James Barnard / Logo & Visual Identity Designer / Speaker / Teacher

James Barnard knows logos—and how to turn design into a powerful business.

As an award-winning logo and visual identity designer, James went from burnout to booked out by mastering not just the craft, but the business of design. 

With over a million followers and a global client base, James is one of the most trusted voices in branding today. 

In this episode, we dive into the biggest mistake that nearly ended his business, the viral video that changed his life, and how he uses smart strategy (like the “brand noun” process) to create logos that actually work. 

Whether you’re a designer or a business owner, this one’s packed with insights you can use immediately.

Guest Bio:

James Barnard is an award-winning logo and visual identity designer, educator, and international speaker. Originally from the UK and now based in Australia, James is the founder of Barnard Co., a design studio focused exclusively on brand identity. With over 1 million social media followers, James is a leading voice in the design community, known for his teaching style, practical insights, and humorous yet insightful content that resonates with both designers and business owners. His work has been published in LogoLounge and featured in Adobe’s global programming. He also offers courses in Illustrator, Photoshop, and brand development, helping the next generation of designers level up their skills and businesses.

Link: https://barnard.co/

Paul Povolni, the founder of Voppa Creative, has been a creative leader for over 30 years, with clients around the world. He’s led teams in creating award-winning branding and design as well as equipping his clients to lead with Clarity, Creativity and Culture.

Headsmack Website

Transcript

Paul Povolni (06:27.041)
Hey, welcome to the Headsmack podcast. My name is Paul Povolni and I'm excited to have another conversation with a misfit. James is an award winning logo and visual identity designer, educator, international speaker and owner of the Logo Design Studio Barnard Company. James splits his time between client work and design education, his content, which he shares with his 1 million followers, focuses on how to be a better designer, navigating your software and plus the common pitfalls of the logo design.

Industry James. How you doing, man?

James Barnard (07:04.397)
Very good. Who you calling a misfit? Honestly, cheeky bugger. And thank you for pronouncing my name right. Barnard. Well done. Everyone says Bernard. Bernard. It's Barnard. Well done. Nice job. Yeah.

Paul Povolni (07:06.211)
Cheeky bugger.

Paul Povolni (07:14.325)
Yeah. Barnard. Yeah, I think I said it when I first met you, think I said Bernard, but then I, then I got the hint. Well, man, glad to have you on. I'm excited to talk logos. Love, love your content. I, you know, you got my attention through some of your content online. Not only is it super educational, but it's funny. It's a lot of fun. looks like you're having fun doing it.

James Barnard (07:20.942)
You got it. You got it.

James Barnard (07:30.254)
Thank you.

Paul Povolni (07:39.103)
And so tell me a little bit about your origin story. like, you know, I like superheroes and stuff and I love hearing people's origin stories and I love hearing how, how they got to where they're at. So I'll share a little bit about James's origin story.

James Barnard (07:53.506)
Yeah, sure. So I'm from the UK, but I live in Australia now. We'll get onto that, I'm sure. In the UK, my first graphic design role was a junior design position in the publishing industry. I used to work in magazines. So my first job was for Runners World magazine. And I used to design all of their sort of online advertorials, email newsletters, flash adverts, all that kind of thing. That's how I kind of cut my teeth.

And I basically worked my way through the publishing industry, went onto another magazine house where I met my now wife, went to work for a national newspaper called The Daily Telegraph in the UK, and eventually found myself in a position where I'd achieved a certain amount in my career that I was getting to the point where I was managing people. my last full-time role was head of digital design. So I had a team underneath me, which I loved. And I loved actually, you

I'm mentoring them and guiding them through, you know, this world, this life as a graphic designer. But ultimately I found that I was doing less and less of the design work, which I really didn't enjoy. I actually liked being sort of hands on. So the kind of the creative director role really just wasn't for me. I didn't enjoy it at all. So I left to, um, I basically went freelance to try and find, um, while I was trying to find another full-time role and while I was freelance, realized this is awesome.

this freelance life is brilliant. I can kind of pick my own clients. I can work for whoever I want. I can take a nap in the middle of the day if I want to. and so that was 10 years ago and I've been freelance ever since. And we moved to Australia about four years ago. I've really started, firing on all cylinders with the logo design side of things. So I niche down into that. And then about three years ago had a, one of my video posts went viral and kind of changed my life. And.

Paul Povolni (09:25.698)
Ha ha ha.

James Barnard (09:48.556)
realized that I needed to be spending way more time on social media because it brings in huge amounts of clients. So that diverted like half my time to creating content around graphic design. And this is where I've kind of found myself now.

Paul Povolni (09:54.157)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (09:59.991)
Well, what's interesting is, and I like to ask this of designers especially, and those who enter into marketing and things like that, usually as a kid growing up, you're not really aware of graphic design. Like, you you might be creative, you might be a doodler, you might be, you know, an artist or whatever. When did you discover the idea of graphic design?

James Barnard (10:23.992)
Probably when I was a kid, I used to draw car logos. I loved memorizing all of the different logos for cars. But even then, I didn't even think that there was someone behind these logos. I just enjoyed them, and I enjoyed trying to recognize them and redraw them. I guess it was kind of later in life, I got my first job. It wasn't to do with graphic design at all. I studied music, multimedia, and electronics at university, so I wanted to be a record producer.

Couldn't find work when I moved to London, I realized it was going to be sort of long hours underground on my own all day. and just couldn't, couldn't find, any real positions. So it took a job as just like an office worker, like a data entry role. And I was there for like a good four years. And while I was there, I, learned how to make websites with WordPress. So I made a company internet for the staff there. And while I was on the internet.

you know, doing that kind of thing. I was like, right, I need to make some images for this website and then to compress images a little bit better to make the website load faster. Got a copy of Photoshop at my job and just fell in love and just devoted my time to trying to learn how to use this, this software package, getting on YouTube tutorials. You know, there weren't that many back then, but I was just learning as much as I possibly could and realized, my

Paul Povolni (11:45.13)
Right, right.

James Barnard (11:49.88)
Goodness, this is so much fun. and basically once I realized like how much I enjoyed this, I started trying to find positions and eventually lagged my way in to that job at runners world magazine. And the only reason I got that job was because I was running the London marathon and I was a super keen, you know, jogger at the time and had my own blog about running. was called so jog a lot. It's not available anymore. So don't go to the website. It's not mine anymore.

Paul Povolni (12:16.669)
Nice.

James Barnard (12:18.914)
But yeah, I use that to get to black this position that run as well and then realized that I could sort of train myself on the job. So I learned everything while working. I was really lucky. I just did a few little bits and pieces. did a few like free websites for local businesses and used those as portfolio pieces. They were terrible to black this first job. And from there kind of learned from my colleagues and learn on the job.

