Hey,

We have been talking about author branding over the last few weeks – slaying myths, cutting through the noise, and boiling things down to basic principles.

Now it’s time to show you how to do it.

How to turn one stock photo (or cover design) into an entire brand identity. Oh yes!

Before we get into that, I should mention that the DepositPhotos deal is still running – indeed this is the last chance to get 100 stock photo credits for $39.

That is an affiliate link, meaning I make a small commission if you decide to purchase – which helps support all the free stuff I build for writers. But it doesn’t affect the price you pay; indeed this is the lowest ever price for this deal.

Deal ends tomorrow at 1pm Eastern – hence going out a day early with this email, because I know some of you will be disappointed if you miss out; this deal won’t be back until Black Friday.

(BTW sorry for the spoilers but you are probably going to want to buy some stock photos by the end of this email.)

Making An Author

I’ve been walking the highways and byways of Portugal this week as someone has decided to dig a very large hole near my house, apparently undeterred by that piece of ground consisting mostly of... granite.

I don’t know what hell is going to look like, but I’m pretty sure the soundtrack will be a chorus of jackhammers.

While that noise puts video recording on hold, it does have a positive side: it gets me out and about and carves out more writing time for Yours Truly. Writing time, snacking time, ideating time.

Which was handy because I needed a good idea to save my bacon.

My problem was this: I needed to show you all these cool branded graphics I made, hoping to illustrate how easy it can be to turn a $0.39 stock photo into an entire brand identity, only using free tools… but I couldn’t record any video because of the new hellhole beside my house.

And if I load this email up with the 20+ images I’m referring to, then deliverability takes a nosedive and a lots of people won’t receive the newsletter.

Then it came to me. I can make a Facebook Page for my imaginary author – and show all the branded graphics there in their native habitat without tanking this email's deliverability.

Seeing a concrete example from soup to nuts, along with graphics in the wild, might be the best way to explain branding anyway.

And that's how Kirk Jameson was born:

What’s all this about, you might reasonably ask.

I’ll show you – right after a quick message from our sponsor.

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Fair Branding

I needed Kirk Jameson for another reason. I wanted to show you how quickly you can turn a cheap stock photo (or an existing cover design) into an entire brand identity – in just a couple of hours, using only free tools.

I could show you some of my own branding efforts for my own pen names, but you could – quite rightly – object on the grounds that I’ve had time to hone that branding.

So I figured I’d invent an author on the spot, choose a niche, open up DepositPhotos, and just dive in.

When I say “dive in” I mean find a cheap stock photo good enough to turn into an actual professional-looking book cover… which could then be spun out into all sorts of Facebook ad graphics, BookBub ad graphics, Instagram posts, Facebook page posts, newsletter headers, website graphics.

And finish the job before I got peckish (i.e. 2 hours or less).

I thought the timeframe was a little ambitious, as all I had decided was that it was going to be Space Opera/MilSF – a genre I haven’t written in, but one where I’m at least familiar with some of the genre conventions because of some consulting and a little of my own reading in the niche.

And for that sub-genre at least, branding is quite on-the-nose. You want a spaceship, or maybe a planet, or perhaps some kind of space marine at a push. Bonus points, I guess, if it’s a space marine breaching a spaceship in orbit around an alien planet.

I didn’t find that, but I did find a pretty cool stock photo almost right away. I think I just searched for something super basic like “spaceship” there’s no hidden tricks here. And not only did I find exactly what I needed, there were several alternates in case I wanted to spin this imaginary book into a series, or use something different for a background etc.

The entire process of designing the book cover and spinning it out into a dozen or more promotional graphics took less than the two hours I had set aside for the task.

I’m not claiming this is pro level work – a real designer would have spent a lot more time on the lettering of that cover design for sure. Maybe they would have played with the composition a little as well. If I was designing this just for me, I would have tried a few different typefaces and also a version where the title was positioned across the ship itself.

A proper designer would also have added lots more little touches to make it look more pro and give the entire design more depth, I strongly suspect. Taglines, review quotes, things like that are all missing, and fiddling with that stuff - and testing out more fonts than I did - all takes time. I'm not claiming a real book cover design can or should be done in this timeframe.

Really, I could nitpick the design forever, but when viewed for what it is, i.e. a quick knock-up job for the purposes of this exercise… it’s not bad!

Besides, the point is not to create a great cover with a stock photo (although you can see the potential perhaps). The point is to show you how you can translate that into an entire brand identity – without spending any money, just using free tools like Canva.

Rather than include all the images and explanations here, I've just given you a montage of some of them above.

Go to Kirk Jameson's Facebook Page to see full size versions of each of these images, as well as explanations under each separate image on how I made them, how I handled the fonts, the specific marketing purpose for each image, the exact format, and how this branding consistency was achieved.

Please feel free to comment over on that Facebook Page if you have questions on any of that, but do note that I'll also have a video explainer soon. Hey, the script is written, I'm not wasting it!

I'd also love to know if presenting this information in this kind of creative format is useful and refreshing or just annoying!

One small correction to the above: I should note that I do have Canva Pro, but the only Pro feature I used here was the Magic Resizer – just to save some time. You can do the same resizing manually and get the same results, it just takes a little longer. (I do love that feature though, and it makes Canva Pro worth it for that alone – for me at least.)

I have an example of an image processed with the Magic Resizer on Kirk Jameson’s Facebook Page, along with everything discussed here today.

Do make sure to go through the descriptions and comments of each photo on that Facebook Page, where I have explained the marketing purpose of the image, the format, and the way that branding consistency was achieved (and it’s a lot simpler than that sounds).

That’s all for this week – with my calendar suddenly clearing up I’m tempted to take a day off tomorrow and jump in the sea! Although my stupid brain is also tempted to write the bloody book for that cover because it likes new and shiny things.

Don’t forget to pick up your 100 stock photo credits for $39 before 1pm Eastern/6pm GMT tomorrow.

Dave

P.S. Writing music this week is The Divine Comedy with Our Mutual Friend.