Welcome. I welcome you all to this lecture in the course, Samas in Panini and Grammar. And this is the first course. As is our practice, we begin with the recitation of the Mangala This Mangala Charan is the Mangala Charan of a very celebrated text in the Panini and grammatical tradition known as Shabdha Kaustubha. And my reverend teacher who read with us Annikas of Shabdha Kaustubha used to recite this Mangala Charan at the beginning of every search lecture. In his memory, I recite this particular Mangala Charan at the beginning of my own Sanskrit lectures and such lectures. We were dealing with the question, what is Samartha? And we saw that there are two meanings offered, Samartha meaning capable of capable of what? Capable of conveying the meaning, thereby assuming that the group of words which are interrelated, they convey the meaning and then capable of conveying this meaning by merging such interrelated interlinked words in the sentence. We also saw that Samartha also means having the same meaning, Samahartha. The independent words which convey meanings independently when they get merged together, they convey the same meaning. This relation between the merged output and the separate independent input is the hallmark of this second explanation of Samartha. We have already noticed that Samartha meaning capable of means, capable of expressing the interconnected meanings. And the word unit is capable of expressing the interconnected meanings only when it becomes a padha. A prasipadika is not Samartha as it cannot express the interconnected meanings on its own without the pratyaya getting added to it. So a prasipadika with an addition of a pratyaya becomes a padha and then it becomes Samartha, then it becomes capable of expressing the interconnected meanings. So it has to be a padha that is a subanta or also a tinganta which is capable of expressing the interconnected meanings. We also already saw that the karakas which play a very significant role as far as the sentence construction in Sanskrit is concerned, they get expressed by the respective vibhaktis. These vibhaktis are added to respective prasipadikas. These prasipadikas and their meanings, they are related to the meanings of the verbal root. So there is the interconnectivity, interlinkage between the subanta and tinganta. We said that there is this capability but the point is that the speaker of Sanskrit has not thought of converting this capability into a merged output unit where the second meaning of Samartha would also be tested. This is the feature of the desire to speak of the Sanskrit speaker. However, we also note that there are some other forms where words which are otherwise termed as pratipadika, they are interrelated with the verbal roots and they jointly denote the meaning, sakshat, karoti and so on. But these are accounted for in a different manner by Paninian grammar. We also said that the karakas in a sentence like Ramaha, Prayagat, Yanena, Kartikamase, Pujanaya, Kashi Imgatshati in a sentence like this, Ramaha, Prayagat, Yanena, Kartikamase and Pujanaya, all of them, they can be said to be related with the action of going denoted by the verbal root gama and also Kashi but this semantic interrelation has not produced any compounded output as we said just now. Similarly, Ramaha and Prayagat, Prayagat and Yanena and so on and so forth, all these words, they are also directly not related. So, they are also not samartha. So, then what is samartha? So, we saw two instances where there is semantic relatedness and still they are not called samartha. So, the question is what is samartha and here is the first answer. Now, if we add something more to the already existing sentence, Ramaha, Prayagat, Yanena, Kartikamase, Pujanaya, Kashi Imgatshati, if we add some other elements, for example, Ramaha, Prayagat, Nirgata, Yanena, Prapita, Samagat, Kartikamase, Devasya, Pujanaya, Kashi Imgatshati. What this means is, Ramaha, who went out of Prayag, Prayagat, Nirgata, being dropped by the car, Yanena, Prapita, in the arrived month of the Kartika, Samagat, Kartikamase, goes to Kashi, Kashi Imgatshati, for the worship of God, Devasya, Pujanaya. Now, in this sentence, the meaning is, Ramaha, who went out of Prayag, Prayagat, Nirgata, being dropped by the car, Yanena, Prapita, in the arrived month of Kartika, Samagat, Kartikamase, goes to Kashi, Kashi Imgatshati, for the worship of God, Devasya, Pujanaya. Now, in this sentence, the words Nirgata, Prapita, Samagat, and Pujanaya, these are added words, and these are derived from the verbal roots, Gama to go, Aapa to reach, Gama to go again, and Puja to worship, respectively. And in deriving these words, Nirgata, Prapita, Samagat, the suffix T is added to the verbal roots, Gama and Aapa. And in order to derive Pujanaya, we have added the suffix Anna to the verbal root Puja. So, the internal structure of these words can be shown in the following manner. Nirgata can be said to have Nir as one unit and Gama plus T as the other unit, Nir as one unit and Gama plus T as the second unit. Similarly, Pra as one unit and Aapa plus T as the second unit. Then, Sam plus A plus Gama plus T. This is the structure of Samagata. And finally, Puja plus Anna is the structure of Pujanaya. Nir, Pra, Sam and A, these are independent words, also known as Upasarga or Gati, and are treated as separate words. And that is why they are put in separate brackets. Now, the suffix T and Anna, which are added in these four words, they are termed Krith by Krithatim 3193. And these words are called Krithanta words, Nirgata, Pra, Samagata and Pujana. These are the Krithanta words. As far as the word Prapita is concerned, there is also an additional augment element, which is not indicated over here. But these are the suffixes that are mentioned. Now, these Krithanthas, Nirgata, Prapita, Samagata and Pujana, they become nominal roots or Pratipadikas, by definition, by 1246, which says, Krith taddhita samasascha. This is 1245, defining what is a Pratipadika. And in 1246, there is an additional statement defining Pratipadika, which is Krith taddhita samasascha. So, these words become Pratipadikas. And once they become Pratipadikas, in order that they be used in a sentence, they will need to be added with the suffix sup after them. And after we add sup suffix after each one of them, they will eventually become Subantas. Thus, we can say that they have peculiar characteristics. Semantically, they denote an action and formally, they are nominal roots. Thus, they retain both features, denoting action involving karakas and getting interlinked with other meanings and words that is one. And then the second one, also be Subantas. These two features, such words retain theoretically in Panimian grammar. So now, we can show the entire sentence in the form of the division in the prakriti and the pratyaya format. So, we have Ramaha, written as Rama plus Su. This is the prathama ekabachana pratyaya added to the Pratipadika Rama. Yana plus ta. Ta is the instrumental singular suffix. And prapita plus su. Now, this is a Pratipadika. So, su will be added to it. Then we have deva plus gas and puja plus ana. And puja plus ana will also have the chaturthi, namely nge added to it. Then we have prayaga plus nasi, the panchami ekabachana pratyaya, plus nir plus gamma plus ta plus su. Nirgata is the pratipadika. Pujana is the pratipadika. Then we have sum plus a plus gamma plus ta followed by nge, which is a sups suffix. And then kartikamasa plus nge as the other word. Then we have kashi plus am. And finally, we have gamma plus t. Now, these words are samarthanao because they have become subantas. And so, these words become eligible for becoming an input to the process of compounding. And as a result, we can get Ramaha prayaga nirgata. Yana prapita. So, now we generated four compounds in the same sentence following the semantic interrelatedness between a pair of words. And we have four such pairs. So, there are these four compounds that are generated. After they get generated, you see that they are embedded within the basic skeleton, basic structure, which is constant. So, these compounds become part of the sentence. Prayaga nirgata and Yana prapita, they become the qualifiers of Ramaha, which is a qualified. And then samāgata kartikamasa becomes the adhikarana. And Deva pujanaya is retaining its own status of sampradana. And then we have this particular sentence. Now, the second meaning of samartha also comes into play. The compound prayaga nirgata is capable of explaining or expressing the same meaning as was expressed by prayagata nirgata. Yana nirgata was explaining and expressing some meaning. Now, Yana prapita also expresses the same meaning. Same is the case with samāgata kartikamasa and also Deva pujanaya. They all express the same meaning, which the separated independent constituent words independently expressed. In this way, the interpretations of samartha in two manners, they get applied and they can be explained further. Now, we go to the second answer of what is samartha. In the first answer, we saw that the verbal root together with the krith suffix does become samartha and does become eligible for the process of compounding. The verbal root with things suffix even though semantically related does not become eligible for the process of compounding. Now, let us look at the second instance where the meaning of the samartha will be explained. Now, we have Now, if you observe, we have added one word in addition to each word playing one role. Ramaha and we have added Rāja. Prayāgāt we have added Mahātā. Yānena we have added Gati Matā. Kartikamasa we have added Śīte. Deva pujanaya we have added Vārṣikāya. And Kāṣīm we have added Pavitraṁ. So, these are all the qualifiers or adjectives of the different words already used, already present in the sentence. What this sentence means is the following. King Rama from the great Prayāgā by the speedy car in the cold month of Kartikamasa goes to sacred Kāṣī for the annual worship of God. King Rama that is Rāja Rama from the great Prayāgā, Mahātā Prayāgāt by the speedy car in the cold month of Kartikamasa goes to Gatshati, sacred Kāṣī, Pavitraṁ Kāṣīm for the annual worship of God, Vārṣikāya, Deva pujanaya. So, in this case we have Rāja Rama, Mahātā Prayāgāt, Gati Matā Yānena, Śīte Kartikamasa, Vārṣikāya, Deva pujanaya, Pavitraṁ Kāṣīm and Gatshati. All these different Kārakas and their qualifiers, they are presented in different colors for specific purpose. Rāja qualifies Rama in Rāja Rama. Mahātā qualifies Prayāgāt in Mahātā Prayāgāt. Gati Matā qualifies Yānena in Gati Matā Yānena. Śīte qualifies Kartikamasa in Śīte Kartikamasa. Vārṣikāya qualifies Deva pujanaya in Vārṣikāya Deva pujanaya and Pavitraṁ qualifies Kāṣīm in Pavitraṁ Kāṣīm. Finally we have Gatshati which indicates the action of going which happens in the present tense. Now these words and their qualifiers can be shown once again in the form of the Prakriti and Pratyayāya Vibhāg. So we have Rājan plus Su, plus Rama plus Su and we have Mahat plus Nasi, plus Prayāgha plus Nasi. And you notice that the Vibhakti Pratyayas at the end of each Pratipatika, they are same in the pairs.  