Paul Povolni (12:39.372)
You

Paul Povolni (12:45.645)
So what was the first logo that you designed professionally? Do you remember it?

James Barnard (12:50.166)
Yeah, it was terrible. was for a, so it was a running race. was like an event called Hell Runner in the UK. And it wasn't even really a logo. was like a redesign of their mascot. They had this kind of illustrated devil running in the race. And I made a kind of simpler variation of that. And then looking back on it, it's still like way too detailed, like gradients and shading and all that kind of stuff, or breaking all the rules of logo design.

Paul Povolni (12:51.552)
Yeah

Paul Povolni (13:16.631)
Yeah.

James Barnard (13:17.442)
I've got a copy of it somewhere and unfortunately the event isn't running anymore. but yeah, it was, it was so bad. It was absolutely terrible. And obviously this was before I kind of niche down into, I was anywhere close to being the logo and visual identity designer I am today. But, yeah, it just, it just broke all of those rules. was, it was awful.

Paul Povolni (13:38.915)
I remember some of my earlier stuff, using all the special effects that Photoshop had to offer and drop shadows. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I remember using Quark Express. That was probably before your time. I don't know whether it was, but.

James Barnard (13:44.364)
Yeah, drop shadows and all that. Yeah.

James Barnard (13:52.622)
Well, my art director at Runners World was using that just before I joined, before they all moved to InDesign and switched over. So yeah, I didn't use it personally, but my art director did.

Paul Povolni (14:03.691)
Yeah, I remember in Quark, would take screenshots of headlines and stuff, bring it into Photoshop, blur it, and then bring it back into Quark to use as a drop shadow in Quark because you couldn't do drop shadows. So that's the old days. Some of the kids these days just don't get the struggle, or one layer in Photoshop and all of that stuff. so when did you start leaning towards logo design?

James Barnard (14:17.119)
Wow, that's next level.

James Barnard (14:25.944)
Yeah, one click.

Paul Povolni (14:30.615)
What, what was it about logo design specifically that just really got you excited?

James Barnard (14:35.64)
Well, I, when I went freelance, I was working in, as like a gun for hire in agencies around London. So I would go into an agency and sort of sit down at a desk and do what they told me to do. And then this was just before COVID, happened. And also my, my wife got pregnant. She, had our first child six years ago and at the time my wife and way more than I did. So she went back to work and I became a sort of.

stay at home dad. And I pulled in the odd job for a bit of beer money on the side for a bit of spending money, in and around looking after my daughter. And so while I was at home trying to pull in more clients directly from, you know, directly so that I could actually do more work at home, I got deep into like Chris does content, you know, from the, from the future and learn about like the business of design and how to sell my services a little bit better. And I've been at that.

Paul Povolni (15:10.712)
Yeah.

James Barnard (15:34.36)
point in time I was, I'd been a designer for like nine and 10 years and realized that I needed to sort of niche down and actually start being discoverable as a designer rather than this kind of Jack of all trades. You can do it all. Cause at this point I can do, you know, a little bit of animation. can do a little bit of layout and no print design, digital design, web design, and the branding side of things. It'd always be like the fun part for me hadn't done too much of it. So I had enough sort of logo design jobs to kind of start a decent portfolio.

And I made the decision to kind of fire all my retainer clients that I had on the doing work that I just was not enjoying. Changed my portfolio, removed everything that wasn't to do with logo design off the portfolio. I really started specializing and it worked almost immediately. Like just those changes on my website, rewrote the landing pages, started targeting keywords like freelance logo designer, London and

did really, really well for those search terms and shot up the rankings on Google to the point where I was getting like five or six leads a week just from SEO alone, which was really great. They weren't like the best quality leads ever, but it was enough to get by on. So I just started doing more and more. And obviously the more logos I did, the better I got and the more that I could share in my portfolio. And the ball started rolling from there.

Paul Povolni (16:41.355)
Wow. Wow.

Paul Povolni (16:47.745)
Right.

Paul Povolni (16:56.193)
I love that. And now there was a point where you almost lost your business, right? Tell me a little bit about that.

James Barnard (17:00.824)
Hmm. Yeah. I made the mistake. I made the mistake of putting my prices on my website. it was a disaster and unmitigated disaster. So I was getting a lot of, leads through that were like, can you do my logo for free? Can you do it for 50 quid? in my mind, putting a floor price on my website would kind of weed out those leads. And so what I did was I structured the, my offerings into kind of packages. I called them startup.

Paul Povolni (17:07.344)
Ha

James Barnard (17:31.162)
forget the name of them, startup professional and deluxe packages, like good, better, best. And on the startup one, the entry level, which was basically a logo and a set of, and a brand style guide. I put a full price on that and then everything else was kind of inquired for price. and I thought that would kind of, you know, weed out a lot of this, admin that I was having to do. but unfortunately it meant that I got no leads in two months. It was.

Paul Povolni (17:34.881)
Yeah. Yeah.

James Barnard (17:59.626)
Absolute disaster could not have gone worse and halfway through our kind of cut the prices in half to try and get people back onto the site again. That didn't work. I threw some paid advertising to get people to the site, wasted money, didn't know what I was doing and eventually reverted back to the sort of inquire for price model and things started picking up again. But it was interesting that it was just like a hard bounce for people seeing that price point without me having the opportunity to discuss why.

Paul Povolni (18:20.577)
Wow.

James Barnard (18:27.778)
getting a logo design for me is worth what it is. They were just bouncing off to a competitor or just leaving altogether. So yeah, could not have gone worse. I dried up, you all my cashflow dried up, nearly lost the business and luckily changed tack and went back to the way things were and saved it. But yeah, it was close.

Paul Povolni (18:36.557)
Ha ha!

Paul Povolni (18:48.323)
So what did you do after you finally realized that the pricing, putting the pricing on the website was killing your business? What did you do to reinvigorate it aside from removing the prices?

James Barnard (19:01.134)
Well, I mean, I'd always been doing a little bit of marketing in fact, commas on the side. So writing articles was something I was actually quite keen on. I used to enjoy it a lot. I actually wrote a piece about how I almost destroyed my business and that got a bit of traction. You know, I think it was titled like, um, should you put your prices on your website and then a follow up article? No, you shouldn't. And that did, that did pretty well.

Paul Povolni (19:25.891)
Hahaha

James Barnard (19:28.12)
But luckily for me after that, things started picking up on social media. And while I was twiddling my thumbs trying to find clients in that dry spell, I put a lot more work into my socials and I started doing sort of concept logos, vector, sorry, tracing sketches and turning them into vector. I was posting to places like the logo design and graphic design channels on Reddit and they were doing pretty well there. And then I also submitted a few sort

concept logos to this book called The Logo Lounge, which is like this graphic design inspiration book. And three of my designs got accepted. And I was like, over the moon, you know, this is a great sort of, maybe this could turn the business around. I've got work that's now suddenly being published. like, this is brilliant. Went on social media and turned the camera around for the first time and started, you know, recorded my own reaction of me getting into this book. And I'd never done that before. I've always been kind of like,

Paul Povolni (20:00.259)
Right? Right.

