How to create a brand vibe people f*ck with

In today's video, we're going to talk about how to make a brand aesthetic that people actually like and how to world build around your brand visually and tie it all together in a modern way. I'm going to be sharing my workflow in Milanote for my brand and for client projects. And this is actually really important because a lot of creatives are visual thinkers, but they don't have the right visual tools. And until I got this workflow here, where as you can see, where I can go look at boards at a high level and scroll through everything that I have going on visually and like watch the tie-ins and make notes about it, I was like stuck in a workflow that didn't work. But we will start with putting the inspiration together visually behind a collection. We will go into building out a brand theme. We'll talk about individual shoots. We'll talk about your social content. We'll talk about bridging the gap between collections. And then we'll talk about building like a visual world as a designer that goes beyond maybe what you do just with a brand, but what you do across projects since I work on all. So we're going to start here inside my studio board. And one of the most important things that goes into any pre-brand process is putting the mood boards together for it. So as you can see here, these are the boards that were initially behind my valuable brand. There's many call-outs and many of you will be like very obviously seen. I put together like that summary of items and item ideas that I wanted to have in there, graphic and graphic ideas, and some kind of like lifestyle and themed overlays that I can go back to that from the start. Anytime I want to create a visual, I would go back and be like, does it play inside this world? And you'll notice it's not a huge board, maybe 50 images on here, probably less, but they tie into a couple of recurring themes. And anyone should be able to scroll through the kind of board the way you scroll through the board here and have a general visual understanding of what you're trying to do with the brand. And you'll see I would kind of now navigate that into what I'm actually creating. So next to it, I would put individual briefs of things that I'm working on, right? So I'm working on these duffel bags I'm about to release here in a few months. And then from the start, I kind of had these overlapping items. If you look over at the board to look at the bags with its references, it makes complete sense. You can see visually how one ties to the other. Same thing with the briefs I have for several products, all the kind of references we put together, all the way to some of the tech packs of the initial stuff. Whenever you kind of have a visual display like this, you should be able to kind of see how things work together and how it all makes sense inside of one world. And with that usually comes a list of iconography, right? Like when I put together that initial board, eagles, snakes, leather, kind of car logos, was the initial thing that tied that world into what we wanted it to be. And this is where I really encourage people to find and lean into aesthetics that work. Where you'll see brands, oh, this is a Y2K brand, this is an opium brand, this is a Western brand. This Western world is one that I'm familiar with. As many of you probably know, I've worked for five or six years with a women's wear Western brand, where we've created a world around like a very particular look and feel. And so this visual identity, obviously much more men's focused, a little more streetwear focus was very familiar to me. But a lot of these general ideas, you want to look at from aesthetic perspective, you have to look at who is actually appealing to and has the ability to create something different. And so what do I mean by that? I mean, you see all these brands pop up, or it's the same logos, the same iconography, the same rough designs played out in a slightly different color way or with a different logo. And with the way social media is now, you can get some popularity. You can even get to your six-figure drop by doing that. But it doesn't give you that same longevity that understanding patterns, understanding materials, that building out a story and it uses something unique for a demographic does. So I want to anchor, because I had this familiarity with the Western world building, I want to anchor inside an opening that I saw, where I was basically like, hey, there is certain guys in certain places that enjoy this vibe, who have been introduced to more fashionable clothing, into a more fashion-forward life, into streetwear by the internet, by the TikTokers that look like them, to help them style themselves, by some of these accounts and Instagrams who begin to kind of purchase more heavily. But there isn't really a brand that speaks to them. There may be Rude, which is kind of way too expensive and feels way more streetwear. There's kind of like the vintage era that's hard for people to actually go find and hunt down. And I was like, all right, I think I can create a world around that. And more importantly, I could create utility products around that. Because I went and looked at things like these bags and was like, there's just not the right product for people's lives that exists out there. There's some good brands, but they don't have that same aesthetic feeling of what's like modern and popular today. And that's why I centered the thesis around some of my first designs on, and then tying that into the same utility of, hey, a car is a natural extension of someone's style and personality. How about we create some products for that, right? Think about the areas with which this goes, to go beyond apparel and clothing, and map that all out, like inside of these initial boards. One thing to understand and lean on is that your initial concepts aren't necessarily what you roll with forever, right? There's the concepts you have. There's the applications of the concepts. And then there's what customers actually think, ultimately what sells, and then what you want to do. And I've been working through all of that. And there's basically no content that talks about this on the internet, because designers are often really private about it. And I'm going to walk through that whole experience. So working on a photo shoot is an extension of that. I like to work side-by-side, board-to-board on those. So this is a photo shoot, I have a video