Cultivating Giving Part 4: Developing a theme and designing for success

This week we will be discussing developing a theme and designing for success. This topic digs into the language and aesthetic presentation of your campaign in the world.

We’ve gotten lots of questions about design so this particular topic will be a two-parter. Stay tuned next week for some easy design basics.

Developing a theme

We all love a good theme. A themed party allows you to set aside your current reality and embrace a past, future, or alternative reality for a little while. It opens your eyes to something different. It is compelling, interesting, and unmistakable.

A theme helps the campaign feel striking, it stands on its own from the organization and creates urgency on the part of the donor. How do you create a theme that is unique, but still reflects the mission of the organization? It is actually easier than it sounds. You’ll want to identify your organization’s character as it applies to the campaign.

What is character? Brand character is the humanlike attributes and qualities that give your organization its unique personality. Having a defined character makes it easy to land on decisions regarding language and aesthetic.

Your campaign character should be an extension of your brand’s character. Take what you already know and believe about your organization and conduct a Campaign Character Workshop. This will help you identify the additional aspects of your organization that you want to apply to your campaign. Coming up with a theme will then be a lot easier, just look to your character.

Go out into your community, search for images, read articles that interest you, and scour the web for creative sources that will inspire campaign ideas. Our favorite sources for inspiration? A trip to a thrift store, a walk in nature, and a scanning of our favorite artists on Behance or Dribbble.

Customize your design

While leaning on a professional for design, photography, and videography is ideal, there are ways to make adjustments and optimize your impact on your own.

Canva is one of our favorite tools for non-designers. It is easy, intuitive, cheap (and free in many cases if you just use the basic settings), and actually has a lot of great features.

There are plenty of well-designed templates from email headers to social media posts, but these are often overused. What we suggest is to take the templates and bring your own brand or campaign character into the existing designs. You can add your own photos, change the colors to align with your brand or campaign theme, adjust your fonts to match, and apply common filters that you use on Instagram. By making those changes and adding your own flare, these Canva templates will no longer feel standard, but will feel like they were created for you. You can also use Canva to upload existing designs and edit them easily in the tool.

Need help with Canva? We offer training sessions, just send us an email.

Playing with photography

Stock photography has gotten a lot better in the last several years. Unsplash has transformed stock photography from cheesy to dreamy. However, if you are looking for diversity, you won’t find it there. InVision pulled together some tremendous, diverse stock photo options.

Ultimately though, stock photography has its place as a background image or as a design element, but you want to showcase the true faces of your organization. These authentic photos represent your organization and will help supporters connect with your cause on a far deeper level. Instead of using stock photos, try editing existing photos. Adobe Lightroom is stellar, paid photo editor. Snapseed is a free photo-editing app available on Google Play or the App Store.

Give these settings a peek when you’re editing:

1. Straighten your photos. Make sure that the horizon is on a straight line, many programs (like Photos on Mac) will adjust automatically when you go into edit mode. No more tilting your head when staring at a photo.
2. Crop it like it’s hot. Don’t be afraid to crop out any distracting elements in the frame. This small touch will make the framing feel professional.
3. Make changes to exposure. These adjustments will lighten or darken your photo to be exactly where you want and need it to be.
4. Adjust hue and saturation. These elements focus on the colors of an image, by making changes, you can bring certain colors to your viewers’ attention.
5. Adjust the sharpness of your photo. If your photo has fine detail, playing with sharpness settings will make it crisper and clearer.

Tried editing, but still don’t love the results? No worries, you can snap some new photos! Phones today are equipped with advanced cameras that allow you to capture clear shots in various lighting conditions. Hubspot has some tips for taking photos on your phone.

We work with professional photographers for our Make a Mark events. They spend the day with us, edit the photos, and then send them to us for use all year. Check out these photos from the talented Caroline Jewell at Make a Mark Chattanooga.

Make use of video

Our brains process information much faster when it is presented as a visual or a video compared to text, but that isn’t the only reason you should be making use of video. You’re able to truly and deeply tell a story with video, you can evoke intense emotion and connection.

In fact, take a look at this video for Welcome Home of Chattanooga and this one for Downside Up.

There are a variety of video formats you might want to consider — everything from an explainer to a testimonial, behind-the-scenes to an FAQ. Once you pin down the style of video, grab your phone (do not use your webcam, the quality will not be as high) and get ready to record.

A few quick tips for recording your video? Sure!

1. If you don’t have a professional camera, use your phone, it will provide the quality you need.
2. Use a tripod, they can be found for under $30 easily on Amazon.
3. Sound matters, a lot. Use a mic to create high-quality sound. Blue creates some great products. Our favorite starter mic is the Blue Snowball, under $50 and it makes you sound amazing!
4. Optimize lighting. Open some windows, close some windows, turn on some lights, turn off some lights — whatever you need! Also, consider purchasing a ring light for head on videos. Play around with your lighting until you get it where you want it.
5. Choose your background. Select an interesting background that isn’t too distracting. If you’re sitting in front of a bookshelf, make sure you’re distant enough that the books and trinkets are not stealing attention from the message. Trust us, we’ve been there. Sitting in front of a piece of art and/or some plants can create a clean, yet still warm vibe. Don’t have a particularly interesting background and don’t have time to create one? Find a simple space like a blank wall or a tidy area.
6. Consider music. Music in a video sets the mood, adds a professional touch, and covers up any lingering issues with audio. Find music that fits the mood of the video and keep the volume low enough so the voice over is still clear and easy to understand. The most important tip, don’t break any copyright laws. You may want to use a popular song, but copyright violations could cause the video to be pulled from YouTube and Vimeo. It is best to find a song that you can get the rights to for free or with a paid license. Audio Jungle is one website where you can purchase licenses for music. Free Music Archive has hundreds of options of royalty-free music, just be sure to check out the licenses to learn more about how to use it legally and ethically.

We work with professional videographers for our Make a Mark events. They spend the day with us to film and then pull together a beautiful, final result. Check out this video from Make a Mark NYC by Kiersten Williams with Make Beautiful.

In action

Take some time to complete the Campaign Character Workshop to develop a theme and consider how you might use design, photography, and video is your campaign. Have questions? Need more guidance? Just reply to this email.

Next, we will discuss designing for success a bit more with some easy design tips. Let me know if you have any particular questions or prompts for this topic.

Need some extra help preparing your campaign? Give our Cultivating Giving Package a look. We’ll walk you through some of the exercises in the course, provide our guidance and strategy, and even create some deliverables like social media templates.

Cultivating Giving was prepared by Purpose Craft, an empathetic approach to design, marketing, and event planning. We believe in leveraging the power of creativity and technology to make something impactful for your organization.