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 Field Notes 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.
Hey, Reader — Welcome to the second issue of SOLO Field Notes. Each week I’m sharing a quick story and examples that spark ideas for standing out as a solopreneur.Today, it’s a story from my fridge. Humor and delight go a long way in standing out. Here’s a recent favorite find: the bottom of a tub of Ithaca Hummus. Just as you’re finishing the last bite, you see this line: “If you’re licking this clean, another tub must be in your future.” Now, to be fair, I wasn’t exactly licking the...
Hey, Reader — One of my favorite parts of this summer was wandering through Muir Woods in Northern California, among those ancient redwoods. Have you been? Here’s a photo I snapped. Yes, that tiny figure in the lower R corner is a grown woman — these trees are enormous. The park map had two kinds of trails: solid lines and dotted lines. The solid ones were official and well-marked. (I made it to Bridge #4.) The dotted ones? Unpaved paths you could follow, but at your own risk. It struck me...
What Comes After the Shapes? Over the past 12 weeks, we’ve explored the power of visual frameworks together. From circles, triangles, and squares to paths and networks, we’ve seen how simple shapes can explain, clarify, and inspire. This series was never about design tricks. A well-drawn framework can do more for your product or service than a dozen paragraphs of text. It helps your audience understand quickly, remember clearly, and see themselves inside your story. That’s persuasion at its...