CRAKD

22/09/2021

You'll NEVER guess what..

We have ALL experienced the occasional overthinking when creating content for our social channels📱🤔

Especially when the goal is to deliver lots of helpful advice to people ✍🏻

Often it comes down to questioning how well the post will do, I.e. how many likes, shares and views 👀

As a result sometimes thinking too much leads to inaction..

Which means no content and stress from wishing you knew what to post 😅

Our advice to you: THINK LESS, POST MORE 👍🏻

📢 If you have something to say, say it!

Your content is ALWAYS good enough.

22/09/2021

This mindset shift is an absolute game changer 🤯

Have you ever caught yourself posting any old thing that gets a few extra likes?

Try thinking more about the purpose of your content and who the person is that sees it and what value is received.💡

18/09/2021

CRAKD AGENCY UPDATE:

As some of you may be aware, we've been busy lately with the birth of our baby girl ❤

Dan has been busy working in the city and Jelena has been busy growing a human inside of her 🐣

We've taken some time over the last few weeks to plan the future for CRAKD and we have decided that we will begin branching out into general marketing and social media management. We will still offer tailored branding and strategy services 😁

Whilst we are both keeping busy with the little one and other work commitments, we are excited to start sharing more content online 💻✍🏻

Give us some time to gather our feet and expect lots more fun, educational and valuable content to come! 🔥

11/03/2021

Pleased to announce the launch of the official CRAKD logo!

Since the beginning of operations we have been busy working on client projects and until a few weeks ago had to make do with quickly designed logos or simple typography to display on our social profiles, but we finally made time and whipped up the new CRAKD logo that we are pleased with.

Stay tuned because in the months to come we will be further developing and sharing our own brand guidelines, graphical elements, and the process behind it.

Big thanks to those who supported the design process with valuable thoughts and feedback.

Stay positive & happy branding,

Dan & Jelena

09/03/2021

How well do you know your brain? 🧠

For every brand product you see, you will make assumptions about it in a split second and perceive it in a certain way. Most of the time you do this subconsciously without ever realising.

Everybody perceives the world around them from a unique point of view 🧐

From human evolution to your own experiences through life, the way you see something may be completely different to that of another person.

One role of marketing and branding specialists is to capture your attention whilst also connecting with you in the right way.

Now go check out the branded products in images.

Did you perceive these brands the same as we did, or did you see and feel something different?

👇🏼 Drop a comment below and tell us how your brain works! 😉

04/03/2021

Turn your brand into a human and see what happens! 🧐

At first you might think that imagining your brand as a person is little strange, but people relate best with other people!

Answer the questions on pages 02, 04, 06 & 08 and see for yourself how helpful such a simple comparison can be.

What kind of person is your brand?

Happy branding 😁

08/02/2021

How to pick brand colours from nature 🏔

Are you starting a brand and want the most natural colours to represent your visual identity? Why not take a photo of your favourite nature spot and then extract the photo colours into your very own branding colour palette.

Here's how to do just that 😎👇🏼

🔴 Step 1. Select or capture a photo

🔴 Step 2. Upload the image into Adobe Illustrator/Photoshop or similar software

🔴 Step 3. Use colour picker tool to individually find each colour you want from photo

🔴 Step 4. Organise and save them

🔴 Step 5. Start branding with your new colours!

Boom 💥 you just created your very own colour palette from nature. Nice work!

It's important to know that pairing colours can be difficult, not every colour looks good together, or certain colours may not match your branding goals and remember that colour proportions play an important role when actually using colours in your designs.

We hope you found this useful 🙏🏻

Would you like to see more content like this?

If so, challenge us to create a colour palette from something you love ❤💙💛

03/02/2021

How to build a community... ONLINE 🤳

In our experience, there’s nothing more awesome than building a community and being part of one. It feels great. It also does wonders for your personal brand.

A community helps you to share ideas, to be a service to others and learn more about what you enjoy most. Having a community of like-minded people is also a great way of finding new opportunities and finding the right people you want to work with.

Grab a notepad and let’s dive in! 🏊‍♂️

1. SHARE VALUE
Value can be educational, motivational and inspiring or simply something somebody really enjoys.
This post you are reading now is insightful and educational - there is something that is hopefully helpful to our audience and therefore, valuable. This strengthens the relationship between the reader (you) and us.

Another example is a sports car enthusiast showing a behind the scenes GoPro video of how they drive the car around a track. For sports car lovers, that video is also valuable because they enjoy the experience and can learn at the same time.

2. TALK ABOUT YOUR MISSION
People like what you do but love what you stand for. To build a passionate and caring community, focus on people who share your vision of the future and relate with the mission you are on. This is one of the most powerful ways of community building through branding. Spend a lot of time making your mission transparent and heard.

3. WALK THE TALK
The biggest fail when trying to build a community is talking the walk and then sitting down. It’ll gather a crowd in the early days, but just like the movies, if your king is the first to enter battle, your army will march with you. Now this isn’t about being a king or queen, it’s about speaking the truth and taking action upon what you say you will do.

4. ENGAGE
Engagement isn’t only about liking a commenting, it’s about getting consciously involved in discussions, taking time to respond with helpful and caring answers. It’s about taking 15 minutes out of your day to have a chat with your followers if they ping you a private message. It’s the heartfelt actions that create a truly irreplaceable community.

5. MAKE YOUR SPACE SAFE
Finally, put in the time and always make sure that your spaces where you community share their thoughts, feedback and questions, are places that are safe, warm and inviting. Nobody wants to be around judgement, insults or bullying, so take responsibility of your online spaces and keep them clean.

Put in the effort to build a community and you shall be forever grateful and inspired by how amazing people are, and how much your online experience improves ❤

01/02/2021

Are YOU following this simple formula?

