- I'm sorry that was obnoxious.

(laughs)

What's up everybody?

Peter McKinnon here, and today we're talking about brands,

and how to create one, and where to even start

and all of the shenanigans that goes along with it.

So, let's go.

(southern rock music)

So the best way to describe what a brand is

or how to get the point across is

when you think Peter McKinnon,

I'm associated with photography,

cinematography, coffee, YouTube.

Those are the things that come up when you think about me.

Or, Nike, for example.

Basketball, clothing, shoes, athletics, sports,

that's the brand that Nike's made for themselves.

So if you're gonna create a brand,

the first thing you need to do

is come up with what that's gonna be for you.

What do you want to be known for?

What do you excel at?

What are you trying to sell?

Is it a product?

Is it a company?

What's that company's name?

What's the logo?

What's the mission statement?

What are you trying to get across to people?

And then that is the brand you need to focus on.

But today, specifically, I want to focus

on the website portion of brand.

Because having a good website, and a home base,

somewhere for your fans,

your clients, your prospective clients

to actually go to is imperative.

And not enough people are doing it,

and I'm here to show you that it is incredibly easy to do

and it's the first thing you need to do

when creating a brand.

If Nike had this massive brand and no website

for anyone to go to and check out their stuff,

well, you know, eh.

If I'm trying to book clients

and I want them to see my portfolio

and be able to contact me

but they have nowhere to go to see any of it, eh.

The website is your identity as a brand,

as an artist, as a product.

It's the home base, it's the ground zero,

it's where everyone's going to go initially

to see everything and to learn about you

and to contact you, and to browse

what it is that you're offering.

So it's important that you have a website set up,

and that it's laid out properly,

because it's more than just

dragging and dropping some photos

and putting the contact info up

and being like, "Boom. I got a site. Peace, see you later."

There's a lot more that goes into that.

Now, I actually went to school for web design,

like way back in the day.

I never finished, but I think I'm

like two credits away from graduating.

I kind of think it's funnier to be two away

than actually have the diplo--anyway, it doesn't matter.

But we learned so much about the psychology of a website

and how to properly lay one out,

versus just the actual grunt work of making a website

which nowadays you can do in half of a day.

And here's a little fun fact for you.

Did you know, on average people spend

less than 15 seconds on a website?

So think about that.

You have 15 seconds or less to capture someone's attention.

To either draw them in with

whatever it is that you're selling,

or draw them in with whatever photos that you've taken,

or draw them in with a video,

or the music that you've written.

You've got 15 seconds or less to get that done.

So in this video, I'm hoping to equip you

with the proper tools and knowledge base,

and platform to be able to do that

so that you can book more gigs,

get photo jobs, book weddings, get gigs for your music,

sell your prints, sell whatever it is that you're selling

because this is where it starts.

This is the ground zero of your brand.

The website.

So throughout this video, I'm going

to use my dad as an example.

Now, my dad's amazing.

My dad builds acoustic guitars, he's a luthier.

He's got a little tiny cute little shop in the basement,

and that's where he spends hours, and hours, and hours

of a day meticulously making these guitars.

Attention to detail, the specifics,

the work that goes into this, the man hours,

the hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of hours

that go into making one custom guitar is incredible.

So with that being said,

I'm gonna head over to my dad's house.

We're gonna shoot some photos for him.

We're gonna shoot some video.

We're gonna pick a template,

and we're gonna get this guy up and running

so that he's got a brand and a website

that'll help best identify what he's trying to convey

and that best speaks to his products

and who he is as an individual.

(southern rock music)

So I'm gonna use that as the basis

to make my dad a website.

He doesn't have a website, he doesn't have a brand.

He doesn't have anything like that.

So I'm gonna go through this video,

and we're gonna set him up

so that you can see the stages and the steps

that I take in making a brand from scratch.

So one of the first things you're gonna do

when building a site is choose a template.

