Melanie
Welcome to the Monday Morning Marketing Podcast for all decision makers and action takers. Take it away, Esther.
Esther
Good morning and welcome to another episode of the Monday Morning Marketing Podcast. Today we're joined by Ange Lyons, graphic designer and founder of Lions Creative. Welcome, Ange.
Ange
Hi. Hi Esther. Hi, Melanie. Thank you for having me here today.
Esther
Oh, we've been trying to get you on this podcast for a long time because you are a fabulous graphic designer and you can tell us lots of stuff about design.
Melanie
Award winning.
Esther
Yes.
Ange
Bless you.
Esther
Is so you can tell us lots of stuff about graphic design. Some tips, some hints, some strategies maybe to, for people, our audience, to improve on what they've already got without having to go back to the drawing board. See what I did, see what I did? So first of all, why is graphic design important? What role or relevance does it have in our business?
Ange
Well, I think first off, 100% is visual. You have to see a brand out there and you're going to be looking at a brand. When you first come to somebody's, either their website or their profile on LinkedIn or their social media, it's all visual. And having that brand and having the graphics in place makes them stand out. And I think that you've got to have that in place. If you're a long standing business or even if you're starting out, it's, you should have some visual recognition of who you are and what you stand for visually, I'd say definitely.
Melanie
Okay. Does, does it give you a sense of what people represent or stand for? Out of interest, when you're looking at the visuals of a business, do you think that's how it works?
Ange
I think so. I think it could be like anything. I mean if you're going to go and buy something online on an online store, first off, especially if it's something that the seen online, an advert or something, you think, oh, I'm going to go and look at their website to go and buy that product. If you go to their website and it looks like it's like circa 1990 graphic design, you're going to think these people are not, not really my kind of people here, or these, they promised me something else and I've come here and it looks visually completely different. So I think it's very important to have something in place that represents your black brand and for you to look good, you have to, I think you have to look good if people want to buy from you. And that's what we're about. We're marketers and obviously as well as getting the message across with words visually, I think you have to have things in place that sell your brand and eventually make people buy from you and that it goes from. If you're a sole trader, if you have a service based product, if you've actually got products, people are going to want to look at it, aren't they? So you have to have the brands in place.
Esther
Yeah, it's okay. So you were saying, you know, circa 1990s. That brings me to things like word art, clip art. I mean we're showing our age a little bit here.
Ange
Yeah.
Esther
But is, you know, we all started with that and tinkering with that and you know, enjoying it, what it was at the time. Is there still a time and place for word art? Clip art?
Ange
Oh, you know, I think you might know what I'm going to say. I think WordArt is going to be in primary schools and Clip art. I, you know, I think if you're doing something quite funky and retro, of course you're going to do something. Go back to a bit of nostalgia. Funny enough saying that. I've seen a lot of companies recently use fonts that are quite nostalgic. I don't know if you noticed some rebrands, I don't know if you've seen them ConvertKit and their rebrand with their new email and they're just called Kit. But the font looks quite 70s and you're like, wow, they've actually gone back, way back to the styling and the fonts. But WordArt, Clip art, I think that definitely belongs in primary schools. There are so many other alternatives out there at the moment for great graphics. Obviously we know about. Well, I don't know if it is obviously but when people are publishing images online to go along with their articles or their blogs or anything around their marketing brochures, even event banners I've seen and people might go to Unsplash photography. I don't know if you know, Unsplash the photograph library and there's also pixels and then if you want in something more, should we say more vexer based or around the kind of clip art but sophisticated Clip art.
There's platforms like Envato and they have a massive library, flat icon. There's also the Noun Project. The Noun Project is a great resource for quirky icons. I don't know if you've heard of them and they're really great. Yeah, they're called the Noun Project and you get a lot of them. There are icon designers out there. There's lots of designers of designers of designers. There's Icon designers out there and you can get something quite quirky on there, something quite different. So it's not going to be your standard ones that you'd find on, you know, Envato or places like that. And dare I say, I might. You might bring this up as a question, so maybe I won't say it for now, but let's see if we can get the whole conversation without saying it. But go and carry on.
Melanie
I think we both know what that is now, don't we? So one thing, obviously we deal with startups on this podcast, but we also get a lot of sort of growing businesses that listen to us and larger businesses as well. How often do you feel that a brand needs to sort of tweak and update their graphics? And, and in what way do they need to update them?
