Making the Brand Course

Go from business idea to full-blown brand in just 8 weeks.

Develop a bragworthy brand that stands out and speaks directly to your audience, transforming casual customers into diehard fans. Conceptualize your business concept into messaging and visuals designed to attract the right customers and turn them into loyal fans.

It’s time to stack your skills and launch that idea you’ve been daydreaming about. Learn how to build a brand strategy + identity with beauty, brains, and brawn in real-time.

You decided to launch a business, now what?

You finally got the courage to make the leap and take your talents to the world of entrepreneurship. Finding customers didn’t add up to what you’d thought it would be, and you find yourself scrambling for new marketing techniques with the ever-changing algorithm. Somewhere along the line, you feel like your mission isn’t being translated, let alone understanding the difference between a font and a typeface.

It’s time for something brand new.

You’re invited to Links & Lattes: Making The Brand, a 2-day weekend activation powered by The Idea Girl, where you’ll work on building your brand strategy and identity in IRL, live from NYC.

It’s a workshop turned laptop party where you’ll learn how to conceptualize your business concept into messaging and visuals designed to attract the right customers and turn them into loyal fans.

Does this sound like you fam?

🙃 You’re a creative, freelancer or founder in a constant battle between Imposter Syndrome and taking the stage.

🙃 You’re ready to take action and launch your business like yesterday because your ideas are tired of sitting in the dark?

🙃 You’re over taking twelve week courses because you end up abandoning them and forgetting they exist.

🙃 You’re pivoting the direction of your company and looking to target a new audience.

🙃 You’re working with a champagne taste and a soda can budget when hiring the right creative team.

🙃 You’re interested in learning from an expert with hands-on experience.

1

2

Branding Foundations

Research & Development

In this chapter, you'll learn the fundamental principles of branding, starting with an introduction to branding basics and the branding process. You'll explore how to craft and communicate your brand story effectively, understand the problem your brand solves, and clearly define your product. Additionally, you will establish your brand values, mission, and equity, setting the foundation for a strong and cohesive brand identity.

Understand the importance of research and development in building a successful brand. Gain insights into market research fundamentals and learn how to conduct a comprehensive market analysis. These skills will equip you with the knowledge to make informed decisions and develop a standout brand strategy.

3

Target Audience

Defining your audience is key to effective branding. Discover how to identify your target market, create detailed user personas, and understand customer behavior through emotions and motivations. Learn to craft compelling messaging and map out the user journey to enhance their experience with your brand.

4

Competitive Analysis

Gain a thorough understanding of your competitive landscape to better position your brand. Learn how to conduct a SWOT analysis, identify direct and indirect competitors, and create comprehensive competitive profiles. This chapter also covers tools like comparison charts and FAB analysis to help differentiate your brand and explore opportunities for collaboration.

5

Brand Positioning

Defining your audience is key to effective branding. Discover how to identify your target market, create detailed user personas, and understand customer behavior through emotions and motivations. Learn to craft compelling messaging and map out the user journey to enhance their experience with your brand.

6

Verbal Identity

Discover how to create a distinctive verbal identity for your brand. You'll explore techniques for developing a unique brand voice and tone, using brand grammar effectively, and incorporating expressive tools like emojis.

7

Brand Messaging

Dive into the core elements of brand messaging to clearly communicate your brand's essence. Learn to define your brand's core pillars, values, and story, and articulate its purpose and vision. This chapter also guides you in crafting a mission statement, brand promise, and unique selling propositions, providing a comprehensive framework for all your brand communications.

8

Brand Identity

In this chapter, you'll discover how to create a strong visual and experiential brand identity. You'll start with the basics of brand identity and move into developing a cohesive brand art direction. You'll learn the principles of color psychology and how to create a compelling brand color palette. You'll also build a typography suite, design impactful logos, and finalize your brand guidelines. Finally, you'll learn how to activate your brand experience, ensuring it comes to life consistently across all touchpoints.

Get ready to take centerstage.

You told yourself this year that you were going to go-big or go-home. After playing the background for all these years you’re ready to:

✅ Build brand awareness to get your business in front of the right people, publications, and platforms.

✅ Get clarity on your messaging to communicate your offerings minus the confusion on who you are and what you’re here for.

✅ Show up for your customers and transform them into loyal fans by establishing trust.

✅ Expand your resume by stacking new skills to help you DIY your designs with assistance from the best of the best.

✅ Create elegant, elevated designs that will have you fending off compliments everywhere your brand appears.