Now you see there is this black square bracket here and right square bracket over here to indicate that this is one unit, one sentence. Now meanings with qualified qualifier relation they are interlinked and so we can say that they are samarthas that is the bottom line and so they become eligible to be compounded and then we have the same sentence written in the following compounded manner. Rājarāmaha, Mahāprayāgāt, Gati Mat, Yāna, Śīta, Kartikamasa, Vārṣika, Deva pujanaya, Pavitra, Kāṣīm and Gacchati. I repeat Rājarāmaha, Mahāprayāgāt, Gati Mat, Yāna, Śīta, Kartikamasa, Vārṣika, Deva pujanaya, Pavitra, Kāṣīm and Gacchati. Now as you see there are some modifications happening in the first part of the compound, initial member of the compound also known as Purvapada. So we have Rājarāmaha over here and Pavitra Kāṣīm over here and Mahāprayāgāt over here where the Purvapada has undergone some change. So this is part of the process of compounding where a qualifier gets compounded with the qualified. So this is the second explanation of what is Samartha. A qualifier is interlinked with the qualified and then it is also capable of expressing the interrelation and also the compounded form conveys the same meaning as the separate independent words in the sentence would convey. So both the interpretations of the word Samartha are applied and the pairs of qualifier and qualified they become Samartha and so they get compounded and we shall study this feature and this type in detail when we study the Karma Dharaya compound later on in this particular course. Now the third explanation of what is Samartha is the following. So we take the sentence Dāsharathasya, Putrasya, Ramasya, Hastasya, Alankāram, Namāmi, Dāsharathasya, Putrasya, Ramasya, Hastasya, Alankāram, Namāmi. There are four words in Shasthi Vibhakti. What this sentence means is the following. I salute the ornament, Alankāram, of the hand, Hastasya, of Rama, Ramasya, the son of Putrasya, Dāsharathasya, the son of Dāsharathasya. So here we have Dāsharathasya linked with Putrasya, Putrasya linked with Ramasya, Ramasya linked with Hastasya and Hastasya linked with Alankāram in different, different semantic relation. Dāsharathasya and Putrasya, there is a link of Janyajanaka Bhava, Dāsharathasya being the Janyaka and Putra the Janya. Putrasya and Ramasya have Vishayasana, Vishayasya Bhava, qualifier, qualified relationship. Ramasya and Hastasya have Ava-yava, Ava-yavi Bhava. Rama is the Ava-yavi and Hastasya is the Ava-yava. And Hastasya, Alankāram, we have Swasvāmī Bhava, where Hastasya is the Swami and Alankāra is the Swa. These are the different relations expressed by the Shastrībhi Bhakti. And so we have this particular kind of format that can be presented in which it is visible that all the Pratyayas, they are Shastrī Pratyayas and except one where we have Alankāra plus Am and Namāmi which is the verb. In this context, meanings of Dāsharathā, Putra, Rama, Hastasya and Alankāra are interlinked through the suffixes and hence they become Samartha. And so they become eligible to be compounded. So we can have Dāsharathā, Putra, Rama, Hasta, Alankāra, Namāmi. Dāsharathā, Putra, Rama, Hasta, Alankāra, this can be a compound. It is indeed a compound and you can have multiple members that can be added to the same compound if the meanings are shown to be interrelated. So this is an observation. Meanings of Kṛdantas and interlinked Kārakas, meanings of qualifier and qualified relations, meanings of various relations denoted by the sixth case, Shastrībhi Bhakti are Samartha and are eligible for undergoing the process of compounding or Samāsā in some scripts. The other pairs, other combinations, sometimes you can say that they are semantically linked but still they are not accepted, eligible for undergoing the process of compounding. The Subanta and Tinganta which are interlinked, they are not eligible for the process of compounding. In conclusion, we can say that the process of compounding or Samāsā is based on Samartha theory. Samartha theory is based on the Kārakā theory by default, thus embedded in the sentential structure with sentence as an input and nominal root as primary output and sentence as eventual output. So Vākyādvākyam samasānam is an apt sutra to capture this entire process of compounding. These are the texts that are referred to, these are the traditional sources that we constantly refer it to and the Samarthārnika of the Vyākarana Mahābhāshira will be heavily relied and referred to in the next lecture. Thank you very much.


Cell David Johnson. Johnson was featured on this podcast as a Cell candidate after week two, but at the time, we had far less information than we do today. Back then, Sam Bradford was still the quarterback and we didn't know how long that would continue. And we also didn't know how long they'd continue down this path of running so few plays offensively. Since that time, Arizona made the move to Josh Rosen, but the problem is they've gone from 50 and a half offensive plays run per game to 48.7. And that's hurt David Johnson's ceiling. Now his fantasy point totals haven't been all that bad. Johnson's actually a low end RB one and cumulative PPR points scored at the position after five weeks. But how he's accumulating those points is not sustainable in this type of offense. He has 242 rushing yards and based on the rushing yards to rushing touchdowns rate that we've seen by running backs over the last half decade, Johnson's rushing touchdown total should be between one and two. Instead, he has four touchdowns. This is not like a Todd Gurley situation where his team is consistently putting him in plus situations. Arizona has run the fewest plays in the league this year. And that even includes teams who have had their buy. No team has run fewer red zone plays in the Arizona Cardinals. And even with Josh Rosen under center over the last two weeks, the Cardinals have still averaged the third fewest yards per drive in the entire league. And here's the thing, we also haven't seen much of a change in David Johnson's receiving usage since the first couple of games either. His average depth of target has jumped slightly to 1.3, but it's still far off from his 4.7 mark a couple of seasons ago when he really had a huge year. And in Josh Rosen's two starts, David Johnson's target share has dropped from about a 17.2% share to a 13.5% share. Now the Cardinals offense can and hopefully will improve as the season goes on. And that'll make David Johnson a little bit more viable. But this is also a time to sell because he's clearly overachieving in the touchdown column to start the season. And a lot of fantasy owners may not realize that.


Well this is a Raspberry Pi Pico W also known as a Pi Cow and this is the board that Raspberry Pi just came out with that has an RP2040 and a Wi-Fi Bluetooth module built in and it's really cool and this one's got a special thing going on when I plug it in you see that LED that's blinking yeah well that LED is actually controlled by this module so if I want to blink this LED I need to have firmware that's talking back and forth here like communicating to tell this firmware to blink the LED and this is not micro Python this is circuit Python as you can see here that's right so we have started on a build for the Pico W for circuit Python it's gonna be the easiest way to do IOT and we've just got the LED blinking and there's more to come


I think the original request was we were to give them $50,000 or they would take us to court. I wasn't about to hand over $50,000 because I didn't have $50,000 and even if I did, I still wouldn't have handed it over. Ruth Taylor, I'm a Bucks County photographer. I've been photographing for fun most of my life. None of it even made sense. It's a website somebody logs in and submits photos, videos. It's not a patent. We bought our own software, ran it on a server that we paid for. Everything was legit. There was nothing you would even think that one day you're going to get sued for something because you own it. It just never occurred to me. To me, a patent was always and would have been an amazing invention that would help people, not something that's used to extort money from people. There are people now who want to have Alice v. CLS Bank overturned. What would that mean for small businesses like yours? That means that they would then be able to be sued and probably go under or people would just be able to extort money from anyone for any little thing.


