You’re The Best
You all are amazing. Running a business on my own is stressful so thank you all for supporting me.
Now that you have your deliverables, I want to make sure you know what to do with them. Both because I want to see you be successful and also because selfishly my designs look better when you use them correctly.
So I’ve curated the following videos with some tips for how to use your new logos and/or Squarespace site.
At the end you can get a discount for my Canva course, give me some feedback, or leave me a review if you’d like.
Lesson 1: Creating Your Own JPG Logo
The file format JPG is like your standard photo. I only give out black and white JPG logos because it’s helpful to have one of each. I don’t hand them out in your colors because there’s a lot of color combinations. If you have 5 or 6 colors in your palette, there’s a lot of pairings for logo colors and background colors.
I give you your logos in all colors in PNG format because they have a transparent background and you have a lot more flexibility with them. If you need a JPG in a particular size, you can use Canva to create your own by choosing the PNG logo in the color you want and adding a background color to it.
Lesson 2: CMYK vs. RGB
A quick lesson in colors. Screens and printers are very different in how they portray colors. One combines cyan, magenta, yellow, and black pigment to create the color you see on paper and the other combines red, green, and blue light to create the color you see on your computer or TV
Because of science, you can create a lot more colors in RGB than you can in CMYK. Sometimes a color that’s really bright on a screen can print duller than you want. So first, it can be important to set expectations when you’re printing your logos but second, it can help to speak the same language as the printer.
Documents (and logos) can be created in CMYK format, which allows the printer to know exactly what to print instead of having to guess and translate from an RGB format.
I provide logos in RGB because they’ll be the most vibrant and because if I also gave them to you in CMYK, I’d have to charge a bunch more for my time. Rather, if you have something you need printed (like merch or signage), reach out and let me know exactly which logo and which colors you want and I’ll make sure you get it in a CMYK optimized file.
Lesson 3: Know Your Color Contrast
Color contrast is SUPER important for legibility. And legibility is important because you want people to be able to read your shit and also because it will impact your SEO if you don’t do it well.
This video is a clip from my Canva course that explains what color contrast is, the importance, and how you can check yours with a resource I provided below. If you have any interest in purchasing the course, and you’re here which means you’re already a client, you can get it for 50% off using the code ILOVEMYCLIENTS. And please don’t be a dick and share that code with other people.
Lesson 4: Improve Contrast Over Images
If you’ve ever tried to put text over an image and you can’t read a single thing, it’s probably because the image you have has too high of contrast, meaning there’s a lot of lights and a lot of darks all smashed together in your image so if you use a white text, you won’t see it against the light parts of the image and if you use a black text, you won’t see it against the dark parts of your image.
Which means you need to reduce the contrast in the image, which you can do through editing the image, or you can use this very simple trick to both reduce the contrast and make an image fit your color palette better.
Lesson 5: Squarespace Practice Pages
If you’ve got a new Squarespace site, it can feel overwhelming but I promise it’s quick to learn and the reason I do Squarespace sites is because you can become independent with them and not pay someone for very expensive monthly maintenance.
Of course, if you have any large updates or concerns please reach out and I’m happy to help. But if you have small updates or want to change out some text or images, I have full confidence that you can figure it out. The best way to do this is to create practice pages first so you can learn how to make edits without worrying about fucking up your site.
Lesson 6: Adding Pages/Sections
Here’s a quick lesson on how to add and edit sections to your pages. You can start from scratch or you can choose from predesigned sections. Some are quite structured so I’ll show you how to change out that content.
Adding pages seems very straightforward but you can add pages to your header, you can add pages under a drop down, or you can have them remain unlinked but access them through navigating through your site.
And possibly most importantly, there are some behind the scenes SEO changes you can make when you add a new page that you absolutely want to be addressing. Make sure your meta-descriptions contain keywords and really tell people what sort of answers or help you’re providing on that individual page.
Lesson 7: Adding/Changing Content
There’s a lot of blocks you can add so I’ll walk you through how to do add them and some of my tricks for modifying them.
You can explore these on your own but the ones you’ll use most frequently are text, images, shapes, buttons, forms, and accordions. With images, make sure that you’re always adding alt-text. From the homepage on your Squarespace account, there should be an option to have AI help out to make sure all of your images have alt-text.
Since Squarespace uses a grid layout, you’ll want to make sure all of your elements have enough breathing room. As you can see when you exit out of editing mode, and the size of your screen shrinks, it can mess with your positioning. Make sure to check your site at various sizes to minimize layout problems.
Lesson 8: Squarespace Site Styles
If you’ve added something and the font or the color just isn’t want you want, chances are you can change that in the Site Styles section.
Most importantly, be careful when modifying these because it’ll change it everywhere on your site. But you can control the fonts, colors, sizing, spacing, buttons, and forms from your Site Styles.
If you can’t find the thing you’re looking for, you should be able to click on the section you’re working on and it will pull up the content within that section.
Lesson 9: Don’t Forget The Phone
Because you’re likely editing your site from your computer, it’s easy to forget about the phone layout but chances are most people are actually viewing your site on your phone. Any time you change something on the desktop layout, you need to double check the phone layout.
A big suggestion is to section off your content. If the page you’re working on has a lot of elements, your phone layout can be an absolute disaster which can be really frustrating to edit. Keep things in sections to minimize the headache of editing a phone layout with a million blocks in it.
Phone layouts tend to be more similar than lets say a laptop vs iPad but you still want to see how your website looks on various phones. Check it on your phone, have someone with a dinosaur iPhone check it on theirs, make sure you’ve check on both an iPhone and an Android…just check as many layouts as you can.
Hopefully you feel a bit more confident with your new deliverables.
As I mentioned, if you’re interested in more assistance you can check out my Canva course at the link below and use the code ILOVEMYCLIENTS at checkout for 50% off.
Also I love feedback. Preferably positive but I’ll take anything. Here’s a form that you can fill out and let me know how it was to work with me. If you have any suggestions, I’m all ears. And since I’m trying to practice what I preach, I made a Google business account and would love to gather some reviews. You can fill one out below if you don’t mind. THANKS AGAIN AND PLEASE REACH OUT IF YOU NEED MORE ASSISTANCE.