James Barnard (20:22.67)
screen recorded content or kind of top down videos of me sketching something and turning it. Yeah, exactly. The second I turned the camera around, instant success, that video went viral and it got something like 3 million views. And overnight, my business turned around. I was now booked out three months solid. So it was, it was unbelievable. The amount of leads that I got, I think we've got something like 70 leads for that, from that one video.

Paul Povolni (20:25.761)
Right, faceless,

Paul Povolni (20:33.506)
Wow.

Paul Povolni (20:43.67)
Wow.

James Barnard (20:50.368)
And overnight, you know, my business is now a success. So I was like, wow, okay. I need to be doing more social media content. This is ridiculous. I've just made more leads in a single day than I have in the previous six months combined. So I just basically started answering all the questions that were coming through in the comments on that video. Like, how do you find clients? Can you show us more of your work? creating content that was designed for graphic designers was

Paul Povolni (20:56.163)
Hahaha

Paul Povolni (21:05.688)
Wow.

James Barnard (21:19.918)
weirdly pulling in clients, which was unbelievable. I didn't realize that there was this whole market of businesses looking for people like me on places like TikTok and on places like Instagram. So yeah, it's been that way ever since I use social media as like the main lead generator for my business now and something like 80 to 85 % of my leads all come from socials.

Paul Povolni (21:22.445)
Wow. Wow.

Paul Povolni (21:42.699)
Wow. Now that first video was just a reaction video to you being in Logo Lounge and that's all it was and that's what went viral. That's amazing.

James Barnard (21:48.706)
Yeah, I've, I've, I've dissected this video. I've torn it apart and tried to work out what happened because it was mostly luck. So I, on tick tock, you know, there's the stitch feature. So you find someone else's video and you do a stitch and respond to people's questions. Used to be way more popular than it is today. And this, content creator, she, she, posted the question, give me an example of a niche flex.

Paul Povolni (21:54.118)
you

James Barnard (22:17.72)
that means absolutely nothing to the rest of the world, but it's a big deal in your industry. And this was me, I got into this logo lounge book. And also my one year old son was next to me at the time wailing away. So that had the baby factor had me geeking out about getting into this book. Another thing was that my stupid British accent, everyone thought I was saying Lego, not logo. So everyone stayed around to the end to look, wait for these incredible Lego designs. I got really disappointed at the end of it. So there was a lot of luck there.

Paul Povolni (22:20.483)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (22:30.775)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (22:44.938)
Yeah, yeah.

James Barnard (22:47.56)
but yeah, just be basically being genuine and geeking out about getting into this book was cool. And then everyone then went to my profile to try and find the logos that got in. Cause I didn't mention them in the, in the post. And I think that led to a lot of followers. got something like 15,000 followers in one week, which is ridiculous. So, but luckily behind that video, I had something like 30 videos of me making logos, the screen recorded content, working in Adobe illustrator.

Paul Povolni (22:57.879)
Hahaha!

Paul Povolni (23:02.849)
Wow. Wow.

James Barnard (23:14.536)
so it meant to, you know, lot of new followers. from there, the content changed a bit. I'd started getting on camera more and doing a lot more talking, bought a nice camera with, you know, professional lighting and up the game a little bit. Got a good microphone and the rest is history.

Paul Povolni (23:30.851)
That's awesome. So how many followers did you have at the time when you went viral for the first time?

James Barnard (23:35.246)
Before there was maybe a couple of thousand. I think on TikTok I was maybe like 800 and had a couple of thousand on Instagram. And then overnight TikTok went to like 15,000 in like a week, I think it was. Then about six months later after making all of this content that was designed for TikTok, video-based content, getting on camera, talking about the graphic design industry, about six months later I had a video go viral on Instagram, which was such a weird.

Paul Povolni (23:42.369)
Wow.

Paul Povolni (23:47.832)
Wow.

James Barnard (24:04.588)
niche. It was about the pencil tool in Adobe Illustrator. And basically that video got 15 million views. And that by that point, I'd be making so much video content for tick tock and posting it to Instagram as well. That when people went to my account, there was a bank of like binge worthy content that they could just go through. And I got 100,000 followers in one week on Instagram. And it was ridiculous. I thought I thought someone was playing a trick on me. And I thought my mates had paid like

Paul Povolni (24:08.588)
wow.

Paul Povolni (24:27.362)
Wow.

James Barnard (24:32.812)
you know, for one of those bot subscriptions or something. thought someone was having a joke. Yeah, yeah. And, but it just didn't stop. It just went absolutely crazy. I hit like 10,000 followers in a couple of days. I was like, wow, that's incredible. And then a week later it 10xed. was like, this is insane. So yeah, I basically, since that point, I think that was maybe two or three years ago that happened. Since that point, I've just kind of kept the ball rolling and kept it going. And since then, I've done a little bit more on YouTube. found my

Paul Povolni (24:33.987)
Yeah, the bot farms, yeah.

Paul Povolni (24:46.637)
you

That is so amazing.

James Barnard (25:02.338)
found my place on LinkedIn as well and combined now, it's a million followers, which is unbelievable. And that's led to so many other opportunities and it's opened so many doors for me. It's brilliant.

Paul Povolni (25:13.859)
Yeah. Wow. That is so cool. So with, know, now that you're, you're a full in on, on logo design, did any views about logo design change from when you decided to go in to it to now that you've kind of gone down the road, you've taught on it, you've spoken on it. Do you have any views that have changed about logo design in that time?

James Barnard (25:34.446)
Personally, I think if anything, it's kind of strengthened my view that logo design is the purest form of graphic design, changed my mind. I've basically been just like selling this point. I mean, obviously I'm completely biased. I'm a logo and visual identity designer. I'm always going to say that. But yeah, I could not enjoy this part of the industry more. I think it's like...

Paul Povolni (25:35.586)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (25:46.071)
Yeah.

James Barnard (26:02.158)
one of the purest forms of design. It's like starting from scratch, starting from just an idea or the ethos of a business or their values and sort of rolling all of that into a ball and spitting out one single symbol that represents their industry at a glance. It's not an easy thing to do. And when you can get it right, it's absolutely beautiful. yeah, I live for it now. I find myself, you know, I follow a lot of other designers. I've got a lot of inspiration from

my heroes and now in a position where I'm lucky enough to have met some of them and gotten their thoughts on it. And, just chatting to them, it just kind of really recharges my batteries about the industry. And it's so inspiring just having them, you know, be my friends now and I can sort of, you know, chat to them whenever I want and get ideas from them. It's brilliant. So yeah, I love this industry. I don't think I could do anything else now.