Ange
Interesting. I think some companies might change their tone of voice. They might have changed their direction in their company. They might have grown and they might be something else. And that's when I think they might need. Or they think they might need a brand refresh and it might be a completely new brand starting from scratch, hiring a graphic designer or hiring a marketing team to actually work out what exactly they need. And it isn't going straight to that designer again. It's going back to the words and what they stand for, what their values are. So I'd say if the business has changed, then there's definitely call for a rebrand and a refresh. But if you're happy with what you've got and you're still, you know, people are still recognising you, and that's another thing, people recognising you. Do you really want to go and change that, that look that you've built up for all those years? So it's, I think it's definitely down to what you have, where your business is at that time. Definitely. Yeah. Well, for me, I think. And that's when I get. People talk to me about where they are at that time.
Yeah.
Melanie
Yeah.
Esther
It's interesting because, you know, a lot of the bigger brands that are very well established, you know, we're thinking BP, Coca Cola, they've all rebranded multiple times. And their, their baseline is still. Is very similar. You know, their, their, either their lettering or their, their font or their color scheme, something. There's one thing that maybe doesn't change, but something else changes completely. Would you recommend doing that more than doing a complete overhaul? Like maybe keeping your colors but changing your font or changing your font but keeping your colors or, you know, should it just be a. Let's just go back to it all again.
Ange
It's interesting because you mentioned BP and just a little bit that I've read, I can remember around their rebranding recently. They've always been green, haven't they? They've always had that green and yellow, but now they've got this kind of the flower shape behind them to say that there's some sort of like natural place. And obviously they're trying to get into, you know, maybe sustainability areas. But obviously we know that they drill oil and you know how damaging that is on the environment. But so for them visually, they might have wanted something that looks more friendly to them, to their, you know, their people coming up to their wherever, their pumps. But I think over time, yeah, I think people, if they need to like Nike, I know that they've sometimes they change their logo, but they'll do it in a funky fashion way where sometimes that's down to their new, maybe their new clientele, that they've got new teenagers buying into their business, that they would change it to make it look quite funky and not as athletic. So when you think about it, they are just selling shoes and clothing for athletes. But at the end of the day, it's become more of a, a fashion buying experience. So I think whatever your business is, you kind of build it into whatever your customer base is wanting at that time and then things can change and. But yeah, going from a complete rebrand, obviously that costs money and that depends on your business. If you're one of the big guys, you can afford all that, that's great. But if you're the smaller people and just starting out, I'd always say don't and it sounds terrible, but, but don't invest too much because you're just starting out. Just make sure that you've got some sort of, you know, brand consistency out there, but not spending completely, you know, millions of dollars on rebrands. But if they can afford it, they can afford it. So, yeah, interesting. It's interesting because the Nationwide have just rebranded recently, haven't they? And it's funny because their colors really remind me of NatWest. And I'm like, who were their designers there with the market research?
Esther
Which bank should I go to? For our American listeners, Nationwide and NatWest are local banks in the United Kingdom. So-.
Ange
And their colors are so similar. And I just, I literally was walking down the street and I'm quite a visual color person. I was just like, what is that? NatWest or Nationwide? So it's interesting. So be careful of your competitors and who else is in that space and you're changing your colors and your fonts.
Melanie
You know, looking back some stage in 2024, I can't even remember when now, Disney changed their background color on, on Sky. So, you know, you can see all the different channels, prime and Netflix, and I'm not even sure what color it was. I think it was darker than it is now. And it's kind of like a green hue now. And I think when you open up your Skybox, you see all these buttons that take you through to the different channels and after a while you stop seeing them because they just look the same all the time. And all of a sudden I saw Disney because the color had changed and it was just. I couldn't even tell you what the old color was.
Esther
I think it was blue.
Melanie
Dark something.
Ange
Was it dark blue? Was it a purpely blue?
Melanie
Yeah, but now it's kind of green.
Ange
Yeah.
Melanie
So-.
Ange
That's Interesting. So they caught your attention because they changed their color.