Choose a theme.

But before you just randomly choose one,

because, "Ah that's the one I want, it looks cool! Awesome,"

you gotta think to yourself,

what do you want to leave these customers with?

What do you want to leave these perspective clients with?

Your friends with?

Anybody browsing?

What do you want them to feel when they get to your site?

And what do you want them to feel

when they're done browsing the site?

Very much like putting together a film,

or a video, or a series of photographs,

this is the same thing.

It's just the online version

that's always running in the background

when you're not around to speak for yourself.

So are you selling a product?

Are you trying to book gigs?

Do you want to do weddings?

Are you trying to get more work with your photography?

And if you are, what kind of work are you trying to get?

What kind of weddings do you want to shoot?

And what kind of products, and what kind of customers

are you trying to attract with

how you're shooting the products,

and how you're displaying them?

So there's a lot of thought

that needs to go into these things.

To pick the right theme, to portray the message

that best reflects you and the brand

that we're trying to create.

Now, we're using Squarespace as the engine for this site

because, like I said, they're a sponsor of this channel

and they make an incredible product.

So it is incredibly easy to choose a theme,

choose a template and a layout,

customize it completely, through and through,

and the best part is, in two months from now

if you're bored of it, or if it's not working for you,

or for some reason it's just not exactly

the message you're trying to portray

you can change it in an instant.

That's the best part about it.

It takes no time at all.

So don't worry, these decisions aren't concrete

once you make them today.

It's not like you have to stick with them

for the rest of time.

I've changed my site, personally,

in the last year like seven times.

So it's OK to go back.

They make it really really easy.

So once you've got that template locked down

we're gonna calculate how many images,

and how many videos that we need

to fill up all the blank space

and once we get that list,

we're gonna go out and shoot it.

Now, one of the things I like to do

is shoot all the photos for a website,

all the branding for a website,

all the self-portraits, or all the product shots,

I like to do all of that at the same time.

Because keeping a specific and consistent aesthetic

is very very important for that brand integrity.

If you're selling products,

you don't want a picture of a guitar on the floor,

and then a picture of a guitar on a couch,

and then some random guy holding a guitar and strumming.

You want all the pictures to feel uniform.

You want it all to feel like meticulous attention to detail

was put into each and every aspect of this website.

You don't want a shot from three years ago,

and then a shot next week when your hair,

and your face, and everything looks completely different,

and you're in a completely different setting.

You want all of the shots to be relevant.

They want to be within the same day,

or within the same week

so that you look the same.

So it carries this theme.

It looks updated.

It feels updated.

And it's a consistent aesthetic.

I like that word, "aesthetic."

It's fun to say.

So if your store is white,

you probably want your product photos

to be isolated on a white background.

You don't want a big mixed bag

of 18 different surfaces across 12 different locations.

It's just gonna look messy.

It's not gonna look uniform.

If your site's white, you want to match the photography

to match the theme of the site.

Same goes for video.

And when we're doing this theme we're talking about

templates and aesthetic, fonts are another big thing.

You don't want to mix-match fonts.

You don't want a giant, ugly impact font

next to comic sans that's bolded

and 16 different typeface sizes.

You want to keep everything consistent.

Consistency is key.

Keep that in mind across the photos,

across the videos, across the text,

across the text size, how many photos are placed on a page,

all of these things are taken into account

when you choose the template

and when you go to actually shoot

the content for the template.

Now, lastly, when it comes to templates, simple is better.

If you can break down your website

so even a ten-year-old can follow it

and understand what the message is

or what the feel, or the vibe is,

or how to find certain things, that's what you want.

Because you'd be surprised how many people land on a site,

and if we've only got 15 seconds,

and they can't find what they're looking for, they're gone.

If they can't find where to check out and buy a print,

if they can't find where to contact you

to book you for a job,

if they get lost in all the tabs you have up front

and they can't find your social media,

they're gonna leave.