about a photo shoot I do with Garrett King, where we did these kind of like heist-themed shots with models for one of the latest campaign releases. And this was the mood board for it, we kind of mapped out, where, again, I want this to live in the same visual universe as this, but to be more cinematic, more shoot-focused. I feel like it's important to have those different boards, because you begin to be able to feel this idea of like fire incorporated into it, of motion incorporated into it, of the vehicle being the star, of every one of these feeling like they're a frame from a movie as opposed to a photo of a model, right? When we began to put the shoot together, we began to have this as what we uncovered behind it. And same thing with even the colors we had in the shoot, and the colors, this was like the clothing colors that are in there, I'm really pulling hexes and pantones and putting them up here, so we can see kind of what works visually in the same place. I can look at these side-by-side and being like, this shoot feels like an extension of this brand story. And then I come down here into my actual assets, the things that actually came of that. And so this was like directly inspired by what's above, same here, and ties into some of the assets that we'd run before. I'm trying to make sure the storytelling and the visual world is the same. I'm literally embedding Instagram posts in my Milanote here, so I can see how they work together, right? Because this whole Night of the Covenant idea is for our Black Friday sales, kind of like Cormac McCarthy based, which is like the brand voice. And it lives in the same visual world as these, even though they're shot by different people, the look is a little bit different, it feels right, you can see the colors have shifted across this well. Same thing here, different shoot, but the cover ties it together. Starting with that other shoot, we're beginning to add the video game element to it. But I, inside these boards, I'm saying, okay, here's excerpts from social media. Here's excerpts from the white background shots and the model shots. Here's other shots I haven't got yet from this shoot and that shoot that I'm gonna have here. And then start to think about, okay, what's missing, what ties together? Like there's really warm light here. I need that warm light on these before I release them to be able to kind of make these visually make more sense together. You know, I'm basically outlining all these assets into one place to see how things move and how things navigate. And then adding design styles in that too. Like as we began adding designs for carousels, et cetera, this is a different feel. I'm beginning to explore for the future. I kind of have that shift happening inside these boards. And so that's worth noting and exploring as well, is what happens between these moments of these brands. So right now I'm going through a shift in this brand world building, where I found some success from some of these initial products inside of some kind of specific niches. I found some success in meta ads. I found some things that didn't work or sell as well. And I'm beginning to look towards the future. I'm also thinking from myself as a designer, what do I want to build? And this is probably a video in its own right, but there's this whole idea of like luxury pricing and the end of luxury pricing. And something I really wanted to position against is like you can go buy $800 shorts and shirts and whatever, but there's so few people who can actually do that. But more and more brands pricing there. I want to be able to deliver, you know, a certain level of quality in this mid range. I feel like it's going to be a bigger category. But with that, as I began to build the brand story, it actually felt like at the beginning, I went almost too under luxury for this. Where the things that I truly aspire to build and create where my design talents are do lie higher end. And instead of trying to create a story that almost like lives too much in the middle. And so I'm thinking as I get into, you know, ready for this next release, I'm putting out this next month and I get ready prepping for summer. What does a transition look like from what I started with, from what I've validated, what I've sold to where it's actually going. And that's where we enter into this shoot that we have here and into this kind of summer collection. So I'm getting ready to release for summer. We've designed bags for it. I have a bunch of kind of samples, like something like newer things coming, redoing some of my popular items, like these beach pants I have. And I've kind of put together a board that I feel like lives in a similar visual world, but is elevating it a bit, is moving it a bit more towards summer. Where I want to be able to connect the dots between the more vintage beach feel and the more vintage race feel and like have it make sense. And then in the middle here, I have the shoot that we're about to do. Where I want to bridge the gap between what we did in this last shoot and getting to this next world while I release a bunch of these products. And this is again, the power of having all of this next to each other is you can begin to see what all of this looks like. Because I'm tying all of this together, right? Because over here at the same time, I'm also configuring my visual world, right? So right now you see me recording here in front of this. This setup here has no visual tie-in to what I do with my brand. And I'm also at the same time, redoing my house as a creative space. And I want that to have a visual tie-in to the brand. So I'm actually literally laying out in the mood board, what our plan is for my home. To be like, okay, where does that overlap? Can I shoot content for the brand inside that? Can these stories kind of align? And the answer is like, they don't really yet. But that's the things that you're able to hack out on a board. Because what there isn't just enough conversation about is you have your brand story. You have your individual shoots. You have where your brand wants to go. Then you have the environments you created, whether that's with photographers or studios or your office space or where you shoot as a creator. And eventually I want all of these to kind of be synonymous. Because one of my goals this year is to have my brand not feel fully separate, which it basically is now. Have it feel more aligned with where I am as a creator, since I'm a