Melanie
And you know, every sort of two to three years, I tweak something in my branding for the same reason. So previously I was light blue, dark blue and white, and now I'm light blue, a little bit of dark blue and a fleck of green. And it's just so that, you know, and I don't launch it, I don't relaunch it, I just, just put it out. And I change the, the way my images look. So if I had the picture on the left hand side, now it's on the right hand side. Or move my logo from a different corner or something like that because I think people stop seeing you, they stop seeing your updates and your, your latest news because you just look the same all the time. So is that something that you would help people with as well? Just like a tweak, a refresh?
Ange
Yeah, I think just a refresh or a tweak. And you could even have these things backed up so they don't have to do it all the time. So if they, like you wanted to change it, you'd have it on tap ready for you to have a quick. If somebody wanted to put out, for example, a social media post, give them different examples of where the logo would sit, where the graphic would sit, where their image would sit in their text, just to change it up a little bit. So I think you're right. I think sometimes people, if they keep on saying they're seeing the same thing, they're just going to be like, oh yeah, it's them, and just move on or even like when things get dropped in the door. I don't know if you get that like, you know, it's the same leaflet and you've seen it before, just like, you know, recycling bin. It's just sometimes you need to switch things up a bit. Yeah, you're right. You're right. See that? Yeah.
Melanie
So how about when you're working with larger businesses? Because you work with a bit of both, don't you? Larger and smaller businesses. I assume it's not just website graphics that you're doing. You're doing everything from tablecloths, roll up banners, branded literature. So you know, how much marketing budget do you think is spent on, on images?
Ange
Images is quite interesting because I love it. If all my clients could actually get them done bespoke and have a photographer. Years ago when people had big budgets for this, I've worked with photographers would go on sh. I think I even was in some of the streets where they needed extras, you know, stand on the side. Obviously I got dressed up. Anyway, that's another story for another day. But definitely I think that they would if they have budgets. I'd get your own bespoke photography if you don't. Please try not to use Unsplash. I don't know if you've seen it, you guys, but when you look at certain websites and you think, oh, I know that image and sometimes I take the MCAT a little bit and I've got some pod, some blog posts on my website, I'm like, oh yeah, this is the same woman from Unsplash and I've seen her like several times before. And if you're running a big marketing campaign, you really don't want to have something from Unsplash or Pixels. Trying them, I'd say go for if you can. On Getty, you can actually have exclusive rights. Obviously you pay a bit more for that. But budgets, again, how long is a piece of string? It depends on how much it's like people are going to spend on the marketing budgets. But I know with Getty you could have the license rights for yourself. Sole usage. Another library stock libraries like Shutterstock, you could use have the soul rights. And then if you have. Honestly, if you've got the budget and you've got the props and you know what you want to photograph. Contact photographers. They're crying out for work at the moment. A lot of their work has been replaced by image libraries. And if you've got something bespoke.
Melanie
AI.
Ange
AI. Exactly. AI. I've seen so many images too that obviously look like AI because-.
Esther
Extra fingers.
Ange
Extra Fingers, you know. So, yeah, if you can. And even contact photographers that are local, if you can do that, if you've got budgets for that, definitely.
Esther
Well, I'm going to ask the question that we knew was coming when it comes to graphic design and when it comes to designing things for your business and your social media, because it is something that provides a lot of all encompassing records.
Melanie
You're live on Channel four. Please do not swear. She's gonna swear.
Ange
Is it the C word?
Esther
I just said a bad word. Yes. Canva.
Ange
Do you know what this might be? Close your ears. All the other graphic designers out there listening. I actually really like Canva. I do, yeah, I like Canva, really honestly. It has sadly taken a few jobs away from graphic designers. But I like Canva because a lot of my clients want their work set up in Canva. But they'll come to me bespoke branding and then they'll say afterwards, can you set this up for me in X, Y, Z? Like I need a LinkedIn banner, I need my brochures, I need blah, blah, blah, all the other bits that come along with the business and the social media posts. So I can set it up in Canva, no problem. Canva started off about how many years ago and it is a brilliant tool for small businesses and larger businesses, but I know a lot of larger businesses don't use it still. But I know if you're a small business and you're on a budget, it's free. Why would you not use it? You know, it's a brilliant tool for that.
Melanie
Yeah.
