Design Power Ups for Promoting Your Course as an Introverted CEO - Nihaad Gamieldien

00:00 Hello and welcome this is Nihad founder and designer behind our Polish pages. And in case this is the first time that you're joining one of my presentations, I did quickly want to introduce myself. I'm a launch graphics and course assay designer, small biz brand expert and canvy geek. I'm also a stay at home mom to poor tiny boys. So believe me when I say that I'm all about looking for ways to grow my business in time saving yet still impactful ways. And that is why I'm utterly obsessed with graphic design because it's been my personal secret weapon to help me connect with gym clients even when I'm not showing up on camera and actively selling. 

00:42 And that is why I like to say that I use graphic design to sell harder so that I don't have to in this presentation, I'm going to be showing you how to work smarter, not louder using graphic design by sharing the three major design power apps for promoting your course as an introverted CEO. So let's dive into the design power apps for eye popping promo graphics. Ok, so Design Power up number one includes simplifying your branding. So we now say simplify branding i just mean that you should remain consistent with your color palette so use colors that are aligned with your course and then stick to it. 

01:28 I would not advise chopping and changing your colors when you are running a promotional campaign because this is the time when you want to build that familiarity and trust among the audience and you want them to instantly recognize your promotion and what you're advertising so when you are promoting a course, especially during a launch, you want people to immediately identify that this is yours, right? And the same goes with your fonts so choose two to three fonts and stick with it. 

02:04 This helps with clarity and it helps to keep things cohesive. And once you have this information and you have your brand assets, pop them into a brand board as simple as something like this one that I have here on the left. You don't need to create anything fancy just keep all those brand assets together in one case so that when you start creating your graphics, you have this document that you can just go to where everything is conveniently saved for you, helping you remain consistent with your branding. 

02:40 The next power app is font hierarchy and readability, which is super important so I did want to 1st take you through this graphical video, which is really, really interesting because the first thing that you will notice when you see this graphic is this big bold pink heading headline rather that says you'll read this first. Next, the eye will then go back to the top and you will read this bit of a year that says you'll come back to this and then after reading that you will then go to the bottom to read this longer block of text. 

03:18 So this is really powerful to know because notice how you are not reading from top to bottom and your eye actually jumps around the graphic so once you know how people are going to be reading your information on your graphic, it's amazing because now you know exactly what information to put in what section of your graphic and this guides the eyes so that people actually get through your content and you'll get your message across right, which is what you want. 

03:50 So to help this, you also want to make sure that you're emphasizing key information, especially when it comes to your call to actions or when you want to highlight your urgency, when there's a, you know, a timeline or when doors close or when they're open, you want people to know that information so that they can take action. So for example, you're on the left, I have a little box that highlights commenters for more details so that's an instruction, right a call to action so you want to make sure that that is easy to spot and that you highlight it so that the eye immediately goes there. And you also want to make sure that your text is easy to read because you spend a lot of time on your copy like you will go through multiple versions of your copy and you will refine it and tweak it to make sure that it's really punchy and that people really find it interesting because you wanted to grab attention so the worst thing that you can do then is to use a font that is hard to read or style it so that people can't even make out what you are saying. 

04:58 So for example, of a year and this is a really common mistake that I see people make, especially when they are using it in headlines. When they are using a script font, they'll have it in uppercase and also they will have this huge gap in between the letters or the kerning will be really high. So what you want to do in this situation when you are using a script find is to keep the case as a lowercase and also make sure that the space between the letters are set to 0. And the same thing goes for the rest of your headline make sure that the letter spacing makes it easier for you to read it and not harder because if you are struggling to get through it, then believe me, the person who's just scrolling through the Instagram or wherever you are going to be sharing your graphics, that person is not going to stop and read it right so make sure that it's easy to read, it's legible and honestly, simple is better so even means that you need to, you know, teach your script font and then do it it's OK just make sure that again, going back to the first power up, that you remain consistent and then design power up number three use relatable and relevant imagery so you want to include markups and abstract visuals to keep things interesting and also to, you know, illustrate the value of what's inside your course. 

06:25 But you also want to make sure that the stock images, if you are using stock images, to make sure that you are using images that are relevant to the people who would be interested in buying your course, right? So that's a really great way to form a connection and to immediately get people to relate to what you are selling. And also, when you are designing, white space is your friend, right? You don't want your design and your visuals to distract people from your main message. You want to use design to emphasize your message and your copy. So make sure to maintain white space. So I did want to take you through a tutorial to show you how to create a promo graphic and hopefully you will pick up some tips and tricks that you can use when you are designing your own promotional material for your course. 

07:18 So I'm just going to hop on into Canva and I'm going to show you how I do that. So yeah, I'm inside Canva and I just opened a new Instagram square document and appled in this brand board. So this brand board contains a color, palette a pattern a, little emoji and my fonts that I'll be using. And I also brought in my copy that I want to be using for my graphic as well as an image. So I'm just going to add a new page and I'm going to start designing. So the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to grab this pattern i'm going to add it over here and I'm going to set it as background image. 

