Is a Brand Kit Necessary ?

Of Brands, Design Tools, and How-to Videos.

In the previous post, I demonstrated how to craft brand kits for your newsletter or product, specifically tailored for Substack. I showcased the creation of a logo and wordmark using Canva.

In this follow-up post, I provide:

1. Detailed guidance on how to create multiple cover photos for the welcome page in 5 minutes or less.

2. Advice on crafting multiple email banner images and customizing email header/footer text for all subscriber posts in 5 minutes or less.

3. How-to videos for the above tasks. These five-minute videos will walk you through the process using Canva, using the same demo publication, "Alien Diaries…when you feel alone," as a reference.

4. Results of the images uploaded in Substack, along with test emails.

5. Welcome Page caveats for banner images.

But before we start - in a celebratory post, I shared a preview of upcoming paywalled content - in case you were wondering, here's a fun update snapshot showing progress with some fun red, green, and yellow status stickers.

Green, yellow, and red status of upcoming paywalled posts. © Jayshree Gururaj

I created the snapshot in Notion to demonstrate how your content can be cataloged and managed in another software product. You can also set it up as a site to share with your readers.

Researching Notion is turning out to be a fun experiment - stay tuned for the update!

As a thank you for reading, here is an always-on 30% lifetime discount once redeemed - a monthly price of $7 per month (instead of $10) and $70 annual (instead of $100). You keep the discount forever!

Need more reasons to upgrade? You can choose a topic for my next post if you upgrade as an annual or platinum subscriber!

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Now, let's address the remaining assets: banner images that reflect your publication's intent and your design style. These serve well in welcome notes and as email headers.

I'll walk you through creating multiple images and customizing Substack email posts with them, all in five minutes or less. I've also included how-to videos for added clarity.

Have fun creating a batch of these images, and feel free to switch them up monthly to keep your publication fresh.

Pro tip: It's worth noting that the top-selling platform, 'Letters to an American,' doesn't rely on branding images, so if you're just starting, focus on your content!

If your publication demands extensive visual content, a custom strategy might be necessary.

We will use the same sample publication from the previous post:

Name: “Alien Diaries”

Tagline: “When you feel alone.”

The unexpected twist of creating a demo publication: now I'm genuinely curious about these Alien Diaries - what would they contain? Is anyone else curious?