[PASSION + EXPERTISE + CONSISTENCY = FORMULA FOR SUCCESS]

Let’s talk about why these are key to your success and how they compliment one another 👇🏼

Passion ⭐

This is your daily driver. Your reason and strong emotion that answers why you do what you do. Without passion, you’ll inevitably fall off track at some point along your journey. Find the passion that gives you a tingly feeling in your skin and never let go.

Expertise ⭐

This is what sets you apart from the crowd. There’s a lot of people who specialise and are good at what they do, but being great at what you do is a game changer. You will be noticed, spoken about, sought after and create exceptional work that truly helps people. Without expertise, you’ll be worth less and will always be in tight competition with the next person.

Consistency ⭐

This is the missing link. Building consistency in all areas of your life, from schedules, to ethics, quality of work, branding and more, will generate awareness and results. Without consistency, you could build a bad reputation and detriment your quality of work.

By combining these three key words in your personal and professional life, you will be designing your own formula for success 🥇

If you remove one word from the formula, it will break the ‘mathematical relationship’ 💔

Find your passion.
Become an expert.
Remain consistent.

Leave a comment if you're using this formula in your life, or have one you’d like to share! 🙏🏻

27/01/2021

We are Brand Therapists.

Often branding is assumed to be just logo design, it's not. It certainly can include logo design, however this is a small piece of the large juicy cake! 🍰

🤷🏻‍♂️ What do Brand Therapists do? 🤷🏻‍♀️

In short: Brand Therapists listen to their patients(clients) and solve their problems.

Our main professional service at CRAKD is Brand Strategy, where we dive deep into our clients world and get to understand what our client is trying to do, what they are actually doing, who they are and what they stand for, what challenges they face, and then create a formal plan and design tailored branding materials that sets them up to consistently communicate it to the world 📢

During Brand Therapy; a stage of Brand Strategy that we call 'Discovery', we ask questions such as: "Why?" and, "What makes you think that?" 💡

Although these questions sound SUPER simple, the key is in fully understanding the client. An overly complicated question can confuse the client and produce a scrambled answer. The question must be totally understood by the client and likewise the answer must be understood by the 'Therapist', this creates synergy.

Great Brand Therapy isn't about coming up with great ideas, rather it is asking great questions and determining whether you've listened well and fully understood the client's problem.

26/01/2021

Colours Impact The Way We Feel

What does that mean for a brand? 🎨

🔵 Well lets take a look at the colour blue ⬇️

Among many of its associations, blue is associated with feelings of trust and stability, and for examples sake, take a look online and notice how many banks utilise the colour blue in their core brand colours, it seems a logical choice if you consider the correlation between the colour psychology and the importance of trust in the financial industry.

On the other hand, blue is considered a highly unappetising colour. Notice how blue is rare among logos in the food industry, where as colours that are closely associated with passion, such as the colour red, it is one of the most popular among fast food restaurants in their logos and general branding.

As you can see from these few examples, colour can have a large impact on the way we feel and have an influence on the decisions we make. So choosing the right colours for your brand is important.

Even though colour psychology is a deep topic and a quick 2 minute search online will show you hundreds of different colour associations and some articles may contradict others. Colours can also be associated with both positive and negative emotions, depending many factors, therefore it's important not to rush your decision.

Finally, remember that there is no right or wrong when choosing colours, and branding isn't only about an emotional relationship.

And although blue may be hunger supressing, Oreos sure do make our mouths water! 🤤 Explain that one..

30/11/2020

Do you have a personal brand? 📸
Probably, maybe? YES! Let’s chat.

The term Personal Brand is becoming more and more popular and the chances are you’ve heard of it before and may have already asked yourself, “What is my personal brand?”

If you have asked yourself this question, or you’re now curious what a personal brand is, then keep reading 👍🏼

Firstly you need to know that there are many ways to define a personal brand, and our definition is our opinion of what we feel describes it best, in as few words as possible 🤓

💡A Personal Brand is what you are known for and the perception that others have of what you do, what you believe in, and what you solve.

To understand what your personal brand is you need to dig deep and refrain from labelling yourself as just a job title or job role.

So just for fun, ask yourself these questions:
1) What am I known for?
2) What do I do?
3) What do I believe in?
4) What do I solve?
5) What do I want to be perceived as?

These questions are not the only questions to answer, but they’ll certainly get you on track to understanding what your personal brand is and how you can begin crafting a personal brand that helps you to achieve more in your personal and professional life. 😎

Stick around because we are going to crack open the egg of personal branding and post about everything there is to know and learn about the world of personal branding, and of course open dialog with you to share thoughts, ideas and stories along the way.

What things personal branding would you like to learn about ??

Drop us a comment 👇🏼

26/11/2020

IT'S OFFICIAL! 🥳

Allow us to introduce ourselves,
We are Dan and Jelena 👨🏻‍💻👩🏻‍💻

Dan has long hair, loves animals, is out-going and is super passionate about all things marketing and branding! 🐧

Jelena also has long hair *snap*, is always smiling, cooks the best vegan lasagne and has a background in design and fashion! 🎨

What is CRAKD? 🥚

After 2020 being a long year of trekking through the Filipino jungles and finally returning home to the UK, we decided to put our experience of branding together and create and agency to help people around the world to design, strategise, build and turn the THINGS they love into BRANDS they love! 👌🏼

This month we registered our company so we are all official and we also started working with our first client based in London - super exciting times! 🇬🇧

Our Facebook will be curated to all things personal branding. We will share our journey, experience, lessons, tips and tricks, while trying our best to build a community to share and learn together ❤

We will post everything right here so if you're interested, stick around and get involved! 👍🏻

26/11/2020