Kendra Yoakum — Year Three Reflection
From scheming up branding to launching business collateral, Kendra Yoakum has been there from the beginning. With her third year at Little Taller coming to an end, we sat down and chatted through her experiences that led her to become a branding mastermind.
Little Taller: You’ve been with Little Taller for three years now. How does that make you feel?
Kendra: It’s crazy — it feels like more than three years just because it’s where I’ve been for so long, but at the same time I can’t believe it has been three years. It’s just funny to put a number to it.
Little Taller: Maybe in 10 years you’ll feel the shock, except I think that I would be more shocked about my age than I would be like anything else.Yeah.
Kendra: I want to chat about my age sometimes, but I forget that I’m as old as I am, and I think, “Oh my goodness. How did this happen?” ...and I’m not even old!
Little Taller: What has been your favorite experience or memory with Little Taller over the last three years?
Kendra: There’s not just one specific memory that comes to mind, but working in the office is always fun. I love working from home because it’s super convenient, but it’s also good to be around other people. Before COVID, we were all in the office pretty regularly, and it was fun because we would fall into our little groove of getting there in the morning, hang out, and then find some kind of food or snack or something. There were even a couple of times when they’d have Canyon Ventures Leadership meetings for everyone at the Innovation Center, and Alex and Kyle would bring me along sometimes for the free pizza. It was funny because everyone else was professional, and we were just there eating pizza and hanging out.
Little Taller: Free pizza is always a plus. I feel like if I were in Phoenix, I wouldn’t even know what to do in the office. I feel like I would be so uncomfortable because there are too many people around, and they would be watching us, and they could hear our conversations.
Little Taller: As a designer, what was the biggest challenge you faced this last year?
Kendra: This year, we’ve kind of made a switch from bigger projects for lots of clients to more steady-stream projects from a few key clients. So one of the challenges that I’ve had to deal with this year is shifting to the steady work, from more of that fast-paced agency experience where you would learn one brand and then, in two days, learn a different brand while keeping everything separate in your mind. But recently, I’ve been doing a lot of work for one amazing company. It’s been steady, but I’ve had to learn that brand really well and be able to tell other people how to use their brand and push it further.
Little Taller: Yeah. Do you feel like if you had a bunch of brands come in, do you feel that the process would throw you off now because you’re in a “steady” groove?
Kendra: I don’t think so. It comes pretty naturally to me. It’s fun to get different projects in every once in a while; it feels good for my brain sometimes.
Little Taller: For sure. On that note, you’ve been working on the Little Taller brand for so long. What is your favorite element in our brand currently?
Kendra: When I first started here, we didn’t have a brand. We had “red.” I sort of had to establish the brand little by little through our social media and marketing materials. Then last year, we officially rebranded, and I got to get everything squared away. I loved pushing the brand further by keeping the red, black, and white, but tinting the colors a little differently and using different white, black, and red values. I feel like this turned it into a sophisticated and easier-to-look-at look now brand. The brand is still fun and playful, but the contrast between the colors doesn’t hurt your eyes anymore.
Little Taller: Absolutely. The changes open up so many doors with what else we can do with the brand because we’re not stuck with just the red, the white, the flag, and the lightning bolt. My favorite part is how there is so much more texture to the brand.
Kendra: Yeah, we also brought in different fonts and the little scribbles. We added a gold color too, which I think was a good addition.
Little Taller: What’s your secret “design pet peeve” that drives you crazy?
Kendra: Lining things up. I’m not organized in my day-to-day life like my life is “artists chaos,” but I also like to know where everything is. But I cannot stand it when items like margins aren’t aligned or elements are not centered, especially buttons. You would think buttons would be an easy thing, but sometimes the text is a little lower than it needs to be or like all of it off to the side, and I want to make it perfect.
Little Taller: From looking over design work, I think mine would be whenever there’s a centered paragraph and there’s an orphan at the bottom. I’m sure it’s hardest to align social icons because they always look like different proportions, but they technically line up.
Kendra: Yeah, you can always use the technical specs, but sometimes you have to jump off the deep end and be like, check it out visually. I would say one of my pet peeves is when people don’t pay that much attention. It is your job to make this beautiful, so make it beautiful.
Little Taller: Since we’re a teaching agency, what’s something in design that I should know about but probably don’t?
Kendra: Figma is amazing with everything that it can do, and one of the things that makes me happy when designing is when all the Figma pages are arranged nicely, and they have their little emojis. They’re so stinkin’ cute, and it helps a lot with keeping everything organized.
Little Taller: Yeah, I love seeing the team play with that too. It doesn’t feel so overwhelming with text and adds visual happiness. If you had to choose one project you’ve done with LT, to include in a portfolio, what would it be?
Kendra: Probably the Granterra book that I made. It was a semi-medium project, but it eventually evolved into a pretty huge one. Plus, it’s a pretty big deal to design a book about 30-something-pages, with each page super designed out. The project used digital design, but it’s also designed for print. I also did hand-drawn illustrations, taking real-world art and transferring it into the digital world.
Little Taller: Yeah, I think that’s like a good choice because you put so much sweat and blood into it. Who is your favorite designer, and why?
Kendra: Oh, I have two. My first one is Aaron James Draplin. His style is very cool, with blocky designs that are kind of retro. Every single thing he does is so strong. I actually have his book, and it has all this design stuff in it, stories, pictures, and everything. He’s super inspiring on the digital side of things because I love this style of super heavy-handed, with bold colors.
My second would be Christian Watson of 1924US. Everything he does is hand-done, so it’s the complete opposite of Aaron James Draplin, even though it still has the same vibes of being dark, strong, and bold. He runs a branding agency in Australia, and every single thing they produce is hand done. It’s crazy the amount of detail that he puts in everything. He also does photography, writes, and they have great values, and his page is so cool to follow. Those are the big two I go to whenever I need inspiration.
Little Taller: When I look at their work, I see you. Your Instagram has the same feel to it.
Kendra: Well, thanks. That’s what I’m going for.
Little Taller: What branding advice do you have for new clients that don’t know where to start?
Kendra: Your logo doesn’t have to be a piece of artwork. Everyone wants their logo to be super cool and memorable. While that is the goal, you don’t always have to have an eagle’s soaring over a mountain range to be memorable. I think many people fall into that trap or the trap of wanting to put everything in their logo, which isn’t the case. It won’t flow well throughout the rest of the branding, and eventually, you’re just going to abandon the logo, which sucks for everyone if you paid for this logo that you can’t even use.
Little Taller: Less is always more.
With her ever-growing design talent, Kendra has continued to inspire and grow us all over the past three years. We can’t wait to see what personal spin this mastermind puts on her next memorable brand.