very primary driver of it. And so all this happens like here inside this space. And then ties into what we're doing with product. I'm working through these new duffels here. This is one of the duffels I did for Fermat. I'm looking at the colorways and where that kind of plays in. I'm looking at these products as they get released and the colorways and things that look there and how that could work on it. And I'm literally tying the releases and what those look like to what I'm thinking about for my space to what I'm thinking about for the future. And one of the directions I have for the future I'm outlining here, where as I think about where the products go, I want to leave these initial colorways, right? Where you saw, hey, it's red, it's cream. And I want to build into these greens, these blues. I want to build into more technical garments. I want to build into more bags and accessories, into more texture inside of the clothes. Now that I see that there's a positive response to that. And having this mapped out this far, where this is basically fall next year, ideally I'd be mapped into early 26, but we're not because the brand is like new and still finding its groove. Like all that's happening like here inside these boards. So I'm gonna talk a bit about how I did this in Milanote. Now I'm actually gonna show some of like the garments that are tying this together. And then we'll talk about my client workflows and the client story inside this as well. So as you've seen throughout this video, I use Milanote to organize my brand workflow and they graciously agreed to partner on this video. And so every project I do has a master board, like I'm showing you here. Basically my brand universe, where I can visually look at everything going on and like track the workflow and make sure it's cohesive. So what I don't think I haven't showed so far is like this corner here, where I have everything from like a very simple to-do list to like the core creative brief we have, to some tech pack links, to where things are in terms of production and like a list of the incoming items is all happening inside this same sheet that the visual universe is. Again, I have the smaller versions of my mood boards. We share notes about the project in here. I have these color call-outs about the color stories and how they evolve. They actually just let you pick a hex and I'll do these color code ones, which is the little thing I love. But you can also create sub boards and offshoots. So when I talk about client projects, like I do a lot of product design for client projects as well. So one of them that I'm working on right now, I have a sub board in here because there is just a lot of overlap. I'm using the same designers. I work on the same team on it. It's often the same photographers. It operates in a associated visual world. When I do a client project, there's another one that is kind of popping up here for like a sub brand. All of this happens in the same board. So I can easily jump beneath them and then those sub boards, I can then share them separately if they're going like direct to a client or a different team without having them see the master board. But I love this as a platform because I can embed these social posts like this is here. Like literally, I just copied an Instagram link. I was able to embed it, whether that's published work or references that we have. And this is the exact type of organization that works for my creativity. I need to see everything and Milanote is the app to do that. You can get started with them at the link that I have down below. And Milanote is available for free with no time limit. Popping back into this, I want to talk about some of the items that are coming out and how those tie into this kind of visual world that's being created. And I want to talk about some client products. So one of the through lines I have for this brand from the start is texture. I care a lot about texture and material. For anyone that's experienced the shirts or gotten some of the things that I sell, you'll notice that everything is just a level above in terms of like texture and material quality of anything else similar that you've gotten because of my expertise kind of in supply chain. But as I shift towards this future mood board, you see here, you'll notice everything has very intense colorways, textures, looks, and technicality. And I'm beginning to bridge the gap in between where I am now and where that is going with this next release. So this is one of the first products. This is a textured cargo pant. And if you saw the videos where I went sourcing fabric overseas, this is a material we actually found on the trip where I went to Guangzhou. It is a Japanese material. It's 100% cotton. It almost feels like a heavy denim but a little bit more flexible that we found while on that trip. And that's how I build that story out, right? Is I'll find these materials I want to make part of the brand and then bring them into this work. But the same thing, you can see some of the branded bags that we do is we found that in multiple colors. And so we have that same pant coming out in black as well. They begin to have this more of a material story that matches the future of where I'm going with the brand while also still having iconography that can bridge there. And then it's releasing with this shirt, which changes slightly. A lot of people request to do undistressed shirts. Though we sell well on the distressed shirts, I understand that, again, my audience as a creator is much broader than my audience for the brand. I'm trying to increase some of that appeal with what this works like here. And so if people don't want to say, hey, I can't wear something that's that distressed, I want to give them some options. We're releasing just one blue distressed shirt to see what people think of it. And again, it's the same iconography. It's the same feel. It's one of the same designs on the back that the cowboy I've released in the previous. So the line feels like it has a bit of cohesion but you begin to see the change of what's happening. In the colors, like in the materials, like in the silhouettes from this initial kind of very Americana driven to a bit of where I'm going. And then same thing with the evolution of the shoes as well where I'm moving into that similar color base. You can see obviously the color of the shoes and the shirt matches. It's going more into the blue and the blue and green I eventually