Paul Povolni (26:48.461)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (26:56.245)
Yeah, well, and I agree with you about the value of the logo. And for me, know, I can't really, something isn't real for me. Like when I'm doing a personal project, something isn't real for me until I've been able to create an identity for it. Like even for this podcast, the Head Smacked podcast, you know, it didn't feel real to me. And I didn't feel as, as connected to it or that it was as legitimate until I solved the puzzle in my own mind of what the logo looks like. What does this

What does a head smack look like? You know, what does my brand look like? And I've done other brands for myself as well. And it didn't feel real until I had a logo for me. That's, and that's, that's how, you know, that's how I work.

James Barnard (27:37.55)
That's interesting because I struggle branding myself. I hate my current logo. I don't actually really use it anymore. I took it off my website and just use my face. And I've always been jealous of people like Alan Peters and Aaron Draplin. You've got these great brands for their own business and I've never been able to do it for myself. So I really need, I've set myself a challenge for this year to create a great brand for my own business. And I need to treat myself like an actual client the way I do.

Paul Povolni (27:44.589)
Ha ha ha.

Paul Povolni (28:06.968)
Yeah.

James Barnard (28:07.15)
my client workers, you know, come up with the success statement for my own business, come up with some brand nouns that mean something to me. The trouble is, is I'm always going to want to tweak it. always find, I always find problems with it. I'll be changing it until the day I die. But I've got to the point now that I've lived in Australia for four years now, and I'm about to become an Australian citizen. think I might move my business from the UK to here very soon. I think that's the perfect opportunity for me to

Paul Povolni (28:17.569)
Hahaha

Yeah.

James Barnard (28:35.98)
rebrand and maybe even rename slightly, just to kind of, you know, start a bit of a fresh with that. I'm also, I've got a bit of a team going now. It's not just me anymore in the studio. I have an assistant, I have a salesperson and I have people that help me with things like copywriting and logo animation, which I'm not especially great at. I can do it, but it's better for me to hire professionals to do that. So I've built up a bit of a remote team so I can, I can.

Paul Povolni (28:39.213)
Yeah.

James Barnard (29:01.91)
Absolutely call myself for studio. Yes, it is me in my office at home, but I'm definitely at the point where I'm a logo design studio now, maybe even a small agency. So what better way to, you know, start this new venture than with a new brand that I need to create for myself. But yeah, it's, it's very, it's very difficult. I also need to set time aside to do it, treat myself like a client and actually, you know, give myself a couple of weeks of time to actually devote to this.

Paul Povolni (29:04.546)
Nice.

Paul Povolni (29:09.836)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (29:19.105)
Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Povolni (29:30.658)
Yeah.

James Barnard (29:31.618)
And once that's done, there's so many things I've got in the pipeline that I can do. can get merch done. I can do t-shirt runs. I've got a wooden sign maker on retainer right now, ready to make a sign for my office. I just need a good logo to go with it. And I even did a project recently for this motor racing team in Texas in return for designing their t-shirts. They're going to put my logo on the side of their car. And I didn't have a logo to give them. I didn't want to give them my old one. So I gave them this sticker that's on my

Paul Povolni (29:36.397)
Right.

Paul Povolni (29:44.801)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (29:56.205)
Hahaha

James Barnard (30:00.75)
water bottle here that someone, one of my followers did that for me, a guy called Ben Daniel. And I gave him that because it's the only thing that I've got that kind of really represents the business. That's just terrible. So yeah, I need to get this logo done for myself for sure.

Paul Povolni (30:01.922)
yeah, yeah.

Nice.

Paul Povolni (30:09.283)
Yeah. Yeah. Designing your own stuff as a designer is the toughest thing because it's so close to it. And I think it even happens for clients when they're so close to something that they definitely need somebody else to give them a objective view and objective opinion on it. And for me, my Vapa logo hasn't changed in like 15 years. Like my Vapa logo, once I settled on it, I'm like, I'm not touching it anymore.

James Barnard (30:34.478)
That's great.

Paul Povolni (30:38.763)
It is what it is. Now I've fit, you know, I've fiddled with head smack and other, other things. Those I've been, it's been a little easier to create, but my own personal logo has been a little tougher. And so you started talking a little bit about process and I do want to dive into some really practical stuff when it comes to a logo design and getting the logo that is the right logo for a business. when somebody comes to you and says, Hey, James, love your videos, you know, awesome stuff.

James Barnard (30:38.808)
Yeah, nice.

Paul Povolni (31:07.747)
I need a logo. What are you telling them?

James Barnard (31:10.862)
Okay, so just recently I have a salesperson who's come on board and they handle that side of the things for me now to actually get them in as a client. So once they're over the line and that's all been agreed upon and the deposit has been paid, with that discovery call, the first one, we're to get two things out of that first chat with the client.

One of those is a success statement. So that's just a paragraph of text that kind of encapsulates the project. So you're looking for this type of logo using potentially these colors revolving around these themes. And it's going to be printed here, here, and here. So it needs to work well in these formats. And that paragraph sits at the top of my Illustrator document. So it kind of grounds me in the whole process. So when I'm designing, I'm not drifting off in directions that I shouldn't. I've got that paragraph up there that just reminds me what the goals are for this project.

The second thing is a process that I got from Alan Peters, which is the brand noun process. And this is four or five things, okay, so nouns that represent the business and these are pre-approved. So we get these approved in the discovery phase before I even put pencil to paper. So these aren't words like nature or growth, because those can be represented by so many different, you know, ideas or icons.

we would use words instead like tree or leaf. So that way I can design confidently knowing that the objects or representations of a brand that I put into a logo have been pre-approved by the client. That way there's no surprises when that first logo design comes through, they kind of know what they're going to get. And also it gives me so much confidence in the design process that I'm not drifting in the wrong direction. So I've done work before where I've tried to embody a company using

something like a representation of something. So I did a logo once for a company with the word electric in their name. So I put a lightning bolt in the design, spent weeks working it up. It was a great design, worked really, really well. It's actually this neon at the back. You can't quite see it, but it didn't work for them. I sent it over and it was, you know, they didn't want a lightning bolt. And had I just asked them that, I could have saved myself, you know, two weeks of work. So I did all the, like the mockups.

Paul Povolni (33:16.045)
You

Paul Povolni (33:30.315)
Right, right.

James Barnard (33:34.658)
loads of different variations. I treated the whole thing, added color, wasted time. So had I just checked whether lightning bolt worked for them, I could have actually just never have gone down that route. Now eventually actually ended up selling that logo, not selling it, giving that logo away to another business. And that's a whole other story. But yeah, it was a real learning curve for me. And when that happened, unfortunately that client, we got to round five and I still hadn't hit the nail on the head.

Paul Povolni (33:47.255)
Right.

