Welcome to Issue 2 of our Visual Assembly series. Brand Split Personality? Here’s Your 15-Minute FixOpen your website. Now check your social media. Look at your email signature. Do they feel like the same business? For most solopreneurs, the answer is no. Today’s Brand Essentials Toolkit will fix that visual disconnect forever. By establishing these core elements, you're not just picking colors and fonts – you’re building a visual system that drives business growth. This is your first step in transforming visuals from a time-sink into a business asset. Why brand essentials matterThink of your brand elements as the DNA of your visual presence. Without this genetic code, your business visuals can mutate randomly. When that happens, potential customers might: ⚠️ Question your professionalism ⚠️ Fail to recognize your content across platforms ⚠️ Miss the connection between your various offerings ⚠️ Struggle to remember your brand Just as DNA provides consistent instructions for every cell in your body, your brand essentials create a foundation that guides all content creation. This blueprint transforms scattered visuals into a streamlined system that works automatically. Your three core elementsLet’s focus on the essential trio that forms the foundation of every strong visual brand: ✅ Colors ✅ Logo ✅ Fonts Remember, these elements should be intentional choices made in advance, not spontaneous decisions during content creation. Think of them as your visual strategy, not last-minute design decisions. 🛠 This week’s visual buildLet’s continue to build your visual system. Grab a fresh document. Set a timer for 15 minutes. Ready to lock in your core elements? 1️⃣ Colors (5 minutes)
Pro tip: Save your color hex codes (like #FF5733) for perfect color matching across all platforms. 2️⃣ Logo (5 minutes)
3️⃣ Fonts (5 minutes)
Making it workOnce documented, these elements become your visual automation tool. This system eliminates decision fatigue, speeds up creation, and ensures your visuals consistently build audience trust. As your business grows, these foundational elements scale with you, making your visual content work as hard as you do. Put them to work: ✅ Speed up social media creation ✅ Build professional marketing materials ✅ Guide designers effectively ✅ Make confident visual decisions These elements aren’t set in stone. As your business evolves, your brand can too. But changing them should be an intentional decision, not a drift. Question: Which of the three core elements do you find most challenging to maintain consistently? What’s the best solution for your workstyle? ⭐️ This week’s SOLO Insight: ”Consistency builds recognition.” Store these brand elements somewhere you’ll actually use them daily. Next week, we’ll build on this foundation with three design principles that transform good visuals into great ones. If you’d prefer to opt out of the Visual Assembly emails (but stay on my list for other things), click here. The link to unsubscribe from ALL my emails is at the bottom of this newsletter. Women solopreneurs: Ready to crush your to-do list?“I now find myself selecting specific tasks to do during this focused session. It’s great.” Every Tuesday at 12pm CT (10am PT, 1pm ET, 18:00 GMT), we gather via Zoom for 50 minutes of focused silent work, followed by optional networking. ⭐️ It's free, it’s effective, and it’s the accountability boost you need. Click below to join, and you’ll receive an email with details.
💎 Fresh finds for creative mindsHere are three gems this week from around the Web for all types of visual thinkers and solopreneurs: ✍️ Writing wisdom from Austin Kleon’s journal 💾 Why that Save icon is still a floppy disk 🤝 Smart sponsorships: Beyond the pitch ⭐️ Have an item I should share in this section? Don’t keep it a secret. Email me with your find! Did you miss our kickoff issue of Visual Assembly? Here you go. Know someone who wants to know more about using visuals to communicate and stand out? Share this newsletter with another solopreneur! And if you received this issue from a friend, I invite you to subscribe. Thanks again for being a SOLO reader and coming along on this adventure! Until next week, |
SOLO is your weekly design and visibility lab — part of the Solo Business School, and dedicated to helping solopreneurs stand out with smart systems, sharp visuals, and tools that unlock your edge. Each week, you get fresh ideas to help you stay small and play big.
SOLO is your weekly design and visibility lab — part of the Solo Business School, and dedicated to helping solopreneurs stand out with smart systems, sharp visuals, and AI that unlocks your edge. Each week, you get fresh ideas to help you stay small and play big. From prompt to picture: A new way to think about visuals Everyone’s talking about AI-generated art, and its impressive ability to create images in any style. But I’m not quite sold. Most solopreneurs don’t need a photorealistic lion...
SOLO is your weekly design and visibility lab — part of the Solo Business School, and dedicated to helping solopreneurs stand out with smart systems, sharp visuals, and AI that unlocks your edge. Each week, you get fresh ideas to help you stay small and play big. The Easiest Way to Get Visible (and you’re overlooking it) News flash: you don’t have a creativity problem. If you’re a visual thinker, you’ve likely got too many ideas — sketched in notebooks, pinned to digital boards, or scribbled...
SOLO is your weekly design and visibility lab — part of the Solo Business School, and dedicated to helping solopreneurs stand out with smart systems, sharp visuals, and AI that unlocks your edge. Each week, you get fresh ideas to help you stay small and play big. Mental Pictures → Written Words (Without the Struggle) Ever sketch out a great idea — on a napkin, a whiteboard, or a sticky note — only to hit a wall when you try to put it into words? Yeah, it’s where many brilliant ideas stall...