08:06 Then going to bring down the transparency a little bit so it's not too distracting, but it's still really fun to look at. I want to bring in this image so I'm going to bring the image in over here. And if you have Camera Pro, then they have this nifty little background remover tool which I love. So I'm going to remove the background. I'm going to click on edit and go to shadows and add a drop shadow. 

08:35 And I'm going to bring this to the center of the graphic. 

08:41 So now I'm going to bring in the headline. So the first thing that I want to do is bring in the main title of the course, which is Words that Win. So I'm going to play around with this. I'm going to use the main heading font. 

09:06 Can you remove this? And I mean, to make it a bit bigger so that it's easy to start. So I'm going to play around with this a little bit, right? I'm going to go over here to effects and I'm going to choose the outline, bring this down a little bit and make it black. And then I'm going to change the actual bond to that's fine and then I'm going to increase the latest spacing just a tiny little bit to make it easier to read. So I want to add a little bit more emphasis to this and what I'm going to do is I'm going to duplicate this and make sure that it's right above that. 

09:56 And I'm going to make the color of the font white, go back to effects and choose the neon style. And I'm going to duplicate that and then go to position layers, grab these two and place them below that first one. Here we go so it just creates this kind of light around it, makes it easier to read, 

10:31 Mainly to bring in the description. And I'm going to paste it over your sentence and just make it a bit smaller. 

10:46 And I mean to highlight the bit from Connect all the way to overwhelm, I'm going to make this bowl because I think this is really important. And then I want to really place emphasis on without overwhelms i'm going to make that italics. And I'm just going to make sure again, that this is centered. And I also want to emphasize that the doors are open so this is a great way to bring in this script font. We need to add it in here. 

11:26 Let's make it a bit smaller. So this should say doors are. 

11:37 Ok. Here we go. 

11:45 Perfect. 

11:50 So you'll find a video that there is a longer tagline for the course so it just is a copyright and crash course for soloprenees by the way, I just pulled this up in chat GPT, so it's not a real a real course. So I want to do something really fun over here to bring in this background pattern. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to grab this and just need this bit like that center i'm going to copy it one more time. So going to try and do something though different up here. 

12:38 I'm going to use it, fix the background. I'm thinking white yep. I mean, what I have to do is I like to add a couple of spaces. 

12:52 Before and after the actual word just to give it a bit of padding over there. And I'm going to use. 

13:04 Just move that. I'm going to use the curve. I'll make this spread, but least. 

13:33 We go and then I'm going to copy this and I'm just going to flip it. So add a negative that should flip it over the and then bring in the result. So course, and in a year, there we go. I'm just going to make sure that that joins up nicely. 

14:07 Here we go so I'm going to copy that and duplicate it over here. 

14:21 And this one needs to come to the front. 

14:26 There they go. Ok, smaller. 

14:58 Now I need to add a call to action. Ok, so I'm going to. 

15:06 Grab some pics over here oK, 

15:23 Make it a bit smaller and I'm going to make this. 

15:30 Yes, I want to be bold and OK, so this is going to be the call to action so I want to make a button and I'm going to grab a shape over here i hope you can hear me clearly. Ok, so I'm going to grab this shape over here and just adjust it a bit so that it's smaller. And Canva now has a great feature which I've been waiting for forever. We can add a border. So I'm going to just bump the border down tiny bit and change the color of this button and the border i'd like it to be white and this white as well. 

16:16 Here we go. So I'm going to add this over your group it just add a bit of an angle to make it more fun i mean to draw the eye to this call to action i mean to bring in this store emoji. 

16:37 And place it somewhere. 

16:41 Somewhere to guide the eye. 

16:48 To the instruction. 

16:52 Here we go. 

16:59 So this is a promo graphic and you want it to be a bit more eye touching, right so I'm going to add a border to this so what I'm going to do is I'm going to get a shape and I'm going to make it be full to be no full, and I'm going to add a border. I'm going to make it a white border and I'm going to make it the sizing can be one oh three oh, copy that so that the screen and make sure that it is in the center. 

17:41

And I'm going to position this to the back. And then I'm going to do another one. And this time I'm going to make this pink and I'm going to increase the border so that it falls that gap over there there we go. And again, this needs to go to the back and then I can bring this white one. But closer to that. 

18:20 There we go. 

18:23 There we go. And there is a one promographic that you can then use to share your course and everything is really easy to read. The message is clear, the call to action is clear, you know who it's for and it's just gorgeous, eye-catching and it will really encourage people to read your content. And if you want to use your graphics as a way to do the hard selling for you in your own business and connect with your dream clients before even having a conversation with them. I'd like to invite you to my free 30 minute itty bitty Graphic Loafs master class where I go through the three key things you need to pay attention to when designing your graphics, which includes catching the eyes, keeping attention and inspiring action. 

19:15 And in this master clause, actually super simple, actionable tips that you should be using whenever you have Canva open. It's really going to take your graphics from barely noticeable to unforgettable in just a few clicks. It should be a link somewhere on this page to take you straight to the sign up form so I will see you over on that side, but for now, that is it from me if you have any questions concerning today's presentation or if you'd like to share your own thoughts with me, I'm happy to connect with you so feel free to reach out. 

19:47 Happy designing and enjoy the rest of the summit bye.