Edible. And you may have had an edible before this episode.

Okay, fine. So I'll eat my words. Was that better? Was that. That was better.

Good. You were on point.

That was good.

That was good.

So with my logo, like, the, between the font being all kind of wild and scripty, and then the logo itself being very swoopy and almost organic swirly, it was too much together. So I took off the name, put it back in Poppins, and then even, like, adjusted the kerning and the tracking and all of that fun stuff so that it was longer and more spaced out so it looked even more modern.

Yeah.

It was a very traditionally kind of look originally.

And that's really one of the cool things about doing your logos, is you have so much flexibility, man. And, I mean, you were using terms there, like kerning, which I'm assuming is the space between the letters themselves. Is that right? Is that right?

So there's kerning and tracking. I think kerning is space between letters and tracking. A space between words.

Okay. Oh, wow. Between words. Okay, interesting. Wow. Okay. And what do we have for the space between the lines? If you've got like a carriage return in there. And it probably just really line space.

Just. Oh, just line space. Okay, cool.

Or like. Yeah, it's like spacing. Like double space.

Okay. All right.

There might be a more technical term. I don't know it.

I don't either. I called it a flicking carriage return, for Christ's sake. I'm still not my top brother.

It's a line break, but, you know, close enough.

So anyways, there's all these different aspects to your brand. And a lot of it starts with color. And then, you know, you have the color and then the shapes coming into play and the fonts coming into play. And it's just absolutely critical that when you're developing your brand and you're developing your logo, that all of these different psychological aspects are taken into account.

Yeah. Put some thought into just how do you want people to feel when they look at your logo, when they think about your company? What are those feelings that you want to elicit? And just do a little research. What do those colors mean? What do. How can you use color to get those feelings? How can you use shapes to get those feelings? And that can help you just develop your logo, develop your look. Instead of sitting there staring at a blank page trying to figure out what could I possibly use? Start with figuring that out. Figure out the colors, the shapes, the fonts, and go from there. While you're listening to this, or after, look at your own logo and your own branding, see if you can pull out these different feelings, these different things that we've talked about. Send it to us.

Let us know. Either send us your logo or send us kind of your summary of how things make you feel. And that'd be really interesting to see because with ours, they lined up. I would love to see if other people's subconsciously lined up too.

That would be super, super cool. So, hey, with that, I'm Larry Roberts.

And I'm Sara Lohse. We'll talk to you next week.