Links & Lattes : The Event was one of the most invigorating, inspiring and productive events that I have ever attended. I too am an “Idea Girl,” and I have found transforming my ideas into tangible products had been difficult as of late. Attending Links and Lattes as well as engaging with the other creatives in this space was just what I needed to kick my ideas and focus into high gear! The event included easily digestible and information packed lessons that helped me flush out and execute my brand idea, narrative, visual content and more. On day one, I received a 96 page “Making the Brand” spiral notebook that I comfortably carry and confidently reference in all of my brand building activities. I’ll call it what it is. It is a BRANDING BIBLE and you need it!  Do not wait, do not debate - Links and Lattes is worth more than your time and money it is worth your business! I highly, HIGHLY recommend. 

-Lauren Napier, The SP1NSTER

This class is for you if…

💸

You’re working with a smaller budget

You don’t have a five-figure budget to work with an agency but you still want to learn the transformative power of great branding.

⏳

You’re tired of wasting time

You're a busy entrepreneur with little time to spare. You don’t have the time to wait because you needed to launch like yesterday.

💥

You need a plan of action

You’re a designer or DIY guru who needs a step-by-step plan that’s already mapped out for you.

Making the Brand is for dreamers and believers who are ready to take immediate action, and need accountability and direct guidance to launch their brand.

Which founder are you?

Whether you’re running the BTS of your beauty brand or a designer on the path to expert, this class is a perfect fit for both the founder who needs to relaunch like yesterday and the multidisciplinary creative who wants to master strategy to manifest projects with bigger budgets 🤑.

The Founder Needing A Rebrand

You’re often found juggling multiple hats between CEO, graphic designer, and accountant. You want to scale up, but you don’t know where to begin when it comes to the business of branding. All you know is that the logo you got on Fiverr a few years ago is no longer making the cut.

The Designer Who Wants to Pivot

You’re a designer whose been in the game for years and you’re looking to switch it up and do things differently. You may be looking to pivot and elevate your current look, messaging, and offerings to attract the clients you truly want to work with.

The Freelancer Ready to Go Full-Time

You’re ready to dive into the world of entrepreneurship, but you realize that random design jobs aren’t keeping the bills paid. You’re curious about brand strategy and how to use it to grow a steady clientele.

Your Instructor

Gone are the days when you need to work with an agency with a big budget or drag yourself through another online course. My name is Brittany Antoinette, and I’m a Brand Strategist and Creative Director of The Idea Girl, a boutique design practice for fashion, beauty, and wellness brands.

Over the past six years, I’ve worked behind the scenes partnering with start-ups, founders, corporations, and creatives to help them launch products and platforms that make the world a better place.

After closing my agency and pivoting into independent practice, I realized that I, too, wanted to make a bigger impact by building a faster-growing generation of founders and creatives through done-with-you classes to launch your brand.

Features & Collabs ✨

Features & Collabs ✨

Get ready for takeoff.

1 Payment of

$1499

Includes:

✅ Access to 13 all workshops in NYC

✅ Making The Brand Workbook

✅ Brand Guidelines Deck Template

✅ Art Direction Deck Template

✅ Two catered lunches + refreshments

✅ Design templates

✅ 30 Days of project support

✅ 1x 60 minute consultation w. The Idea Girl

4 Payments of

$425

Includes:

✅ Access to 13 all workshops in NYC

✅ Making The Brand Workbook

✅ Brand Guidelines Deck Template

✅ Art Direction Deck Template

✅ Two catered lunches + refreshments

✅ Design templates

✅ 30 Days of project support

❌ 1x 60 minute consultation w. The Idea Girl

A brand new solution that won’t require you to cross the Brooklyn Bridge for a slice of cheesecake.

You’ve been to more panels than your hands could count and hot girls aren’t gatekeepers so it’s time to let you in my best trade secrets in order to build a shelf-worthy brand that brings all the customers to your yard (or website). An adept curriculum to help your brand go from background to centerstage, Making the Brand helps founders and creatives through shortcuts, strategy, and skill-building workshops to go from concept to commerce.

There’s no such thing as education without application and during MTB weekend, you’ll walk out with a brand new look by learning how to:

🪚

Build your brand from top to bottom and/or how to develop them for other clients.

🙋🏾‍♀️

Curate your unique customer profiles in alignment with your target messaging.

🖌

Develop your own logo, color, and typography suites with strategy and style.

🗺

Create a unique brand strategy for your business’ roadmap to success.

🎨

Design a brand identity to keep visual consistency across your content

✍🏾

Write the right copy from your mission to your unique value proposition statements.

🔬

Conduct your own research when it comes to customers and competitors.

🎤

Establish your company’s voice and tone so your sound is pitch perfect.

🗂

Conceptualize your ideas into a brand guideline deck to pass off to your team.

Curriculum

SATURDAY [DAY 01]

Brand Strategy

First things first, we start with strategy. On Day One, we’ll breeze through a series of lessons to help you build the foundation of your brand’s strategy and the framework of your verbal and visual forms of communication.

  • We’ll kick things off by forming your foundation to develop the framework for a solid brand.