Hey guys, this is Hader from Xtrades and in this video, we're gonna talk about all the different ways to make money from trading So I broke it up into four different paths the first one being day trading. So let's get into that first With day trading it typically has the biggest learning curve and it also has the higher highest failure rate That being said day trading is also the best way to grow a small account So if you are good at day trading, it's definitely the best way to grow account because it has the best return on your money But that being said, it's also very difficult to do. So day trading is the hardest cut all of these ones But if you are but if you are successful with day trading, then it's the best way to make money And it's the best way to grow a small account. So high risk, high reward and With day trading it does require a lot of screen time But since you are closing and opening positions within the day, you're not holding anything overnight, right? So that's also a plus because you have more control of your portfolio You're not you don't have to worry about any risk overnight So for example, you don't have to worry about the position tapping down on you Which is something that's when trade swing traders or position traders have to deal with so you don't have to worry about that So you have a lot more control of your P&L But yeah, it does require a lot more time and it's definitely still very very difficult and the three main setups with Day trading I would say are momentum plays based on some sort of news or catalyst and then scalping features and indices like SPY QQQ or NQ and ES and then shorting pump-and-dump stocks So these three setups are typically the best ones That I've seen so far in my experience, but there could be more and with swing trading So day trading and swing trading are similar in that you use Charts to make your decisions right cause it requires a lot more technical Technical analysis compared to position trading or algorithmic trading But yeah, so what's when trading the two main setups or breakouts and gap ups and what's when trading you're typically going You're playing the long side where with day trading you can go long and short But what's when trading you can also go short. It's just more typical to see more long strategies work out So yeah, we're doing trading a lot less screen time And you typically have a pretty good risk reward on the type of place that you're playing if you know what you're doing at least So let's take some Stake a little bit some examples. So With Coinbase So this is an example of a good day trade, right? Coinbase has been consolidating. This is a clear support level So here you could see that it was consolidating here with four bars here from the little flag And then it broke out once it took that level here and then over here on Yeah, on this day when it clearly broke down with big volume That's a good sign to short here and you could have shorter here and taking profits around this area, right? So this is an example of day trading where you're looking at the five minute chart and making quick decisions So first one trading you're looking you're typically looking at the daily chart for at least the one hour at the very minimum And here's a good example for a really nice flag set up and then a breakout, right? So you're risking you would probably place your stop somewhere on this 135 level and you buy around that 142 level and you have a lot of profit potential, right? So really good risk reward But yeah day trading and swing trading mostly rely on patterns Next up with position trading position trading is basically looking into two different subparts of both position trading and value position trading so broad position trading for example You try to find ARKK names like growth names Where they have a lot of potential to like 10x in the next 10 years, right? So for example a position trader if they believed in crypto and Coinbase then they would have been accumulating throughout this entire base, right and They're looking for a move that can at least 10x their investment. So they're buying around this area They want they want they are probably Predicting a move back up to all-time highs, right? So 430. So if you were buying around this time Around this hundred dollar range, then that's a 4x on your money, right? So It's more long-term trading with position trading But you want to follow the trend and you want to get out as soon as the trend changes So for example with Coinbase, you probably would have if you were a position trader You probably would have broken or you probably would have bought When this resistance level got broken So Coinbase has been building a nice base here, right? For almost a year when the space gets broken When the space gets broken then a position trader Would initiate a position here and then I this out And then now yeah when the trend changes then you typically want to get out But that's pretty much position trading and there's also value investing So this is just like buying dividend stocks or buying things like Coca-Cola Whenever this thing dips you just want to buy buy it right down the dips and then sell it on strength So that's just value investing buying stuff with low Low PEs and yeah, things like that things that don't really move you just buying them on dips Expecting them to come back and then sell them into strength and Yeah, that's pretty much a value investing So basically buying assets when you think they're undervalued. That's value investing and then there's also Automated trading so this is where you see a lot of hedge funds like high frequency trading like Citadel There's also other ones like Jane Street capital And there's a few more like Hudson River trading, but these guys are all like Quants they deal a lot with math and stats and programming so They basically build models where they back test different strategies and Try to find the best ones that they could use for like day trading or market making things like that. So Individual traders can also do this and I know there's some traders that do this But it's also pretty relatively hard and you're competing with some of the best programmers, right? so Takes a lot of skill, but it's definitely possible to do or it's definitely You just need to have the right software and the right tools in the right college But yeah, those are pretty much the four different ways you can make money from trading Just to recap day trading past the highest learning curve or biggest learning curve and Highest failure rate, but it's the best way to best return on your money And it's the fastest way to grow small account. So when trading is good once you Have a decent amount of money and you're already trading with a decent amount of money And that's the best way to grow your account through good risk board setups, and it's a lot less screen time So if you're if you have a full-time job, then swing trading or position trading is where you want to go and position trading again, it's just more long-term investments and Yeah quant trading your algorithmic trading is Yeah, just doing high-frequency trading using models and it requires a lot of math and statistics and program But yeah, that's all I got for you guys this video. Thank you guys for tuning in There's a reason why xTrades is currently the fastest growing application on the market for sharing financial ideas with over $2.5 million paid in the last two years to contributors users are flocking to see what trades the top traders on the leaderboard are sharing in real time If you're looking to grow your reputation as a trader on the internet or discuss your trading ideas with other reputable investors Click the link below and get connected with the trading mentor today completely free of charge


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Yes, new studio. New studio. A lot of work went into this by Derek Service and Jeff Shaw. You get everything ready in time for the new year. You've got new lighting, new backgrounds. All kinds of stuff that we're going to play. Yes. So how was your vacation, Bryce? It was good. It was pretty busy though. Yeah. Yeah. Let's see if we can play a lot of games. I've played a bit. Yeah. Anything new? Yeah. I got Bioshock. Yeah. So what was Bioshock like? Oh, it was very fun. Yeah. I played Bioshock on the PS3. Did you play it on the PC? Yeah. Have you played any of the other ones? Well, there's one other one, right? Yeah. I think that's it. Imagery is a good one. Yeah. Yeah, Bioshock is pretty cool. So why don't you tell us about Bioshock? Well, it's a first-person shooter developed by Irrational Games, if I'm correct? Yeah. I think Irrational Games and published by 2K or something or other. Yeah. So the game takes place underwater, right? Yes. Except that you're in a city underwater. You can sit here. Yeah. And the whole idea is that you... It starts out like there's not really a whole lot of explanation. You're in a plane crash. Yeah. And then you find a lighthouse. Yeah. And a submarine that goes down. And you discover this underwater city that's been down there abandoned. And it was built supposedly in the 50s, right? Yeah. So I think you're not much after the 50s in the game. Oh, is it like the 60s or something? Yeah. So it hasn't been too long, but already there's been trouble down there. Yeah. So what did you think of the game? I thought it was very fun. Yeah. The graphics were pretty good, right? Yeah. And you played on a PC, so you got like the full... Well, I've played on my laptop, so... Yeah, I finished all of these. Okay. All right. So tomorrow? I have a court tomorrow. Okay. All right. Next week? Yeah. All right. Yeah. So next week then we'll shift the whole operation to downstairs. Okay. All right. Thank you once again. You're welcome. Yeah. You have any thoughts on video games or to share with the audience? I don't know. Actually, I don't... I don't know if there's any. I haven't played in the video games recently. It's been a while. Yeah. I think the last thing I played was like Grand Theft Auto, San Andreas. Sweet thing. We'll be talking about that on the new one concept this year. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's five. So it's the, you know, the high HD version of that. Yeah. Like they've redone everything. But they said it's bigger than almost all the other games combined. Oh, okay. Combined. Wow. Like the size of the world. Just like that. Yeah. But it's the same area that it's showing us. So it should be pretty cool. And now you can go... They said you can go under water. There's like submarines that they can actually put. Sea water fin and everything. Yeah. Cool. All right. I'll see you next week. So your impression was good. Yeah. It was a pretty fun game. And what did you think about the whole five minutes? The game, you discovered these like genetic implants, I guess you call them. Yeah. They call them five minutes. But they're sort of like a genetic living thing. Yeah. And they give you different powers, which you'll see in a clip. We have a clip actually. Yeah. And you thought that was pretty cool. Yeah. That was pretty cool. Yeah. I thought it was really good. I think there was a lot of talk about how amazing the back story was. I thought it was really cool. Yeah. But maybe not quite as earth-shattering as everyone was saying. At the time it came in. Yeah. Have you played the sequel to it? No. I have not played the sequel yet. Are you going to now that you've played the first one? Probably. Yeah. I was thinking of picking it up. The reason I got it is because it was like five dollars in the bargain game. All right. And I got exactly one year ago Christmas with my brother and I still didn't have it. The Rapture is the name of the city underground. Under the... Under the... Under the... Right? Pretty sure it's specific. Even though maybe they never really specified it. Yeah. I don't remember. I'm not sure where it was. It makes sense that you build it no longer. I don't consider it cool. Yeah. Might be the Atlantic. Of course. You've got to have a wrench every game. First person shooter you can't have. First person shooter. You've got to wrench unless it's called beauty. Or crowbar. Or crowbar. Or some other metal object. I've got to paint it red too. But that was one of the things. The art direction in this game was really... Yeah. It's this wonderful sort of art deco combined with a little 50s futuristic style which sort of trickles to everything. Like the little advertisements you find. Posters. You know, like the worn posters on the walls. The audio in here. So can we trigger the clip from here? Yeah, we can. I think we have to have the... Let's try it. So now, if we can, we'll cut away the clip. All right. Yeah, we're going to cut away the clip now. All right. It was amazing. I still can't get mine to click in, so I'm not able to... So there was a big article in Wired about Bioshock Infinite, which is the next version of this game that's coming out. So when we get closer to the release of that game, we'll probably talk about it again. Yeah. The article was just a pretty positive profile. But as I said, there was a lot of hype around the original game when it came out. For some people, it was very satisfying. For others, it was like, you guys are overhyping a little. So we'll see what happens with this new one. Yeah. So that was Bioshock. The next thing we're going to cover is... If you recall, in one of the earlier episodes, which for us was a long time ago, but for you, it won't be pretty recent, I brought it in my collector set for Black Ops. And as you'll recall, I was very upset that the drone didn't work. Well, we returned with the drone and the controller that was broken, and I repaired it. So what we're going to do is just to show you a little idea of what the future's going to be like in the entire United States when there's drones flying around everywhere, watching your every move...  As you can see, it's going to fly off camera, and it puts over pretty easily. So I wouldn't say that this Black Ops drone is the best drone in the world.  But this technology is advancing rapidly. As you can see already, it's cheap enough to turn into toys that they can pack in with video games. And of course, the police are interested in them. The military is interested in it. And I guess it needs some development. These things are manufactured in China? Not that the Chinese make bad stuff, but they're trying to keep the cost as low as possible. And in the game, you can get one of these and you can shoot people because there's a machine gun on it. This one doesn't have a machine gun. Hopefully you can hear me over there. You can't worry. I don't know where it's going, but now I can see it. It's flying up into the light. And that is it. Probably just broken. I wanted to show you that in fact, the drone does work if you fix it. If it was broken. And it was kind of a neat little toy that packs in. It's safe not to use it outside, but actually it's probably easier to use outside. And the indoor environment. And flying it around in the office is a little challenging. It doesn't control side to side very well. However, you can buy a little toy helicopter that flies really well. They're a little more sensitive on verticals. Because you lower the throttle and it can get dropped a lot. But anyway, I just wanted to show you that this is this kind of cool MQ, whatever the heck it is, it can impact and does in fact work. It's not just a prop. I thought it was a prop. So the game that I played over the break was this game called The Unfinished One. It's out on a PlayStation. It's a PlayStation network exclusive. I was like once again, I'm always on the PlayStation. Yeah. But if you've heard of the game called The Journey or Flower or any of these sort of artsy games, this game is a lot like that. It's very artistic. It's a storybook essentially. There are definitely game puzzles in it and things like that. But it's really about the story and the atmosphere.  And she leaves you a silver paintbrush. Interesting. And one night at the orphanage, he's sleeping and all of a sudden he wakes up in the middle of the night and there's this door in the wall that he's never seen before. And he wanders through the door and he enters this mystical white realm. And when I say white, I mean like literally it's just a white blank space. But he takes that paintbrush he's got, the silver paintbrush, and he starts flattering black paint. And so you throw these globs of black paint around. And I've got a video that we'll take a look at and I'll describe it more. And the world emerges. And then it's a story that you follow along. And I'll show some of this in this video clip that you've got. Peculus! No. We insert these out the window. Anyway, so as you can see in the video it's a pretty cool game. It is a PlayStation exclusive. It's only like 15 bucks. It's a pretty short game. It took me a couple hours and I was kind of exploring everything and trying to get all the, there's like balloons that you can find and stuff. But it's nice because when you finish it, they give you little bonuses that make it much easier to go back and get all the other experts.  There are other games where just trying to get a complete, you know, 100% super chore. But this game is not like that. It's a really enjoyable game. I think one of the coolest things in the game though, I was playing it and there were a couple moments where stuff came on the screen and I just went, wow! And a second later the kid in the game goes, wow! So it's like somehow they knew that these were, this was the reaction you were gonna have and they put it in the kid, but I just thought it was really weird. It was the first time it happened I was like, oh, that was really cool. And then the second time it happened I was like, oh, that's, you know, it was like you're reading your mind and you know what's really cool and what isn't really cool. So it's a good game, the unfinished one. I recommend it if you've got a PlayStation or if you're in the game's house, you get a chance to play it, check it out. Would you like to take a look? Oh wait, we already looked at the clip, didn't we? We already looked at the clip. It's hard to tell when you're doing everything virtually. So let's see, we've got a couple fan films. Oh yeah, oh, here. And the headset, right. Yeah, we'll do that. So we said we were gonna review. So do you have a, do you play with headsets at home? I have a pair of headphones, yeah. I just have no microphone though. So you just plug it in? Yeah. Which is okay because you're sitting in a computer. Yeah. So you know, I play at home and I sit in a chair a couple feet back on the TV and my brother, who I must congratulate for his, along with my sister-in-law, I just had a baby, they got me these for Christmas and this is a PlayStation pulse wireless headset. And it comes with a little, there you can see, on the right is this model that I'm holding and on the left is the new Elite model which is of course, more money. It's, I think you can get it for about $130 on Amazon. I'm not too concerned. Prices, you can look them up, there's a lot of sales and stuff. The new ones have some extra super bass features that actually are powerful enough to vibrate the headset. So like when you get hit by bullets and stuff, you can actually feel things, like in the football games they say like you can feel the tackles. What they might have done is built the vibrational motors from like cell phones. You're gonna vibrate them into the headset, so like it's like touch feedback or something in a way. These, which are the ones on the right, have a little boom, if you're asking. You can see it there and the photo pulls out but I'll hold it up in front of the way, the background. We tend to run our show a little dark because it makes it easier to do some of the other work that needs to be later. And then here's the little wireless key to plug in to your USB port. You can use these with Macs, PCs, and the PlayStation. There's separate volume control that adjusts between the chat and the music so you can actually emphasize somebody's chat. That only works on the PlayStation, but the other functions all work on PC and Mac and all that. They have virtual surround and the sound quality, if you're an audio file that listens to classical music or jazz and is really picky, these are not going to be the top experience. But they are good headphones and the music sounds, your MP3s, your iPod, the in-game audio sounds amazing. You'll hear all kinds of details that you probably wouldn't hear otherwise because they get lost in the shuffle of the environment. There's some noise cancelling that's in the headphones so they're really quiet when you put them on. You can do everything. I would say the range is pretty good. I was able to walk around quite a distance with them but lose line of sight to the receiver and then you start losing the signal. So some Bluetooth headsets are a little bit better. These are not Bluetooth, by the way. These are the only ones that work universally with a lot of things. I think that probably helps to keep the cost down with future headphones. So you don't have a mic on yours? Do you ever engage in any kind of voice chat? Sometimes I use Skype if I'm playing with my friends. So you can thought behind the scenes? Yeah. My brother and I use the prop cell phone as well. When you're on the same... what do you call it, network? Yeah. We used to do that when I was... Star Wars Battlefront. You know, where you could turn into a Jedi. So, I recommend these. If you're looking for a wireless headset for your PlayStation, if you're doing PC or Mac, I don't know how many other wireless headsets are out there. These are... At this time, they're pretty inexpensive. They've been out on the market for about a year or two. Probably two years at least. Like I said, there's a newer model that has some different newer features, including any sort of sound profile so that you can... The elite version allows you to load up a profile for sports, for movies that enhances various aspects of the sound.  You don't even realize you have them on, and you can still hear what's going on. It's really nice. And then you don't have to disturb your neighbors late at night or anything if you really want to blast it. I think these are not even a quarter of the volume, and it's plenty loud. I don't even know if I'd want to go up full volume in some sort of damaged area or something. So, they're pretty good. Battery life. I think I got about five hours continuous gaming before I had to plug him in and charge him. There is a micro-USB port on it, so you can actually take a cable like you used to charge your phone, depending on the kind of phone you have, or your other wireless controllers, and still be connected and listen and charge at the same time. All right. I think we're nearly out of time. Yeah, out of time. If you'd like to say anything else, friends, I know I talk a lot. No, I don't think I have anything left to say. I haven't even seen the band films yet. Well, next time we're going to be bringing you... which game are you going to be reviewing next time? Frozen Synapse. Frozen Synapse. And I'll be talking about Max Payne 3, which I got my hands on. And probably some other stuff, and I think we're going to go back and probably find a new one for me. And you'll see just that it's going to change dramatically because we're going to be experimenting. Yeah. Although we're probably seeing a new one. Yeah. All right. So, let's queue up those end credits. And revise. Yeah, revise the end credits. And we're going to be having some...


