Tips, Tricks, Tools and Tactics for Novice Designing Like a Pro

I dipped my finger in for one final taste. 

Perfection! Whipped to the perfect consistency and just the right amount of sweetness. 

My home made whipped cream was ready, now to add the fresh strawberries and dig in. 🙂 

As someone who doesn’t eat dessert very often, I was seriously looking forward to this. Tastebuds prepped, and just moments away…

And as I popped open the 2 day old container of strawberries I smelled it. 

That musty, moldy, crap something’s gone wrong smell. 

Sure enough, I had gotten the container with that one bad strawberry at the bottom. And overnight, it had spoiled the rest of the container. Just like that, dessert ruined. 🙁

I flashed back to this story when recording the presentation with today’s featured speaker Jeff Sieh. 

Jeff talks about how one bad image can spoil an entire brand and how important it is to make the right first impression. Even if you’re not a designer. 

Honestly, I was even taking notes during his presentation – it’s completely chuck full of amazing tools, software, tips, and all sorts of time saving things to make your images look phenomenal and not take a ton of time. 

Enjoy these previews from his presentation, and be sure to catch the whole thing at the Smart[er] Content Formula event. 

Enjoy – then go register for the Smart[er] Content Formula virtual hybrid event. 

👉 https://www.thevirtualjenn.com/smarter-content-formula/

About Jeff: 

Jeff Sieh is an international speaker and visual marketing consultant, specializing in Pinterest, Instagram, and video. He is also “Head Beard” at Manly Pinterest Tips where he is the creator and host of The Manly Pinterest Tips Show. Jeff has worked with and produced visual content for various companies, including Guy Kawasaki, Social Media Examiner, Tailwind, and Kim Garst. 

Previews from Jeff’s Presentation

The Importance of Making a Visual First Impression and Avoiding the Bubonic Plague

For those of you who don’t know me, there really is something deeply wrong with me. So I got in this whole visual marketing thing naturally because I just think visually, many guys do, but I’m really messed up. My mind works overtime with visual stuff. So photos like this really crack me up. So this is, of course, shrimp on the Barbie. Yeah. See something is totally wrong with me, but it seems like visual stories just happen to me. 

I always like doing a story, so I want to tell you a quick one. My family was at Thanksgiving with some of my extended family, whose names have been withheld to protect their identities, but we were in Kansas for Thanksgiving and we were getting ready for Thanksgiving dinner. And I was helping prepare and lay out some of the food. And I was laying out some stuff, and I noticed that the bread bag that I’d carried in from the car seemed to be chewed through. And come to find out that one of my relatives had a mouse in the trunk of her car. And it had chewed through the bread bag and gotten into the bread inside. And thats, you know, gross. Right. But that’s not the worst part. So I’m getting ready to throw it out. And another relative says, Oh, I’m just going to cut that part off of the bread and it’ll be fine. And I’m like, excuse me. She goes, Oh, it’s probably fine. We’ll just cut that part off that the mouse is eaten. 

Now, I remember my junior high biology class. Specifically where mice have no sphincters and pretty much pee wherever they go. So I had three questions. Number one, how on earth did the mouse get in the trunk of the car. Two, how nasty is the garage where that car is parked? And three, what else has Mr. Mouse scampered across in the trunk that he spread his, uh, urine on that we need to throw out? So you would have thought, I would ask to have been throwing out the Thanksgiving Turkey, which I would have thrown out by the way, if it was in that trunk. But she was like, how can you be so wasteful? And I argued not getting the Bubonic plague pretty much trumps everything else. And my family would definitely not be eating that bread. 

So what in the world is the point of the story? Well, here it is. One bad image can contaminate an entire marketing campaign. One hastily thrown together graphic in Canva can ruin your entire sales funnel. Your images always point back to you, and you have never had a second chance to make that first impression. 

Training for your creativity six pack

So what if you’re not a designer? What if you have no ideas about colors? What if you can barely dress yourself? Now I’m not talking about anybody who’s watching this, but I have no fashion sense. I used to really want to have cool clothes. Now I just look to see if it has elastic in the waistband. My pregnancy jeans are awesome, especially around Thanksgiving. But you don’t have to be a design guru or have studied Photoshop for 10 years. There are a ton of tools that make even the graphically challenged person have hope. So we are going to be talking about practical hacks to become more creative. So what if you feel you’re like if you’re not creative at all in the first place? Well, I think the good news is that God has made everyone creative in their own way. You’re unique, just like everybody else. But creativity is like a muscle and here are some practical ways you can start doing some crunches to build up that creativity six pack.

Where to Go for Design Inspiration (Smoking Babies Not Included)

So where do creative people go when they need some inspiration? Well, it’s not just because I cut my teeth on Pinterest, but you ask many creative people where they go for inspiration. A lot of people say, Pinterest, they go there to browse the feed, follow specific designers, create mood boards that they return to, and they need that little extra creative spark. It’s a great place. (Ignore that baby for a Marlboro ad at the bottom) my gosh, can you believe these ads in the back end of the day? It cracked me up when I was doing some research on retro images, but yeah, smoking baby. That’s what you get when you watch my presentation.