Paul Povolni (33:53.315)
Yeah.

James Barnard (34:03.71)
And they ended up leaving and going with another designer. And this was like a long way back now, but it was a real wake up call. So, wow, that process really didn't work. I was kind of free-balling that guessing around concepts. And so I went back to the drawing board, rewrote the process and picked up a few bits and pieces from other designers. And that brand noun process has been by far the most successful thing that I've introduced for my clients. It just saves so much time.

Paul Povolni (34:03.907)
wow.

James Barnard (34:31.17)
It's a harder thing to do because you have to get it done in the discovery phase. So you have to get a lot of like back and forth with the client and coming up with those downs isn't always easy to agree on. But once they are agreed upon, it's wow, it's like it's a really, really strong starting point for the whole design phase. It also means that the client has gets their kind of creative juices going before the design phase. So they get their creative involvement, but not during design, because that's not their area of expertise. That's yours.

Paul Povolni (34:39.874)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (34:58.443)
Right, right.

James Barnard (34:58.946)
They shouldn't be governing things within the design phase too much. Because they've come to you for that. That's your sort of area of expertise. But that means that they do feel like they've actually got involved in the creative process by producing those nouns.

Paul Povolni (35:14.467)
Yeah, I love that. And in the, and I'll probably start using that myself because in the past, what I've asked clients is, you know, what do you want to see and what don't you want to see? Um, you know, and you know, if they're an electrician or if they're a plumber or whatever, you know, I don't want to see lightning. I don't want to see plumbing. I don't want to see wrenches, you know? So, but I love the idea of the noun, um, because that gets even more, more particular.

James Barnard (35:32.536)
Yeah, that's it.

Yeah, it's from this, this book here. Sorry, I've got it handy. Alan's book logos that last and he has a whole section on like brand noun processes. So he does like 15 of them, but yeah, she's definitely checked that out. It's a great read.

Paul Povolni (35:45.397)
I love that.

Yeah. Yeah. I follow him and love his, love his redesigns and love some of the stuff that he does as well. And so, you you've, you've, you've got them to, do the noun part. What, what else, what are the kinds of questions do you feel the client needs to answer for you to be able to give them the right brand and the right logo?

James Barnard (36:10.136)
Well, for me, it's about, there's a few things. you know, I like, I like a good backstory. So when I, when I chat to a client and we're on that discovery call, I want them to tell them about their business and how it got started. And it's, I'm only asking questions when there's something that I don't understand when they're, when they're talking me through. about maybe there's something a bit complicated about their industry that I haven't really got my head around. I just like to listen.

I will sit there and make relentless notes and just let them talk as much as possible. And I find that the less I say, the more I get. So as long as you, once you've got them started talking about their, their, their backstory, basically the first question is like, how did you get started? How did this business come about? And it's listened to the story and they get more and more passionate the more and more they kind of chat. And I just start taking relentless notes. I'm listening for keywords for things that they say in that, in that ramble that I can then pick out and then, and then drill down with.

Paul Povolni (37:07.671)
Yeah, yeah.

James Barnard (37:08.974)
So then it's kind of about the personality and like, obviously there's the obvious ones like, who's your target market? You how old are they? Where are they? Who is this logo going to be for? Because ultimately the design isn't really for them. It's for their customers, right? It's designed to bring in, you know, people. So those are the big ones, but I do love a good backstory. And I find that if you can incorporate that into a design, it will mean so much more to the client. And I mean that the logo lasts longer.

Paul Povolni (37:23.618)
Right.

Paul Povolni (37:35.287)
Right.

James Barnard (37:37.24)
They feel like they've got something of their own, of their own personality into the brand. means something to them. It's not just a shape. That's like a random abstract shape that doesn't really mean anything to their business. has a story behind it. And that comes from, you know, just listening when they talk. Now, obviously we have these great tools within places like zoom or whatever you used to, you know, record these conversations, these AI tools that can like wrap up the entire conversation. So you don't have to take too many notes, but it is important to listen when, when they talk and

Paul Povolni (38:02.538)
Right, right.

James Barnard (38:06.734)
I had a client recently, it's sort of like a marketing agency, but they kind of connect marketing to the development side of the business. So much more of the tech side. he, while he was talking, he said, we're like the plumbers of the industry. kind of like stitch those two things together. And I was like, wow, okay, great. Okay, plumbers. And then later on down the line, we used like this pipe system to represent that. Now, it obviously doesn't look like a plumbers logo. The end result was really good. But the whole

kind of concept, this pipes system, is what we used for the final design. And I would never have got that had I just not listened in the first place and when they were there kind of rambling away about their backstory.

Paul Povolni (38:48.203)
Yeah, yeah, love that. Yeah, and paying attention to what they're saying. And so, you you've got some of their backstory, you've got some of the nouns, you've defined their audience, you you've heard a little bit about them, you've listened for keywords. What's your process like, you know, when you feel you're ready for the drawing board? Are you ready for the drawing board at that point, or is there something else that happens in between all that and the drawing board?

James Barnard (39:10.958)
Usually, yeah. So I've said this a lot, but I suck at sketching. I'm so bad at putting pencil to paper. I use sketching to rule out connections that don't work. So I'll do a little line drawings that they're really not good because my strength is in the software. So I'm in the software kind of as fast as possible. So what I'll do is I'll take those brand nouns and I'll have them printed out on a sticky note on my desk. I'll start like drawing out simple abstract.

Paul Povolni (39:32.941)
Yeah.

James Barnard (39:40.494)
variations of those brand nouns, and then looking for connections between two to see if I can smush two of them together to create something new. So sometimes it's about amalgamating two shapes. Sometimes it's putting characters with another shape. Sometimes it's just a logo type only. And that will come from my speed in the software. So I'll take a tiny little sketch, dive into Illustrator, knock it up really quickly because I'm lightning fast in Illustrator.

If it doesn't work, back to the sketchbook and start again. So that's my process. I kind of iterate back and forth between sketch to software really, really fast. I'm not tracing in Illustrator. I'm recreating as fast as possible. And when I see something that kind of starts working, then I'll start trying to refine that within Illustrator and duplicating my objects and working down to try and drill down to that final point. So when it comes to actually presenting to the client, I actually present one concept.

So I've chatted with a lot of other designers about this process. Some people present, you know, two or three, some people present nine, some people present 15. I do one. but because of this sort of brand noun process, I know that the client is going to like the idea cause I've used their pre-approved nouns within this process. So I will go to town with this first presentation. I'll do a full mockup. also in that discovery call, I'm asking where this logo is going to go.

So if they say things like on t-shirts, on the side of my car, on the side of my building, all of those mock-ups will be in the presentation. And if I can find imagery from their website or a picture of them from social media, I will mock the website up onto a picture of them or onto the side of their actual building or onto a product that they might have using my old skills from back in my Photoshop days to bring that to life. So I have a couple of courses on this. So I have like an illustrator.