    • Create your Holy Brand Trinity.

    • Develop your founder story to create resonance.

  • Getting your facts straight can save you time and money by collecting the necessary information to help you make better business decisions.

    • Learn which tools to use to conduct industry research.

    • Choose best methods for collecting customer feedback.

    • Study your customers and your competition.

  • In this workshop, we’ll cover the fundamentals of building your target audience strategy to attract and get in front of people in alignment with your brand’s mission and vision.

    • Cultivate your own target audience strategy based on their demographics and psychographics.

    • Create user persona profiles based on your target messaging.

    • Build your consumer journey.

  • Stand out in the sea of competitors in your industry by studying friendly threats and possible brand companions.

    • Perform a series of competitive analyses.

    • Investigate to find opportunities with brand partners you align with most.

  • Now that we’ve gotten the dirty work out of the way, we’ll focus on developing the way your brand chooses to show up in the world, its personality, and its image through various exercises.

    • Build a brand persona for your internal and external communications.

    • Develop your brand image and personality.

    • Formulate your core values and pillars through various prompts.

    • Lay down the framework for how your brand communicates visually.

  • After molding your brand’s personality and image, it’s time to craft your unique voice to shape your brand’s verbal communication from social media to e-marketing.

    • Shape your brand’s verbal communication system across all platforms.

    • Develop your unique voice and tone.

    • Establish your brand grammar rules.

  • We’ve got your voice and means of verbal communication down packed, so let’s dive deep into your brand messaging, shall we? During this workshop, we’ll cover all you need to know about developing the necessary statements in alignment with your new brand strategy, like your mission, vision, tagline, and even your unique sales proposition.

    • Craft the essential brand statements you need that are true to you.

    • Cultivate your core pillars, values, and target market messaging.

SUNDAY [DAY 02]

Brand Identity

On Day 2, we’ll switch gears and bring your strategy to life by designing a brand identity suite using my methods step-by-step before solidifying your new brand guidelines at the end of class.

  • Now that we’re out with the old and in with the new, we’ll mood board your ideas into existence by exploring Pinterest for inspiration and putting your vision all the way together.

    • Discover your brand’s aesthetic by using Pinterest to gather your ideas.

    • Create a customized mood board that expresses your brand’s look + feel.

    • Develop an art direction deck to conceptualize and organize your brand direction.

  • Color speaks volumes and can create either feelings of happiness or even feelings of excitement.

    • Understand the basics of color theory and emotion.

    • Design your brand’s color palette.

    • Establishing primary and secondary palettes and rules of application.

  • Learn the tricks of the trade regarding fonts and how to implement your very own type suite.

    • Gain clarity on type theory and where to source the best font resources.

    • Create your customized type suite that best represents your brand’s style.

    • Assign headings and text to curate editorial layouts.

  • A great logo is memorable and easy to understand more than stand out.

    • Explore logo theory and lockups.

    • Source the right typeface for your wordmark logo.

    • Design your logo suite and lockups.

  • Seeing your brand in the real world is a reminder that seeing is believing. We’ll work on bringing your concepts to life through mock-ups and ad-lobs.

    • Design ad-lob concepts using your new brand identity to bring your vision to life.

    • Learn how to customize design mockups using Photoshop to showcase your products and concepts.

  • In this final lesson, you will take all your findings and update your brand guidelines template with your new strategy and identity.

Brand Hall of Fame ✨

Brand Hall of Fame ✨

  • TOPICALS

    SPRING 2020 BRAND LAUNCH

  • RANGE BEAUTY

    SUMMER 2021 REBRAND & LAUNCH

  • LILLY'S KLOSET

    2022 SUMMER RE-BRAND & LAUNCH

  • UNWRP

    2019 RE-BRAND & LAUNCH

  • LELIAMAE

    2021 RE-BRAND + LAUNCH

  • MELA VINO

    SPRING 2022 BRAND LAUNCH

  • THE COILY COLLECTIVE

    SPRING 2022 RE-BRAND & LAUNCH

  • TATIANNA TAROT

    SPRING 2021 RE-BRAND LAUNCH

  • LA-LAH

    2022 SPRING RE-BRAND & LAUNCH

  • THE COSMIC LATTE

    2021 FALL BRAND LAUNCH

  • BOHO LOCS

    SPRING 2022 RE-BRAND

  • HYPER!

    FALL 2019 BRAND LAUNCH

  • BLACK GIRL IN OM

    2020 SUMMER RE-BRAND & LAUNCH

  • BABY TRESS

    FALL 2019 RE-BRAND & LAUNCH

Lights, camera, action.

With helping launch over 100+ brands and campaigns for startups and major figures, my work has helped clients acquire retail placement and press like Sephora, West Elm, Urban Outfitters, Macy’s, Vogue, and Forbes. My mission is to help as many founders and creatives develop scalable and sustainable brands that take up space.