Ange
There are other tools and I'm not an advocate or an affiliate or anything, but there's also Adobe Express and that's another tool that's free and that's pretty much along the same lines as Canva. And with both of them, you've got photography in there, you've got fonts, you've got color palettes, you can set up brand guidelines. If you need to do a presentation that's different to PowerPoint, you don't want to download to Microsoft, you can do that in there. So there are, you know, I will never knock it because it's empowering people to create design and I'm a designer, so I want to see more designs out there. But you've got to be careful with Canva if you're going to create something for your business, especially starting out. And I've seen this too, people pick a logo and then somebody else down the road has got that same logo and then they'll say, I'm going to go get it trademarked. And they go and get it trademarked. You're like, you can't do that. A, somebody else has got that and B, that logo still belongs to Canva. It's not your logo. So you've got to be very careful about that. So yes, as much as I want to hate Canva for taking our jobs, but no, I think it's actually helps me with my job.
Melanie
So yeah, I think as good as Canva is, it does have its limitations. I think, you know, when I created a logo and I'm going to put my hand up there and say this was 11 years ago. So, okay, things were a lot different. I went to a free logo website to create my logo and it was ideal for the thing that go Favicon, that goes at the top of the-.
Ange
Favicon.
Melanie
So it was perfect for that. It was perfect for my socials but the minute I wanted to get a roll up banner or a tablecloth, it was useless, it was too small. So then I had to pay a graphic designer to give me. Was it called a vector? Yeah, yeah. And then it was, you know, they gave me one for pretty much everything. Transparent PNG, you know, name it, I got it. Whereas when you get it from these free websites or from Canva, you don't get that kind of choice.
Ange
Yeah.
Melanie
And you lose so much detail if it's not a good quality image. So it was reproduced by a professional graphic designer and it was then multiplied into lots of different uses. So there is still a place for professional graphic designers as good as. As good as Canva is.
Ange
Interesting. Actually you said about the, the PNG file that you got originally from that website because that's another thing that I come across quite a lot where people send in an image for me and it is like say for example, I need to have a photograph of someone in the like one of the board directors, they will send me a screenshot of their LinkedIn profile or they'll try and download an image of from their website or something. And it's the most tiniest, smallest file. So when you're designing and when you're creating, I think a lot of marketing teams don't understand. Well, I suppose not marketing teams because they would understand, but the file sizes of things and that is really important. So if you're working with a graphic designer, please send higher res files. That's my request for this podcast. And Vexa files, if they're logos, because Vexa files you can scale up to any size. Posters, banners, Whatever. And also. Yeah.
Melanie
Esther, do you have any questions?
Esther
Yeah, and well, I was going to add into that that, you know, always get your logo designed into square format as well for social media profiles. But that's just an extra there. Now, we talked a little bit. Sorry.
Ange
Oh, no, I was just. Oh, no, no. That's really important too, because I think some people forget that the logos do get scaled down and like, what you said about the Favicon too. Just maybe having a variation of your logo makes a massive difference. So not just having like, say, I don't know, logo your name, think about how you. The other places where it's going to be placed.
Esther
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Now, we talked a bit before we hit the record button, but let's talk about accessibility. So having your color schemes and how important they are in terms of color blindness, having your fonts like, that's your typography, your letters and how important they are for an audience that may be dyslexic or, you know, have trouble reading certain types of lettering. What is your take on that? I know it's a very broad topic, something that a lot of people are bringing in more and more into their focus to be more inclusive with all these different things. I'm not going to call them disabilities because they're not all classed as disabilities. But all these different quirks-.
Ange
Variables in people's. Yeah, people's. For starting off with colors, again, it's so variable. People have different levels and different gradients of gradients. I'm using the word gradient. Different variants of color blindness. So there are actually accessibility checkers online. I know the gov.uk website has some. I know I've seen some in American websites where you can put certain colors into the hex codes into these websites and you can see how a visually impaired person might see it if they're got. Because there's different, as I said, different types of color blind. They could be just grayscale. There's somebody that might not just see red or greens. So I'd say designing that. There's great websites to actually initially set up color palettes and I know I use Coolrs quite a lot, so that's C, O, O, L, R S. I don't know if you've seen that one. That's a really good, great color palette website and I love it. But they've recently added an accessibility button in there too, so you can put all your colors in there and you'd see the different gradients of how people would see the colors. So I'd always say if you can start with that, especially when you're branding and creating new color palettes. And when it comes to fonts, people with dyslexia, it's been said that they find it very hard to read fonts that are Serif fonts. The Serifs are the fonts with the little squiggly bits at the top and bottom that stick out and so a sans serif. So without the squiggly bits. They're the best ones for people to. That's the easiest way to explain it. If you don't. If you don't know.
