Categories
working out loud

Developing a Brand Platform: Values for the Vision

I’ve been a part of several instances of brand development for different organizations, but this past year I’ve learned that they were all wrong. Scratch that…they weren’t totally wrong, they just didn’t start right.

Many brand conversations I’ve been a part of started with the mission statement, then quickly went into the details of the work and what the organization did, then a vision of the future. Pretty quickly after that came the designs, colors, fonts, and types of photos. And each time it seemed like a logical process.

But then something changed for me.

Categories
working out loud

Tools I Use to Manage a Lot of Work and a Hectic Life

tools_to_manageFor a long time now I’ve been wanting to document and share the tools I use to help me manage communications work at the National Writing Project, and really, life in general. My motives are two-fold: maybe it will help others and maybe I’ll get some good suggestions by putting this out there.

First, some criteria I’ve established for myself:

  1. Whatever the tool is, it must actually make my work easier or more manageable in some way. Just because something is pretty or nifty is not enough of a reason to use it. That being said, I’m shallow. I like pretty if I can have it.
  2. It must have a desktop/web version and a mobile app.
  3. I’d prefer not to pay for stuff, but I do believe in paying for well-crafted tools/services.
  4. It must have collaborative features so I can share work and processes with others, and to that end, it must be available on PCs as well as Macs, iOS as well as Android.