Welcome everyone to our webinar, Building a Strong Brand for Your Organization. I'm Susan Hope Bard, the Training and Education Manager here at TechSoup, and it's my pleasure to host this event today. Before we actually get started bringing you the event, I'd like to talk a little bit about the platform that we're using. We do use the ReadyTalk platform, so as you're either logging in now or you logged in earlier, you might have heard music coming from your computer speakers. Most of the time you will be hearing music come from your computer speakers. You can chat to ask us any questions you might have in the left-hand column. There's a chat box. You will see us chatting different things out to you. It could be a link to events or to some websites that we'll be referencing. You don't need to raise your hand. You can simply chat into the chat box. All of the lines are muted. If you're having any difficulty seeing or hearing the event, please chat into the chat box and we will help you on the tech side of things. If you lose your Internet connection, you can reconnect using the link that was emailed to you. And if you lose your phone connection that you're, if you've called in, you could just redial the phone number and rejoin. The calling number for this event is<PHONE_NUMBER>L. And the code that you will use is 53789. And Becky will be chatting that out to everyone as well. Again, you don't need to raise your hand. You can simply chat into the chat box. As I mentioned, we are recording this event. We will host, when we will post this event in about a week on our archives. We will also be putting this event in our course, Design for Non-Designers 101 in our learning management system. And we'll talk about that a little later. You will receive an email with this presentation along with the recording and any links we mentioned in a few days. You can find out about upcoming and past webinars on the TechSoup website at www.techsoup.org slash community slash events dash webinars. You can also tweet us at TechSoup or using hashtag TS webinars. And again, the call in number for this event, if you're not hearing the sound come through your computer speakers, that is the default, you can call in at<PHONE_NUMBER> with the code 53789. Let me talk a little bit about our amazing speaker today, Gopika, who is the owner and Creative Director at Elephant Designs. She started Elephant as a way to bring thoughtful design to world-changing brands. And in addition to leading a multi-disciplinary team and a variety of prints and interactive pieces, Gopika also teaches design at the University of San Francisco. She curates events and leads workshops focused on design for social impact, so for folks just like you. Her work has been featured in Fast Company, Good, Wired, Italy, and Design Like You Give a Damn. She's an active member of the design community and has given talks at Facebook, Women in Design, and Net Impact. Also, Gopika has worked with us very closely to develop a course for you for nonprofits and libraries. And it's our free course, Design for Non-Designers 101. And I will be navigating through that a little later on today after Gopika's presentation. As I mentioned, I'm Susan Hope Bard, the Training and Education Manager here at TechSoup. We also, on the back end, we have Abigail Maravalli from Elephant Design. She's going to be helping with chat as you chat in your questions. And Becky Wiegand is also on the back end from TechSoup. She is going to help you with any tech problems you have. Again, throughout the event you should feel free to chat all of your questions in. You don't need to wait for the opportunity for Q&A. We'll simply queue those up for Gopika to address during brief Q&A sessions. Also, if at any point in time, if you have any issues hearing or seeing, just chat us in the chat box. The objectives of today, we want you to understand the basic elements of brand design guidelines. We also want you to understand the importance and value of branding your organization. Gopika will also help identify core elements of your brand guidelines to help your nonprofit or library create a strong brand. We will also have an opportunity for a Q&A session. As I mentioned, we'll be queuing up your questions throughout this event. We will also be following up with an email that will have a link to the recording, the presentation, and any links that we discussed during the day. To get us started, I'm going to talk a little bit about TechSoup. TechSoup is located here in San Francisco, California. While I'm telling you about TechSoup, go ahead and chat in where you are joining us from. So go ahead and chat in the city and the state or the country that you are joining us from. TechSoup is a 501c3 nonprofit just like many of you joining us today. And we work to empower organizations around the world to help you get the latest tools, skills, and resources to help you achieve your mission. And you can see from our map here, we serve almost every country in the world. We have about 62 partner NGOs all around the world. Oh wow, we've got folks joining us from it. This chat box is going crazy now. Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Ohio, Georgia, San Diego, Maryland, that's my home state, same as Gopika. Gopika and I are both from Baltimore, Maryland originally. So thank you for joining us. I'm very happy that everyone is here. And I am going to get us started up some folks from the UK. I know it's like 9 hours later there, so thank you for joining us at night. You, as people that are chatting in, you will only be able to see chat that comes from the presenters. But don't worry, we'll share everything with you. If someone chats in a tip, we can share that out with you during the event. So now we're going to have a short poll. So the question is, what is your experience with Brand Guidelines? Are you, what are Brand Guidelines? You're not really sure. Do you know what they are, but you don't use them? Does your organization have formal Brand Guidelines?  Go ahead and just click on the radio button that best represents you. If you can't click on the radio button, you can go ahead and chat into the chat box. And I'm going to give us a few more seconds to answer this question. We have about 450 people in the event itself, so that's a lot of folks. I want to give you the opportunity to answer. It looks like a lot of folks are in the top two categories where they're not sure what Brand Guidelines are, or they know what they are, but they don't use them. So we're definitely in the right place today. So I'm going to give us 5 seconds, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and I'm going to show you the results. So it looks like about 83% of us really are new to this concept of Brand Guidelines, or you may have them in your organization, but you don't really use them. So you are definitely in the right place today. And I am going to turn the presentation over to Gopika from Elephant, and she is going to share with you today all about building a strong brand. Gopika, it's all yours. Okay, great. Thank you so much for that lovely introduction, Susan. And thanks everyone for joining today for this webinar. My name is Gopika, and I'm the founder and creative director at Elephant. And like Susan mentioned, I set out to start Elephant as a way to bring really high quality design to social causes. We're also based here in San Francisco. It's lovely to have TechSoup as our neighbor. And since we started out, we've worked with more than 300 nonprofits around the world. Some of our specialties include branding, and web design, and pretty much everything in between. So we're a full service studio. We recently launched our very first online design curriculum with TechSoup, which is so much fun to create. And hopefully it looks like a lot of you are interested in learning about what Brand Guidelines are.  So over the next hour or so, I'll be discussing what makes a strong brand, and walking you through some examples of brands that I love. Some of the examples are from our own clients, Elephant clients, while others are pulled from my library of inspiration. So every designer will have a sort of pool of inspiration. So I'm going to share some of that with you. Definitely post some questions to the chat group throughout as we go, and as time allows, I'll pause and answer your questions. Okay, so let's get started. All right, so we all want a strong, memorable brand. It's one of our favorite types of projects at Elephant, because it relies on a deep understanding of who you are as an organization, and how you want to express yourself to the world. Branding projects require a lot of teamwork, collaboration, intuition, and creativity. This may sound like a lot, but the fact that you're in this webinar is a really great start. I'm hoping to cover the basics with you and get some of your creative juices flowing on how you can tackle your organization's branding. So what is a brand? We typically think of our website and print materials, all the things that you can see as our branding, but it's really much, much more than that. A brand is your personality, and it extends well beyond the printed page. When done right, people understand who you are. They can recognize your cause, and they remember you. Whenever we work on a branding project at Elephant, we start off by personifying the organization. We ask our clients certain questions that give us a better sense of this personality. Questions include what kind of music does this brand listen to? Where does it go for fun? What's your brand's favorite outfit? These questions, however silly they may seem, allow our clients to think outside the box and begin to see their brand as more than just a logo. So this is a really fun part for us because we get into the abstract, the aspirations. Maybe there's a certain outfit the brand wears today, but there's a certain outfit that the brand wants to wear in a year from now. Understanding that and thinking about the brand in terms of a person and those unique interests and preferences helps me as a designer get into certain decisions. And I'll walk you through some of that thought process later on in this presentation. So in essence, your brand is a combination of soul, heart, and mind. The more you understand about each of these aspects of your organization, the stronger your brand will be. So let's take a look at each of these levels in more detail. Your true north is the soul of your organization. It's defined by your values and purpose on this planet. And sometimes it's a little difficult to sum up in words. Most founders and executive directors will have unique anecdotes and ways of thinking about the organization. Strong brands will be able to integrate these powerful insights into every touch point of your brand. And what I mean by touch point is any sort of point where another person is interacting with your brand. So it could be a physical space, it could be a storefront, it could be a project or a program you're running on the ground interacting with a staff member or visiting your website, getting your press kit, getting your business card. All of these are considered touch points. Later in the presentation I'll walk you through how companies like Patagonia have done this very well. So the spirit of your organization or your true north can also be found in your mission and vision statements and should definitely live somewhere on your website. Sometimes we forget to include this, but after this webinar maybe do a quick check and make sure this exists on your website. Whether you're developing a brand from scratch or looking to enhance an existing one, here are a few exercises that can help you articulate your true north. So we recently worked with a nonprofit who was struggling to articulate what they did in a clear and concise way. To help them out we hosted a full day workshop where their core team worked together to develop a brand personality. Five people across departments in different leadership positions spent the day brainstorming with us. Sometimes getting to a point of clarity around your mission or your vision requires non-linear thinking. In order for us to get to their true north statement we first had to clearly define who the organization was and what they did. It seems simple enough, right? You can typically say what you do in a sentence, but what was interesting is that everybody on the team had a very different way of explaining what the organization did in a simple sentence. So finding that right language and tone can be challenging and doing it with a diverse team among your organization. Getting the executive director to sit with the communications person to sit with an intern or someone who received your programming can be really helpful to get to that sort of what statement. So once we developed a clear what statement for this organization we then asked why? Why do we exist? Why does this organization exist? A simple keyword exercise helped us further define the organization. So we had the very straightforward what the organization did. And some of these words came easily. It was through our conversations around their brand personality that we discovered that their brand was also confident, yet humble, excited, and ready for the future. So there were these little surprises, things that the team hadn't