Paul Povolni (41:31.405)
Yeah.

James Barnard (41:37.246)
you know, a logo design illustrator course, but I also have a course around making your own mockups in Photoshop. Cause I believe that's such a powerful thing to do when you can show to your client that it's working in their business. If they're doing something like a rebrand or if they're starting, you know, new business, take a picture of their office, remove the old logo, put the new one in place, or find a picture of them wearing a t-shirt, remove the design from the t-shirt and put a logo there. It sells it in so much better to the point where I've had

Paul Povolni (41:45.281)
Right, right.

James Barnard (42:06.188)
I started to get work signed off first go quite a lot of the time. I don't want to like say a statistic on that, but it's like more than half of my work gets signed off first go. So that's brilliant. And if that happens, that allows me to get a lot more work through the door. And if it doesn't happen, if they don't like the first one, we have rounds of amends built into the project to actually get that to completion. Usually three rounds of amends. And very rarely does it go.

Paul Povolni (42:10.433)
Yeah.

James Barnard (42:34.126)
do I have to go back to the drawing board? It'll usually be like tweaking something within the design because that process beforehand is kind of guaranteed that what comes out, they're gonna actually be aligned with.

Paul Povolni (42:45.569)
Yeah, if you're a designer, I hope you're really listening to this because this is some gold when it comes to how you're doing logos, how you're doing brand. Listen, listen really well to the client. Because if you don't, then even if you do the mockups, and I call them sometimes fake makes, but if you do the mockups, they're not going to like it because you haven't listened. You've totally missed the mark. So really listen to the client.

get those nouns, get the backstory, understand who they are, do some strategic thinking behind it. And then you create the logo and then the mockups. can't emphasize how important doing those, you know, mockups is because it allows a non-creative client visualize the logo. If you just email it to them and say, Hey, here's your logo. They're looking in the context of maybe their phone.

in an email amongst, you know, they've just had to deal with something with HR or some other thing or whatever. And suddenly they get this email with a logo. It just does not present as well. So I love that that's part of your process. And if you're a designer, listen to this, really pay attention to that. And I encourage you to get James's course on creating those mockups as well, because that'll take you to the next level. And so when, you know, when it comes to a company coming to you and saying, I think I need a rebrand.

Who would you say needs a rebrand and who doesn't need a rebrand?

James Barnard (44:13.102)
depends, doesn't it? Most of the clients that come through to me are businesses that have done really, really, really well for themselves. I've got to the point where they're starting to deal with more higher paying customers or their logo has more touch points and the old design isn't standing up in this new world. So they've created a design that isn't versatile, doesn't work well in one color, doesn't scale down well. So when you print it on like,

embroider it onto a t-shirt is too detailed. Those are the kinds of clients that I get. They've got to a point where their business has gone well, but the logo is making them look cheap. So yeah, that's kind of where I can come in. can upgrade almost what they've got existing. So yeah, it's a lot different. And most of the time it's because they're not proud of the design anymore.

maybe they've done it quite quickly at the start of their business. And now they've got to a point where they're trying to, you know, bring in bigger clients or more higher paying customers and they hand over a business card with their old logo on it and they're embarrassed and they can feel it every day. They want something new and something that they can be proud of and something that means something to them. So that's kind of like the majority of my customers will come from. then, and then usually,

Paul Povolni (45:22.915)
Yeah, yeah.

James Barnard (45:35.052)
the rest of the customers are kind of like new startups, people who are actually just like getting going or maybe got a little bit of investment and they can afford to actually hit the ground running with their company and with a great brand from the start. So yeah, it's a bit of a mixed bag. And sometimes I'll deal with customers that have really, really sort of old brands have started in the 60s or 70s. And the design has a lot of history behind it.

So they don't want to go too far from the original logo. They just want to modernize it and bring it into the real world. And a logo from the 70s that was quite detailed and worked at the time now doesn't work in an app icon. So they need a variation that is scalable and actually modernized and can work in today's world. So those are the kinds of clients that I deal with. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Paul Povolni (46:14.942)
Right, right.

Paul Povolni (46:21.815)
Now, Draplin would like those logos, but... So, say somebody comes to you and they've, you know, they went with Fiverr, they got a Fiverr logo. What are some of the things that they need to understand when it comes to a logo that lets them know they have a bad logo?

James Barnard (46:43.51)
Okay, well, so Alan Peters said this best simple, memorable and unique is directly from the horse's mouth there. I think that's, can't put it better than that. If the design has too much detail and it won't scale well, it won't work in a very, very small format. And you've got to think about things like the app icon. You've got to think about whether how this logo is going to look when you put it on the side of a pencil or in the favicon, the little tiny little thumbnail that comes up in your browser tab.

If it doesn't work there, it's not going to work in the real world. So the first thing is, does it scale well? Is it simple enough that when it's in a tiny, format, can you still see it? Does it work well in one color? So when you put it on a black background and turn it into white, does it still work? Do you have a variation that inverts? Do you have a variation that's going to work well when you put it on a trade show banner next to a bunch of other logos in white on black?

Is it going to stand up next to them? And then, you know, there's all sorts of other, you know, rules and regulations around design, which is why you come to people like me. I don't want to give them all away. But yeah, when you find that you're printing it and there's difficulties with printing, you can't get it embroidered because it's too detailed or there's too many too many colors or there's like gradients through the design and you don't have a variation that works in one color. That's when you need to kind of get a good designer on board. So, yeah. And then the other thing is kind of

Paul Povolni (47:52.267)
hahahaha

James Barnard (48:11.694)
know, versatility. Do you have different variations of the design? So rather than just one single logo, do you have a system that you can use in different formats? So from the very, very small to blown up on the side of, you know, an advertising billboard, you can't, you can't just get away with one logo anymore. You need like a responsive system that actually scales so that you've got all these different formats that you can use in different circumstances.

Paul Povolni (48:38.059)
Yeah. Yeah. And if, if all your designer gave you was a JPEG, you're in trouble. cause it's, it's not going to scale. And I've actually had a client that came to me. He's like, yeah, well, I got from the designer was a JPEG and they've used that on everything. I'm like, you need to have that vectorized. like, well, the designer won't vectorize. They created in some app that only creates, exports in JPEGs. And so, so definitely, what's that?

James Barnard (48:59.084)
Right, that old chestnut. That old chestnut, I've heard that a million times before.

Paul Povolni (49:06.177)
Yeah, and so definitely make sure that when you're working with a designer that you're getting all the files that you need. And as James has mentioned, the reversed out versions, the versions that work for favicons that, it might be slightly different from the main logo proper, but it's a version of it that is still on brand that scales to that size. So you'd mentioned that you also do beyond the logo design, you do visual identity. What are some of the elements?

that a business needs to consider when it comes to a complete visual identity? Because the logo isn't all of it. What are some of the things that you recommend to clients that they need to also consider?