plan to have. It's incorporating some of the same iconography but it's upgrading the material significantly from the first shoe we did, which is much more casual to this, which is significantly more luxe. But it's this combination of having my visual universe together, of identifying all these shoots and where they are in the storyline of knowing really far where I want to go. And then overlaying the sales data and the customer data on top of this, that's getting me to where I want to go. I know this is a process, right? Like I mentioned, we've been working on that women's wear brand now. It's like five or six years to get it to where we want it to be where it's a really consistent brand. And on that, like I'm very focused on the ad and like email, like funnel and sales, like on that brand. So I'm very much in the what products sell or the assets that sell them. And I think it's going to take an equally long journey is what I'm doing here. But now I at least have more background and expertise inside of understanding from the data. What does this mean? What should we test? Kind of what works well together. Now let's talk about client projects too. Because all of this is, while this is a brand, this is an extension of my creator work, of my creativity, something I'm trying to create. It's an overlap between my identity and work. I still design for a lot of other people. And I still work on a lot of other projects. And all of those things, when you begin to think of yourself as a creative, as a designer, as a personality, like have an impact. And how they tie together is important to think of your work holistically. Because I want people eventually to be like, see something and be like, hey, was that Orin? And when we did the Fermat Drap, people like immediately were like, hey, did you do this? Because they knew the things that I like and enjoy. And the quality of some of the stuff and the look of some of the hoodies and the washes I've mentioned, they begin to see it. The iconography ties into stuff that makes sense visually for me. And so I've renamed some of this and moved it around just because I want everyone seeing things like the exact workflow here. But you can see this is the mood board for a project I'm doing, like another merchandise project. And it fits in the same world, but there's some differences, right? Where like I don't do anything in like Chrome or Silver or anything like that. That's going to live inside this brand's universe. But you can feel the iconography and the garments and everything tie back in reference to the brand. And that's how I thought about one of the through lines of me as a designer and with brands is that like the Fermat duffel bag was so good because I've been working on a duffel bag. And I was like, hey, I'm just going to take this thing we've been working on, do a version of it on a client project while I continue to work on it for my brand. And I view like all these silhouettes and things I've created. Like if I work with a client and they want to run a version of this cargo pant in a different material, like great. That's a silhouette I've developed. I know it works. They get something they already like. Similar to this, like this is a new brand concept that we're researching. Colorways are all out there doing something more female focused, looking at bags. You have kind of the inspiration here, looking at a lot of like older Chrome Hearts and Chrome Hearts bags, where again, this fits very naturally into the visual universe I'm in now, but it's an extension in a very different way than where the current brand is going. But being able to keep these boards and these associations and these iconography, like inside of one project and easily reference, okay, here's what I have going on with these other projects. Here's where the core line is going. Does something feel really off? Does it make sense? Does it have to make sense? Like that's a bit of how like aesthetic world building, I think people should be spending time on. And so if you're a designer, I know you're designing. And if you're a brand creator, I know you have all these things happening, but having this in one visual place, like is absolutely crucial. And then overlaying it, like if I can recommend one thing, having gone through this a number of times and in the middle of it now is like overlaying that sales data, like on top of all of this. And one of the big new initiatives that we just kicked off a few days ago is I have someone who's just dedicated to experience, like on the brand team, who is emailing every customer like our first thousand customers, basically to be like, hey, this is like our starter group that really believed in us to like feedback that and to get early feedback on the things that are happening and to be able to tie that community closer together to what's actually happening and have that not purely be online on social media because some of those connections are better directly because some of the customers that are buying aren't gonna be in your comments, aren't gonna be responding to it. And I do feel like aesthetics and results and where brands go needs to be more driven now by conversation because of how saturated everything is. So I know we covered a lot of concepts inside this video. I really just want to show this kind of like higher level thinking of how brand visuals tie together, of how to think about products and generations of things, of finding your particular aesthetic and just going to the actual intricacies of brand building more than you just print these t-shirts and run these Facebook ads because when I look at like the future of this, at least for me, is whether this is just an extension of my creativity or whether this grows into something bigger than that, like I want it to be around generationally. I want it to be something that is a part of my life for decades, if not forever. And to do that, like having intention from like moment one, insert how you build your visual world, I think is more crucial than ever. So thank you very much for watching. Did you want to try out Milanote? It is below. This stuff is all coming out next few weeks. It's all on a boat. And if you want to be early for that, just get on the email list. We will go email list first on every single release and make sure people there have the chance to purchase before we do mainstream release. And that's at valuablestudios.com. Thank you all so much for watching.