yet thought about or words that they hadn't yet identified as being really integral to their brand and true to their brand. So by identifying these five keywords we were able to lay the foundation for a clear and strong brand for this particular nonprofit. A series of exercises led us to this point of defining guiding principles for the brand. Now that they know that every touch point of their brand should be personal, warm, and exciting I'll just point to here. These are the three main principles that we identified after a series of conversations. And why that was important was moving forward outside of the engagement with Elephant when their team is going to create a new post on Instagram or select brand colors or make their next hire, they can use these principles to ensure that they stay on point. So in essence, guiding principles provide you with a concrete unwavering framework that ensures every decision you make is well informed and tells an authentic story. And that's super important in establishing a strong brand. Sometimes overlooked and we want to get straight into visual design but I'm sure a lot of us have stared at a computer and looked at all of the colors and all of the fonts possible and been sort of stuck where you start. And so these sort of preliminary conversations can really help you start to make decisions and narrow down options. The sort of high level and philosophical thinking can also help you tap into something much bigger and identify at the end of the day the soul of the brand. The second level of your brand is your visual identity. With a clear understanding of your values, guiding principles, and personality, you can start to create materials that reflect the spirit of your organization. If you determine, for example, that your values are placing warm and delightful, then you could choose brighter, more vibrant colors. If your brand is professional and grounded and excellent, then a serif font and limited color palette could be a better reflection of your values. And of course, this is all hypothetical. I'm not saying that if you're a profession, if you want to come across as professional, use a limited color palette. There's countless examples that would break that. This is just to give you a sense of if you start off the process by identifying certain characteristics and adjectives that are very unique to your organization, you can then start to hone in on certain visual elements that speak to those words. So let's take a look at how this played out for one of our clients this past year. So let's see here. New Door Ventures is a nonprofit in San Francisco and they provide job training and entrepreneurship skills to youth in the Mission neighborhood. Upon redesigning their website, we went to their headquarters, which was so exciting. It was really inspiring to see. And the first floor was a youth community center. It had lots of vibrant colors, a pool table area for workshopping. And the top floor was a little bit more subdued, and it was dedicated to their C-level offices, so it seemed appropriate. But they also were able to intersperse some really fun elements. So for example, they had this bright orange spiral staircase in the middle of an otherwise sort of regular office space. They also had bright green columns and then some wood paneling with hand lettering on it. So it added so much character to an otherwise somewhat regular corporate space. So visiting their actual office space helped us to immediately get a better understanding of who New Door was as an organization. It wasn't coming across in their old website, and we actually just launched a new website, so I'm unable to show you a comparison at the moment. But when we started the process, it was clear that the org was deeply dedicated to serving a youth. They had a super strong track record and really well-established partnerships that helped them achieve their mission. And the interesting thing for us was that their sort of personality, the friendliness, the way that they accommodate their youth was not coming across in their materials. There was a lighthearted and playful element that we really wanted to be able to capture and integrate into the website and this particular touch point of their brand. So as I said, New Door had gone through this sort of redesign of their interior space, and they had identified certain values that helped them do that. So this is an example of a mood board, just a hodgepodge of example images they pulled for inspiration and some keywords like youth-friendly, welcoming, safe, dynamic, vibrant. And these same keywords helped inform our design decisions when it came to the website. We started our process off with a series of our own mood boards. And for those of you who aren't familiar with them, mood boards easily translate emotions and ideas of feelings into visuals. So this is a light example of that. They also act as inspiration and can help facilitate really great conversations between you and your team. Pinterest is a great tool you can use to build out your own mood board. I'm sure some of us have used it before to plan a party or search for that perfect cupcake design.  So let's take a look at some examples here. So like I said, mood boards help you and your team get on the same page and establish a mutually agreed upon direction for your brand. In this example, it was important for us to create a bold, vibrant community feel. And without me saying much, I mean, if you look at this, the colors we chose, the sort of font choices, the way things are arranged should bring out those sort of feelings for you. There's probably more. There's probably things that you agree with or things that you don't agree with or images that resonate with you and images that you're like, oh, I don't really like that. And that's the point of the mood board. It's not to have every single element on the page be exactly what you want. It's basically the spark conversation. And literally, you can print this out and with a Sharpie, cross off images that just aren't working. So our earlier conversations with the client around their brand voice and personality helped us identify keywords and pull together an assortment of images that spoke to those qualities. So it's a little bit small, probably on your screen, but over here on the left-hand column, we pulled out some of the keywords related to their tone and then offered a little bit more context. So they're in San Francisco. We have the ability to meet with them in person and have plenty of conversations around the images that work for them. But if you're emailing them out, if you want to get the input from your friends, your family, or colleagues that are in other offices, definitely including some sort of insight around the image selection will be really helpful. So we put together a series of boards focused on unique aspects of their brand, starting with imagery. For imagery, it was really important that we captured both the individuality of a person as well as the community aspect of the org. So these were two things that were really emphasized and were coming from the organization. So this is where all of that preliminary conversations around what's really important to you as an organization is important. There's so many different ways of understanding community or individuality for that matter. And my goal in putting together these images was to give a nice variety that met the client's criteria for what community is and what individuality is. This opened up conversations. We had a little bit of a design critique and some really great discussions that served as a valuable next step in the design process. So in this particular example, the client really likes the image over here. They particularly like this because of the different color hands and the motion and the liveliness of it. They loved all the different colors and their previous brand was stripped of color. I think they were just using black, white, and green. So there was a certain dynamism to this image that actually opened up a lot of conversations. At the same time, they really gravitated towards this image. So it was a combination of an individual person, a photo, and fun illustrations. And you can see that there's a pretty large contrast between this sort of style and this style. And so even that was great from a design perspective to discuss that. What is it about this particular image or collage that really spoke to them and spoke to their brand? By selecting and ruling out certain imagery, we were able to conclude that original photography of their target audiences, in that case it was youth between the ages of I think like 16 to 24, would be crucial in establishing an authentic brand. So stock photos or generic images of any group or individual just wouldn't work for them. By identifying the visual design criteria early on, they could then plan next steps like scheduling a photo shoot or identifying images they already had that met their newfound criteria. So moving on to the next board in the series, this board was dedicated to typography and needed to reflect a bold, professional, and clean look. The client really valued accessibility and their brand values dictated the same. So when we pulled font examples together, we went for written text that was easy to read and that would translate well across print and web. While there is a science to typography and choosing the right font, a lot of this is subjective. There's also thousands of fonts to choose from. So mood boards but narrowed down options are extremely helpful before entering the process of actually selecting a font. So these boards included mostly sans-serif fonts. And what I mean by sans-serif font is you can see that they are super clean. They don't have what's called arms and legs. This font that is used for the headline up here for workbook and it might be a little tiny for you. That's an example of a serif font. So this client was definitely gravitating towards the sans-serif font and liked a little, just a splash of character. So you can see here with the K, while the typeface is really simple more or less, there were these unique little qualities built into the font that the client really loved. So when you know where on the spectrum your brand follows in terms of simple tornadoes, you can then start to narrow down and identify the right fonts for you. The last mood board in the series and then I'll maybe pause for questions is dedicated to illustration style. There may be some elements on the board that really stand out and resonate with you and your team, while other images or elements not so much. Being able to articulate what's working for you and how a particular element relates to your brand and brand values will help keep you on track and ensure the visual direction for your brand is on point. So what typically happens when we show mood boards to a client is there's some things that people agree upon and then there's definitely points of disagreement around a particular image or style. So you want to take these sort of points of disagreement as an opportunity to differ and understand why we disagree. So don't try and convince the other person that this is the way we should go. That could be another stage in the process. Really use the mood board as a conversation opener. You want to be an observer, a listener. You want to understand the rationale of others on your team. And why that's helpful is if you're wearing a designer hat and you're ultimately creating assets or materials for your organization, you want as much buy-in from others as possible. You want people to use the brand book that you create. You want people to love the brochure that you're designing. And the more people feel part of the process and that they're listening to, the more they're going to respect your work and your point of view. So with this illustration board what happened was there was part of the team that really loved this style. Line-based illustrations with just a splash of color, very simplistic. And then there were some people that really liked this style. Now you might think it's similar, but this actually opened up a lot of conversation around the type of character and the form of the character. So if you look at this illustration in the top area, you can see that the illustrations are a little bit more abstract, different colors, definitely not realistic. And it had a youthful feel, same with here, a very youthful feel. And it was important for this brand that they didn't come across as too young. They wanted to seem professional and authoritative, but also accessible. And so we had these really great conversations around why this form actually spoke to some people. And it turned out that everybody was on the same page. It was just that the visual spoke to each person in a different way. And so that's why I say it's really important to not shoot someone down or say, oh no, no, no, we'll never go in that direction because often we're saying the same thing and we're just speaking a different language. And so the more you can understand the language of the people on your team, the better off you'll be. So I've definitely come to really enjoy disagreement. And it's these moments that make me pause and I can play devil's advocate and sort of push people to articulate their thoughts and ideas. It's really the disagreement