James Barnard (49:45.858)
Well, I guess, you know, when I send a logo over to a client, I am testing it in a few different formats to see what else is needed. So let's say your website, for instance, you can't just have a website that is just your logo. You need styles associated with that brand. You need decisions on which typeface to use for headlines and body copy. You need a style for your call to action. How do you treat it? What colors are there?

When you hover over the call to action, what happens? So that's just the website. And immediately, there's 10 things that you need, like background patterns, colors, treatments, that kind of thing. So a logo alone doesn't kind of cut the mustard. You need a system to go with it. And you need a way to use that logo in the real world. So a lot of the time when I'm doing a brand guidelines document, I'll have a page in there that says example artwork. And you'll have things like your background patterns.

I'll have like a t-shirt design. Maybe if you've got a product that's actually sold, I'll do a packaging design for that as well. So it's, you know, it's, more than just that JPEG. it's that it's, all the bits and pieces that kind of go along with it. So the second you start designing something and it's just a logo, it's like bare bones. You realize pretty quickly, okay, we need all of these different decisions kind of governed for us as well. And that's obviously where the brand guidelines document comes in. So how to.

Paul Povolni (50:53.782)
Yeah, right.

James Barnard (51:11.254)
which colors you're allowed to use with the design, which logo can you use on which background and in which color, and are they contrasting enough so that they can be legible. And then, yeah, things like background patterns, the different typefaces that you're allowed to use with the design. And if you're to go into web design as well, all the different styles that are associated with that web design.

Paul Povolni (51:34.787)
So when you explain that to a client, and they say, well, why is that important? Why do I need to consider all those things? Can't I just have a logo? What do you tell them?

James Barnard (51:47.49)
Well, I mean, it depends how design savvy that the client is really, doesn't it? I mean, you could just give them an example, say, okay, well, you know, just use this logo and just see what happens. Immediately. If you start picking loads of different colors and using loads of different typefaces with the design, it's not going to look harmonious. And you need, you need a system to kind of keep all of that in check. You need somebody at your company who's responsible.

Paul Povolni (52:09.355)
Right.

James Barnard (52:16.682)
for your brand, you can kind of protect it. Without it, it's not going to feel harmonious. Your logo could sit on a piece of artwork with loads of other different styles, and it's not going to feel like your brand. It's about like a harmonious feeling. When you look at something, it's got to feel like your brand. Now, a lot of that comes with association. know, over time, people will attribute your brand to that visual style, but it's got to be consistent from the start.

Because if you're not consistent with it, you could start drifting off in loads of different directions. And then when people won't be able to recognize your artwork or your brand from a distance or at a glance. And that's the aim of the game, is that kind of association with that style that becomes your brand.

Paul Povolni (53:00.895)
Right. And all of that stuff is so critical because if your competitor can put their logo on your stuff and nobody notices, then you really haven't clearly defined your unique brand to kind of stand out from the competition. so what James is saying is absolutely correct. You've got to look at it. You've got to look at the colors. You've got to look at the fonts and you've got to nail it down with a brand guide because what will happen, and I've seen this happen.

James Barnard (53:09.666)
Yeah, that's a problem.

Paul Povolni (53:30.659)
is if you give it to another designer to create social media or whatever else, you're not using James for whatever reason. And that designer is going to want to freestyle a little bit. I've seen it happen. They want to add their own flair to it. And sometimes what ends up happening is fracture. And so they add their flair, and suddenly the logo is starting to break apart. It's no longer consistent.

James Barnard (53:45.208)
Hmm. Yeah.

Paul Povolni (54:01.031)
And so having, like James had mentioned, the brand guidelines and defining a lot of those things makes a big difference in having a brand that's unified and you start building equity in it,

James Barnard (54:13.558)
Yeah, you also you need somebody at your company, even if it's just you, who's going to be responsible for making sure that this brand is protected. So I designed my my wife's company logo for her. I redid it recently. But you can watch her making social posts and Canva and she goes to the font drop down. She we just starts finding any fun. And that's a nice one. It's just like tagging. I'm like, No, you've got to stick to this. You've got to start creating consistency. Otherwise, people aren't going to know it's you.

Paul Povolni (54:31.235)
you

James Barnard (54:41.81)
so even as the CEO of our own company, she's still doing it. so, you know, it's, it's, it's so important, but you need someone in your business who is the brand ambassador, the champion, like who find out who that person's going to be because, it can slip away from you so quickly. just, know, the wrong font choice here or someone squishes the logo or someone changes, you know, takes the logo that's designed to be used on the light background and just adds a white.

color overlay to it and it inverts the wrong way. It's so, it happens all the time, especially with logos that use a lot of shadows and highlights and people just invert them and expect them to work. It doesn't work. Like I see that with the Premier League logo, which is the lion's head and they have a variation that works in a reverse format, but you see it all the time. You see the dark version and people have just put a white color overlay on top of the dark version and printed it wrong and it's inverted. looks weird.

Paul Povolni (55:13.303)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (55:36.286)
my goodness, yeah.

James Barnard (55:40.418)
the shadows are in the wrong place and their eyes are bright white. You know, it's like, it's totally wrong. So even places like that, they get into trouble as well. So it's so important to have someone who is responsible for protecting your brand in your business.

Paul Povolni (55:43.609)
You

Paul Povolni (55:56.211)
Right. And that also starts building equity in your brand, you know, because, you know, when people start seeing a consistent logo, it's no longer each piece having to work on its own. It's kind of working in unity with other things that they've seen of your brand. And so if you use a certain color consistently, then it starts building equity in that brand color or the brand font or whatever style. And so as opposed to every single piece having to kind of live on its own power, right?

James Barnard (56:26.35)
This is one of the reasons why creating a timeless logo is so important, is because you want this logo to really stand the test of time so that your brand has the chance to build that equity. If you're having to change your design every year or two, if your design follows a trend and suddenly that trend isn't fashionable anymore and you have to change it, you're going to lose all that equity that you've built up within that design. So that's one of the reasons why people come to someone like me, is to get it right from the start.

so that you're building that equity from day one of your company and you have all of that time behind all the work that you've put into it is still associated with that first design that you did.

Paul Povolni (56:56.589)
Right.

Paul Povolni (57:07.829)
Right. Well, and that's, that's the value of, of going to somebody that knows what they're doing. Like James is, is they build for the longterm and not just for the trend because, you know, at some point the hipster logo is no longer going to be cool. At some point, you know, the gradients and the, the, shadows and the bevels and all that won't be cool. And you suddenly start looking irrelevant. And so building for longevity is definitely a key to it. So when it comes to, you know, you, so you've created the visual, you presented the logo.