Melanie
Mind your squiggly bits, boys and girls.
Ange
Yeah, the pointy squiggly bits on the end of the letters. And funny enough, we did mention before Comic Sans and people say, I hate Comic Sans. And that is another one for primary schools.
Esther
I hate Comic Sans.
Ange
I think there's a time and a place for Comic Sans and it is primary schools. But also there is a campaign, Dyslexic Scotland set it up and they used the awareness of dyslexia and people can really find it easy to read Comic Sans. And there are other fonts out there that are designed for people such in primary schools or people that are just first learning how to read or with dyslexia. So I say do your research 100%. And there's great. There's so many type libraries out there and it's not just on Google fonts. I know you can get fonts from Google Fonts, but there's. I love the. I love. Have a website called I Love Typography and I love that website. There's hundreds of thousands of fonts on there. I'm not going to go into it because I'll just geek out. I was at the event last night and it was about a type designer was there talking about his fonts and I swear we were all just sitting there smiling and just like, oh, this is so wonderful, someone talking about typography.
Melanie
So nice to be amongst your tribe nerding out together, isn't it?
Ange
It really was. I didn't think I'd enjoy it that much, but I really did.
Melanie
See, this is why all three of us go to events like Social Media Fest, AtomaCon, Social Media Marketing World, because it's just a place where you can just nerd out together, you know, so well. Thank you, Ange, for today. Thank you so much for bringing us up to speed and I believe you have something that you can offer as a download to our listeners if that might help aid Them with their own graphic design. Could you tell us about it?
Ange
I've got downloads on my website and there's a button that says resources. And there's one on. There's one on branding, there's also one on website design. And there's also one in starting up for if you're thinking about starting your brand. But I'd love it if the readers. Readers. Listeners would want to. Shall I do that again? Should I do that again?
Melanie
No, no, you're fine.
Ange
Readers. I was going to say read my newsletter because it's called Font Love Friday and Other Designer Things and it's out on the last Friday of the month and I talk, I pick a Font of the Month. I'm going to be a little bit geeky. Not massively geeky, but I am. And I also point you in the direction of a font library. And I also talk about design if I found them something that someone's got a rebrand out there or. And then I also talk a little bit, a few tips on freelancing. So how I can help if I've seen something out there that might help your business. And then it's talking a little bit about me and what I've been up to in that month. Normally around design and my life, but that's called Font Love Friday and I've read designer read things and it's out the last Friday of the month and you can get that from my website too, but I love it.
Melanie
And what's your website?
Ange
Sorry, I should say my website too. Gosh. And I'm a marketer. It's lyonscreative.co.uk and Lyons with a L, Y, O, N, S. Like if you're Mrs. Bouquet, you would say Lyons, not Lions, so remember it that way.
Melanie
Or T. Lion's tea.
Ange
Oh, Lion's tea. Leon's tea.
Melanie
Okay, well, thank you so much, Ange. We'll. We'll definitely. This is all going to be going into the Show Notes, so everybody be able to have access to this information in the Show Notes later. That's all the time we have for today, but we'll be back again with another podcast and keep listening and have a great week. Bye for now.
Ange
Thanks for having me.
Esther
Bye.
Ange
Bye.
Well, that was fun.
Melanie
I'm so glad you had so much fun and you could hardly contain yourself.
Ange
Really. Sorry, could that be the outtake? That was fun.
Esther
You, you'll be in the outtake.
Ange
Sorry, did I. Sorry, I. I saw.
Melanie
No, no, no, that was cool. I mean, it. It just shows you just how excited people are to be on our podcast.
Ange
I was very excited. Very excited, honestly. And not last, honestly. Last night I tried not to drink too much. I had one and a half glasses of wine. I said, I've got to record a podcast. I've got to be clear and alert. This morning I was knackered. I went to the gym.