that lets me as a designer achieve clarity and ultimately helps me deliver visuals that are very much in line with my client's goals and those of the brand. Since so much of what we're discussing is subjective, mood boards help you dissect the nuance and ambiguity around these ideas and personal preferences. I've found them useful in pretty much every design project, whether it's a logo or a website or even a themed impact report. Another tip I should mention is that there's a certain vocabulary you can start to develop by reading design articles or publications. So you can check out communication arts or Behance and even Dribble. So Behance and Dribble are both online communities. Communication arts also has an online component, but I think you have to have a subscription to read all of the articles. But the more you read and the more you sort of learn in terms of design vocabulary, the more you're going to be able to speak about your work and your brand and your design decisions. And people will just inherently have more confidence in what you're doing and creating. So that's a little bit of a tangent. It's more about design leadership and owning your decisions. You wouldn't, for example, want to put together mood boards and someone asks you a question and you're not able to back up your ideas. So it's definitely helpful, like I said, include some notes and just provide context so people understand your line of thinking in the event you're not presenting them in person. So I'm just going to pause for a moment and see if anyone has some questions. We do. We have got about 20 questions in the queue, so I think we'll take a few right now and then definitely save 10 minutes at the end for some more questions. So Marjorie asks, once an organization has identified its brand, does it ever change? Does the organization's strategic plan have any connection with its brand? Yeah, that's a really great question. The short answer is yes. I think that a brand that sticks with what was, I mean we've worked with a lot of organizations that were founded 15, 30 years ago. And there are certain principles that remain true today, but then there are so many new programs or services or offerings that your organization now offers and your brand doesn't really encompass the full suite or that full sort of spectrum of what you're doing. And so every once in a while and that timeframe, it's hard for me to say like, okay, after a year you want to do this, after five years you want to do this, but typically at the end of the year it is a point of reflection, right? Individually we kind of look at our life and say, okay, this is what has worked and these are my resolutions for the future. And I think the same is true for an organization. It's almost like a gut check where at the end of the year you can say okay, yeah, we're moving in the direction that we want to be moving in and because of whatever's happened in the past six months we're now kind of changing our strategic plan. And that doesn't necessarily mean that you need to change your logo and your website and your brand from a visual standpoint. It could mean looking at your content and looking at how you're talking about your brand. That's kind of a short-hand version of it, but I say that what we've seen with our clients is probably every three to five years there's a larger sort of gut check that happens where they do want to revisit their logo or branding and it could be a slight modification or a complete overhaul and that's really dependent on the direction that the organization is taking. Thank you. That's a super helpful explanation. The next question comes from Dallery and I hope I'm not butchering this person's first name, so my apologies. They wonder how do people working on defining brand guidelines address generational differences in their community? Yeah, that's a really good question and I mean that's something that's true for every single brand. You're designing and creating something for a wide range of people and so there are a lot of exercises that can help you identify your target audiences and be really clear on who that is. While aspirationally we want to serve everyone under the sun, realistically you could probably group your main audiences into one to three types of people. And there's personas that can help you develop language or aspects of your brand that speak to a specific demographic or age group or type of subset within your audiences. There's also what's called archetypes. So say there's 100 different types of people that you're trying to serve. If you really analyze those people you can group them based on their interests and that's what I mean by an archetype. So maybe there's a group of people that it doesn't matter what age they are, they're all curious in learning. And this is a hypothetical for a non-existent brand right now but this whole group is interested in learning. So what does that mean for you as an organization? How do you provide a platform or portal for learning on your website or in your materials? And so while there might be gaps in generations, a learning curve to certain technology, there are ways for you to start to group your key audiences and develop personalities for them. So personas is one exercise that's really fun. We can send as a follow-up some helpful resources to develop those for yourself. And then I guess the other part to that is if specifically your question is there's this gap in generations and maybe a learning curve because of that that needs to happen internally, then the more you're stepping in the shoes of the people you're designing for, creating for, the more you're going to understand them as people, not as an age group or as an archetype per se, but as an actually living, breathing human being that you can relate to. And if you can do that as a person, then you can translate those insights into your design. Thank you. I think one more for this break and then we're going to transition to the rest of your presentation. Very quickly a lot of folks have chatted in what tool did you use to create these mood boards? And perhaps define mood boards one more time. And I know there are three that you covered, typography, imagery, and illustration. So if you could just talk about how you did that, what tools do you recommend they use to do one of their own? Sure. So mood boards, I use InDesign because it just lets you crop images really well. You can also use Pinterest as a tool where it might not look exactly like what you see here, but definitely gives you a nice compilation of imagery and then you can make comments and have it be very collaborative. What a mood board is, is they basically translate emotion, ideas, and feelings, so all of the intangible aspects of your brand into visual. And they also help you facilitate conversations between you and your team. So you can look at these sort of pulled sound examples. So just to clarify on this mood board here for illustration is I didn't create any of these illustrations from scratch. They were all pulled from sites like Behance and the Internet and just different design inspiration sources that I have. And I use them as talking points throughout the process. And the way you break down your mood boards can change. So just for this particular client I chose to do imagery, typography, and illustration. You could have a mood board just on color. You could have a mood board on pattern. It really depends on your organization and who you are working with and what the brand sort of requires. Thanks so much. Okay, so I think we'll just jump into the rest of the presentation. So the last sort of layer of your brand is your actions. So just as your true north and visual identity tell a story about your organization, so do the people and policies behind your brand. This is often an overlooked element of the branding process. And I'm not going to spend a terrible amount of time talking about it, but it's definitely a very important aspect to consider. So say for example you're an environmentally conscious company, but your office uses diaphragm cups. If part of your mission is to bring more compostable materials into the world, but your own office hasn't changed their purchasing policies, then there's an obvious disconnect that dilutes your brand. And it's not a very authentic story. So at Ellison, we value excellence, care, and playfulness. These are three of the sort of values we hold as our true north as a studio. And so when we're hiring, we look for these qualities in a candidate. So you might be an amazing designer, but you don't really care about the work that you're doing or the clients that you're serving, and you don't bring a sense of humor to the office. And so that type of person is going to affect our studio culture and it's going to dilute how people feel about Ellison when interacting with us in person. So that's just one example of how your brand, the people, policies are all coexisting to tell your story. So I'm just going to flip to a few other examples. So here is a shoe company called Allbirds that uses ZQ Certified Merino wool. This means that they meet really high standards of sustainable farming and animal welfare. And at the same time, they care about your comfort. I don't work for Allbirds nor do I have an understanding of their internal policies. So these insights are pulled primarily from my experience as a potential consumer. So I'm looking at it from the outside. I'd like to highlight basically how their brand ambassadors have successfully and in very little time, the company launched I think maybe a year ago or so. And in that amount of time, these ambassadors have shaped a very powerful and authentic story for them. So these are images that I pulled from their Instagram account. And without reading anything or talking to any of their employees, I got this immediate feeling of what they're about and what they value. They're fun. They care about the environment. They value comfort and excellence and design. They want you to be you in their shoes. Whether you're on their Instagram account or show up at one of their public locations, there's this seamless and uniform brand story. And the product is minimalist. They only offer a certain number of colors. But the personality comes out in these unique stories behind the photos, behind the packaging, behind their people. So yeah, we're not official Allbirds ambassadors. But yes, this picture in the middle with the elephant is definitely one of our favorites. The reason I first heard about Allbirds is actually from my colleague Abigail who stumbled upon their shoes in a pop-up in San Francisco. And she told me she would never have remembered anything about the company if it weren't for their memorable brand. How many organizations can you list as memorable? Not because of what you read or what they do, but because of how you felt when you interacted with it. At the end of the day, that's the goal. So it's also brand. And for someone who's worked with brands every day, I put a lot of thought into what makes a strong brand. For us, a thoughtful brand is authentic. It's memorable. It's reliable. And we often associate great branding with only the biggest and sexiest companies like Apple or Nike or Gatorade. We truly believe that the same guiding principles that make big brands memorable can also be applied to your organization, to this four good space. So I'm just going to look at a few examples within this nonprofit space, but it's strong branding and therefore have highlighted their cause to millions. I love this panda. For me, it doesn't just represent the World Wildlife Fund. It's also a symbol for animal rights and has been in use for about 50 years. Most of us recognize the panda. There are a number of design notes I could discuss right now, but I'll save that for another day. The one thing I'll note is that the reason the panda is so memorable is because they set us as a norm, choosing not to use an image of the world, a tree or holding hands, low as we see a lot in the nonprofit space. While it's extremely difficult to create such an iconic mark as this, our goal with any brand is to create something that's just as memorable and authentic. One thing to note and something that you would want to include in your brand guide is the rules and constraints around your mark. And the reason why this mark is so memorable is because the panda never changes. You never see it in color. You never see it stretch or flip. It never sits alongside other illustrations of animals. There are certain rules and guidelines that inform how this logo is used. And it's important with any brand to have strict guidelines on logo usage. This ensures consistency across all of your touch points. And if you want a little bit more information on how to construct a brand book or what goes into it, then remember to check out our Level 2 course because it goes into all the steps and elements in creating your own brand guidelines. It can definitely be tricky to stand out from all the noise. And there are thousands of organizations, for example, that are working to bring clean drinking water to remote regions of the world. And yet Charity Water is one of the most widely known from a brand perspective. When someone mentions Charity Water, I immediately think yellow plastic water container. They've successfully turned their