Is there anything else that a brand needs to consider when it comes to creating that visual identity? Is there anything that we've missed?

James Barnard (57:45.934)
I mean, you know, it's not just the visual identity that goes with that brand. There's a lot of other things as well. It's like tone of voice, like who you are as a company. And unfortunately, that's not something I can help with with my business. That creating that trust within a brand comes with, you know, what you do as a company and who you are and how you speak to the world. I just help with the kind of the visual side of things, which is A, with a great logo.

be with the extra elements that you can throw in. So if I start a logo project with a business, I use the logo as the start point of that sale. And that's how I get clients. find me because I'm known for the logos. But I can help with other things as well. And that is the extra bits and pieces, like all of the background patterns and repeating patterns that you can provide. Designing the website, animating the logo, custom typefaces, that kind of thing.

help with all of that. So for me, Logo Design is like the lead generator, and then the other services is like the bolt-ons for a visual identity project.

Paul Povolni (58:55.871)
And so, you now that you're, you've got a million followers on social media. what, what are some of the things that you've tried on social, that haven't quite worked? You know, we, we heard about the stuff that did work. what are some of the things that didn't work and what are you finding that's working better now than it has maybe in the past?

James Barnard (59:14.968)
So my content is for designers predominantly, but my secret audience is clients that want a new logo design business. So I'm aiming to set myself as the expert in my industry. So by teaching other designers about this world and specifically about software packages and tips and tricks in packages like Adobe Illustrator,

behind the scenes clients are looking at and going, who's this guy teaching other designers? Maybe we could just go to this guy first and foremost. So just giving value is what works on social media. doesn't matter who it's for really. as long as you're sticking reasonably within a niche, that kind of works. What I found doesn't work is when I drift away from that niche and I stopped talking about the things that I'm known for, people don't really tend to care. and I saw this great talk.

by a lady called Karen X. She's got like millions of followers. She did a talk at Adobe Max and she did this great speech called One for Me, One for the Algorithm. So make content that you like making and then make content that you kind of know will go viral and mix and match that kind of stuff so that you kind of feel happier about what you put out into the world. Because if you just make like viral based videos all the time, and for me that is a bombshell software trick.

set to an absolute banger of a track with no dialogue. Those do really, really well because they are, they're not dependent on language. It's just a very, very visual thing. But I can't do that all the time because those are kind of like glamorous tips and tricks that are kind of, they don't really help people. You know, it's like a little niche fun thing that might be handy for one or two people. When I get on camera a bit more and I talk more about the fundamentals of design or how to be a better freelancer,

how to speak to clients. Those don't do as well on the of popular side of things, but those lead to more followers. Because when a viral video does come in and lots of people are suddenly on your page and they go through your content, it's not just cheesy videos of you like pointing at the camera and sticking your thumb out, which I'm kind of known for. It is actually, there's some value behind there as well. And that's what leads to the follow is actually having something to say and actually giving back a little bit and actually creating value with your content.

Paul Povolni (01:01:25.677)
Hahaha

Paul Povolni (01:01:38.765)
Was there a tip that you posted that surprised you on how well it did?

James Barnard (01:01:43.342)
Yeah, the pencil tool, like how to manipulate paths with the pencil tool and like shave off edges and cut corners with it. was, was a, when I found out about it, it was through a content creator called Abby Connick. And I didn't know about it either, which is why in that video that went viral and got 15 million views is partly to do with my reaction about like, well, I didn't know what's happening here. And recreated it on my computer and it's like, okay.

Paul Povolni (01:01:44.675)
Hahaha

Paul Povolni (01:02:06.627)
You

James Barnard (01:02:12.056)
This is amazing. 15 years using Illustrator. How did I not know this? And that's kind of had the sort of funny side behind it and really, really took off. But yeah, the ones that go that are really successful are the weird little quirks within software that you didn't know were there. Those kind of like hidden tips and tricks videos. Those, those do really, really well.

Paul Povolni (01:02:15.65)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:02:33.357)
Man, this has been an amazing conversation and like your content, not only great for designers, but I think also great for people looking for help in branding, in logo design. And so I encourage you to reach out to James and James, if they want to get ahold of you, what's the best way to get ahold of you?

James Barnard (01:02:37.612)
Thank you.

James Barnard (01:02:50.04)
So my website is Barnard.co, so you can see my work there. And there's also some great resources for designers on there. I've done a bunch of live streams with people like Adobe, so you can kind of watch how I work. And then on that page as well, there's a few of my courses. So I've got an Adobe Illustrator course. I've got a Photoshop course. I've also got a of a course that is like turning from brief to brand, like the full process of logo design. You can check that out.

And then on my socials is at Barnard Co on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and can find me on LinkedIn as well.

Paul Povolni (01:03:26.541)
Definitely encourage you to check out James, really amazing content. I follow him across most of those channels and always enjoy his videos. Very informative, great tips, stuff that I've been using. I mean, I've been using Photoshop and used freehand before Illustrator took over. And I'm still learning stuff because they're constantly coming out with stuff. And so the more you learn, the more you understand this software, the faster you get stuff done. And the better it is.

James Barnard (01:03:37.73)
Thank you.

Paul Povolni (01:03:55.939)
and the more work you can get done and get out of the way. So James, what's the final thing that a question that maybe you wish I'd asked you or one final thing that you want to leave with?

James Barnard (01:04:07.214)
Um, wow. Wasn't expecting that. All right. All right. Let's, let's give a piece of advice to new designers. I was like to like give back a little way if I can. Um, one of the best pieces of advice I got from my, um, first, one of my first art directors was be prepared to defend your work. So whenever you send over your design, don't just send it over, send it over with a little paragraph or maybe just a sentence or a rationale about why you've chosen that route.

Paul Povolni (01:04:10.371)
You

James Barnard (01:04:37.334)
It kind of preemptively answers the questions that they might have about it. And that kind of helps a lot with feedback, but it also helps while you're designing. So instead of every time you add something to a design, if you add like a border color or a new typeface or a drop shadow here or there, think about how you'll defend that when you get questioned on it later. And if you can't defend the decision to do it, don't do it. It leads to much less cluttered work.

It means the work that you're proud of. And when those questions do come through about why have you picked this color? Why have you picked this typeface? You'll have an answer for them and that'll give confidence in your design. You'll get less kind of subjective feedback.

Paul Povolni (01:05:18.465)
That is awesome, man. Well, as I say, one good idea, well executed can change everything. And James has shared a lot of great ideas and a lot of great ways for you as a client to consider when it comes to your brand and your logo, as well as if you're a designer on how to serve your clients better. And so thank you very much, James. This has been amazing, mate.

James Barnard (01:05:23.512)
Yeah.

James Barnard (01:05:39.17)
No problem. Thanks a lot. Lovely to meet you.