Meet me in

Link me alongside other founders and creatives at  Mama Tress Studios in Chelsea, NYC.

What’s Included?

Bring your big idea and be guided through a weekend full of activities that’ll galvanize you into action.

👩🏾‍💻 Co-working Sessions

👩🏾‍🏫 Workshops

🧠 Making the Brand Workbook

🖐🏾 Q&As

🗂 Brand Guidelines Template

🥗 Catering & Snacks

✍🏾 Exercises & Prompts

🫂 30 Days of Project Support

🎨 Art Direction Template

💻 Templates

Bet on yourself.

1 Payment of

$1999

2 Payments of

$1125

You’ll need:

01

Laptop

Adobe Suites (Id, Ps, Ai) and/or Canva

02

Notion

03

Pinterest

04

Class Projects

Every minute counts, which is why this curriculum was curated with the essential steps to curating a full-on brand strategy and identity. Every hour on the hour, we’ll cover a hybrid lesson as you actively take part in exercises and work on your project in real-time. You’ll co-work with other classmates and your instructor to guide you.

PROJECT

Brand Strategy

Step-by-step we’ll work together through various exercises and activities to craft your secret formula in your very own workbook. You’ll develop a brand strategy and messaging that establishes trust, creates customer loyalty, and increases brand awareness.

PROJECT

Mood Board

After breezing through the ins-and-outs of art direction, you’ll work on building your very own moodboard that encapsulates your brand’s new strategy and serves as the framework for your visual communications.

PROJECT

Color Palette

We’ll explore all things color theory to curate a custom palette that reflects your brand’s image. 

PROJECT

Typography Suite

Fonts create feelings too, which is we’ll spend time curating a user-friendly typography suite inspired by your brand’s personality.

PROJECT

Logos & Lockups

You will learn how to develop your logo suite and create different types of logos and lockups for your visual identity system.

PROJECT

Adlobs & Mockups

We’ll bring your designs to life by stylizing mockups for print, product, and ad-lobs that demonstrate the use of your brand identity.

PROJECT

Brand Guidelines

You’ll receive an 80+ page brand guidelines template that you’ll customize according to your new brand identity and strategy paired with the instructions to keep it consistent.

Is this class for you?

THIS CLASS IS FOR YOU IF…

✅ You’re a founder with a product or service based business.

✅ You’re a creative, graphic designer or brand designer who wants to incorporate brand strategy as an offering.

✅ You have basic design skills and can use Adobe Suites or Canva.

✅ You’ve been running your business for a few years and need a rebrand.

✅ You feel that you’re not attracting the right customers.

✅ You want to create a strong brand with beauty and brains.

✅ You want to learn how to create aesthetically pleasing brand collateral.

✅ You want to establish brand awareness in your industry.

✅ You want to work alongside an expert instructor in an intimate setting.

✅ You need to take immediate action and accountability.

THIS CLASS IS NOT FOR YOU IF…

❌ You don’t have a business or any interest in entrepreneurship.

❌ You don’t know the basics of graphic design let alone what Canva is.

❌ You’ve got it all under control and a rebrand isn’t a priority.

❌ You don’t see the value in adding brand strategy to your offerings.

❌ You’ve got your target audience locked and secured.

❌ You’ve got brand design down-packed already.

❌ Your brand identity doesn’t need a makeover.

❌ Your brand is pretty well known in your industry.

❌ You’d rather hire someone to do your brand strategy for you and not with you.

❌ You want to go slow and at your own pace.

Be a brand new icon.

1 Payment of

$1999

2 Payments of

$1125

Frequently Asked Questions

Don’t see your question answered? Shoot me an email.

  • Making the Brand is perfect for founders with basic skills who are taking the DIY route and experienced designers who want to learn how to build a strategy.

  • Making the Brand is a 2-day weekend where you’ll learn how to build your brand in real time with other founders and creatives.

  • For a majority of our projects, we will be using Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. However, you can use Canva as a substitute for specific projects except for Session 12: Ad Lobs & Mockups which requires Adobe Photoshop.

  • This workshop is live and in-person at Mama Tress Studio in NYC.

  • Just in case you’re not able to finish building your brand in 2 days, you’ll have an additional 30 days of support via our private group chat in Geneva to help you launch.

  • Absolutely. All attendees will have catered lunch and refreshments each workshop day. Please contact me directly at whatsgood@notsoceo.co if you have any allergies or dietary restrictions.

  • You’ll need a laptop, Adobe Suites (Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign) and/or Canva, Notion (optional), and a Pinterest account.

  • Due to the nature of this workshop, refunds are not permitted unless in a case of emergency.

  • If the event is canceled, you will receive an automatic full refund once the cancellation is confirmed.