physical product into an icon and universal symbol for water quality. Again, one that is widely known and recognized across the globe. I'm just going to go back to that slide. And I think we're going to pause and go to a poll. Yes, great. We're going to check and see. We've got lots of questions in our chat box as well, but just a quick polling question. So to see everybody that's been listening, what is a true statement about a thoughtful brand according to what Gopika just shared? A thoughtful brand is authentic. A thoughtful brand is memorable. A thoughtful brand is relatable. And you should be able to choose as many as you want. And I think a lot of the chat questions that have come in too are a lot about logos and copyrights, Gopika. So if you do have a chance to talk about that, that would be awesome. Sure. So are there questions about logos, the use of logos, or how to create a logo? It's about the use of the logo and copywriting. So if you could cover some copywriting issues with designing logos, and some of the challenges folks may have in nonprofits. Sure. So obviously you want to do a good amount of research in terms of what sort of logos and marks are out there and being used. And that takes some time. It's definitely worth it to print those examples out and just make sure that you're not creating anything that's already been in use. There's definitely outside consultants and design studios that help facilitate this process and make sure that anything that you're making isn't already trademarked or used widely in circulation. In terms of logo and really differentiating your brand, I think one of the biggest things is making sure that you're also not using the same or similar colors than similar organizations in the space. And so even putting together like a swatch board of the common used colors that are used for clean drinking water or animal rights or ocean conservation can help you add a little bit of an element of surprise to do something slightly different. It's hard. I don't know if I know enough about content writing and trademarking, but there's definitely, especially if you're engaging in outside service, they're specialists in this. And I wouldn't try and tackle that all in-house. Great. Thank you. So if you chose any one of these, you would be correct. And I love the fact that people thought a thoughtful brand is memorable. Yeah, that's great. Definitely thoughtful brands are authentic, memorable, relatable, all of those things. They speak to who you are and who you're not. A thoughtful brand is well executed. It'll legitimize your cause. And it will tell an authentic story. So we don't have a terrible amount of time so I just want to flip through a few of the remaining slides here. But just to leave you as a takeaway here is some of the core elements to a strong brand. And so we talked about having a clear mission and vision statement, having a visual identity that speaks to your values. So that means your logo, color palette, font choices, image style, creating a brand book that outlines some of the rules and guidelines around these elements. Making sure to share your brand book widely across the company. It's helpful to inspire people and get people excited about working. It's a fantastic training tool for new hires to get them on board. And in turn, it creates Brandemasters, people within the organization that feel so connected to the cause that they actively promote and advocate for your organization on their own time. So I think we have maybe a few minutes and I'll walk you through one more sort of common, or big brand, one that I love which is Patagonia. And the more, you know, we all probably recognize this logo or know the name. And I started to, I've been a big fan of Patagonia since I was in middle school. And it was because my friends shop there and growing up on the East Coast, it was the perfect fleece. They gave me the perfect fleece for East Coast winters. The more I learned about the company, the more committed I was to buying from them over other outdoor companies.  And I realized there was so much more to the product than just the jackets and amazing outdoor photos in every single catalog. I started to pay more attention to their branding and quickly recognized how authentic their story was from its founding. Patagonia is a B Corp. They actively counter consumerism, but they sell products that use natural resources. It seems counterintuitive, but they're exactly on brand. Because they have such a deep understanding of their values, they can put out controversial ad campaigns that change behavior while directly promoting their organizational values. And the point here is basically the more you know yourself, yourself being the organization, the more you're able to create authentic messaging and make your mark on the world. So here's an example of how they're doing this online. One part of their website, and this goes back to the question around copywriting and content, but here one part of their website is dedicated to showing consumers the environmental footprint of the clothing they sell. This dress is partially made up of recycled polyester and partially spandex. And they state why they aren't able to trace the source of their spandex. They're super transparent about it. And I think it's important to note that strong brands aren't necessarily aiming for perfection. They're aiming for authenticity. I feel like I have a little bit more in my presentation, but I'd love to leave some time now for any last remaining questions. And if there's time to go through another example, I can do that. Great. Thanks so much. We do. We have quite a lot of questions. And Rhonda asks, she has heard that modern design is, quote, flat with no use of embossing and shadows. Is that true, or is that just a statement somebody made about their particular brand? No, it's definitely, we're seeing a big trend, especially in product design and web design, towards what's called flat design. And so Google released something that's called material design. They have a really great website where you can actually walk through and understand that better. But it is stripped of a lot of shadows and things that make an icon or a logo feel realistic. And that shift is, it was a trend and it's still going. And that's not to say that every single brand needs to follow that. And I would actually recommend, I mean this is where understanding your values is really important because you don't want your brand to not withstand the test of time. And that's why that Panda for the World Wildlife Fund is so powerful for me because this form, it actually was a little bit different 20, 30 years ago. It was a little bit more realistic. And then they cleaned it up to have these sort of clean edges but still a very defined Panda. And so while your brand might shift and change over time, even if you look historically at our elephant in our mark, when we started out it was a little bit crazy looking. And then in the past year or two we cleaned it up to make it flatter and scale better. And so I wouldn't just go with a trend or read one article and say, okay we need to follow suit. I would really understand your own values and then make decisions accordingly. Great. Thanks so much. We also have a question about rebranding. So if you have an organization that has shifted and perhaps it's to state and you want to make it appeal to a younger demographic, is rebranding a good idea? Yeah, because I don't know the details I can't necessarily say whether a complete brand overall is required or if some aspects of your brand could be enhanced. And there's pros and cons to both. Now if you're looking at your brand and you just want it to be fresher and livelier and just speak to the organization of today and the future, then perhaps the brand overhaul is important. We've definitely worked with organizations that not only tackle their brand but also their name. So they want a new name that speaks to where they're heading in the next 10 years. And those are really good questions and conversations to start asking and having. Again, it's hard to definitively say in this webinar whether that's the right approach for you, but if you're finding that there's a huge part of your audience that isn't being spoken to and something is very dated about your content or your look, then some sort of refresh or rebranding might be needed. Great. Thanks. One more or maybe two more questions and also letting folks know that these questions will be shared with the presenters for them to respond to and to get back to you. Some of you have some very specific questions about your particular nonprofit. And Gopika and Abigail can certainly respond to some of those questions individually. One question that came up is, is there a difference between experience with developing a brand for a public library? Are there different challenges that you could see for a library branding than for a nonprofit? You know, for us it wouldn't necessarily matter that you're a library versus a nonprofit because ultimately you're there to serve a certain demographic. You have key audiences just like a nonprofit does just like a B Corp would or just like a for-profit does. So instead of comparing yourself to other nonprofits you have to ask yourself, what are your goals? What are the goals of the library? What are you trying to achieve? What are the goals of your audiences? And where are there points of intersection between the goals of you at the library and those of your target audiences? And then you can start to think about what sort of decisions you can make. And whether that means putting some more attention on your brand or how you're giving people access to books or periodicals or information. Ultimately you're providing a space where people can learn, the learning environment. So I would kind of step out of this, okay, is it important for me as a library and just versus a nonprofit and start to ask a question, what do we want to do in this sort of amount of time that we have and how do we go about doing that? Great. Thank you. We still do have a lot of questions in queue but we have run out of time. As I mentioned we will be forwarding these questions onto Copica and Abigail to answer and get back with you. They've agreed to do that. And some of these more specific questions about your nonprofit they may want to channel those right back to you to ask some additional questions or if you're interested in working with Elephant as a design team. So thank you so much for this. Obviously folks are fascinated with the information that you've shared and we could probably do three or four of these webinars about design. So really quickly can everyone just chat one thing in that they learned today? I know it's probably difficult to identify one thing but just chat one thing in that you learned today or you may try to implement. And keep in mind that we will share a list of resources particularly around logos, branding, mood boards, how to develop those and some best practices in addition to trying to address some of the more general questions in our follow-up email which you will receive in about a week. We do have a free course that Copica has developed that will answer many of the questions that you had in the chat box and you can find that on https.techsoup.course.tc.catalog. It is designed for non-designers 101. It is a free course. We really encourage you to go there. You will actually begin to build your, it's like a starter kit for Brand Guidelines and she's done an amazing job of building videos, PowerPoint presentations, and exercises to help you think through some of these processes that she's described today. Also coming up check out our webinars. We've got lots and lots of webinars in the month of March, easy for me to say. Join us for any of our QuickBooks, Desktop for either new nonprofit users or existing nonprofit users. Those of you here joining us from libraries, how to protect page and privacy in public libraries coming up next week, and also a TechSoup tour about technology donations coming up at the end of the month. I am so sorry we have run a little bit over time. I do want to remind everyone there is a survey we want you to take that will pop up as soon as you X out or as soon as you leave this event. Please do tell us the things that you liked about this, things that we can do better and suggestions for other topics. I want to really a most sincere and heartfelt thank you to Gopika and Abigail. They have worked very hard to create the free course Design for Non-Designers 101 and we will also come out with a follow-up course Design for Non-Designers 201 in a few weeks that will also be available on our TechSoup courses. So they are amazing resources and I do hope that folks do follow up with them to find out more. And I know that Abigail will chat out their email and website and perhaps their Twitter handle. Also a huge thank you on the back end to Becky for handling all the chat questions, tech challenges, and also re-chatting out some of your comments. And a huge thank you to all of you for hanging in there. Sorry we went a little over time. We know your most valuable asset is your time so we appreciate the hour and 4 minutes you spent with us today. Thank you so much. And thanks to ReadyTalk, our sponsor. So have a great rest of your day everybody. Bye-bye.