Behind the Scenes #4: First (ridiculous) design attempts
Artwork disasters, email follow-up annoyances, and strength finding... Welcome back to the Statement Mondays biweekly update!
What is Statement Mondays? It’s a podcast for college and early-career women about being bold and authentic in the workplace. I interview career-minded women with strong identities who give examples, advice, and tools that inspire listeners to bring more of who they are into what they do.
👩🏼🎨 Since last time:
I sent out my two completed episodes to a handful of people and I’m excited to hear what they think! It feels good to have a test run to work things out before full launch.
I tried out the “loop in a friend” idea with my 11th interview last week. My guest’s friend’s responses gave me some great conversation points, though the process will need some iteration. It felt like pulling teeth constantly following up on that email!
I finally bought a design service, Penji, to get going on branding. More on this below.
Peep my new email -> natalie@statementmondays.com!!
🧠 #1 thing on my mind: Ugly podcast artwork
Branding is so not a strength of mine, which feels weird since I am an artist and love to draw and paint. My brain starts melting when I try to come up with design ideas for the podcast artwork -- I think my mind is in conflict between the obvious imagery (heels, woman, workplace), and my quirky unconventional ideas (see below) and I haven’t found a good way to marry the two (I’ll always prefer 100% quirky or a 50-50% combination, never 100% conventional).
These are the very first sketches that came in based on descriptions that I gave the designer (they’ll be built out and colored later!). Oh dear... It either looks ridiculous or boring! I sent in some major revision requests and I’ll keep experimenting until I find something I remotely like, and hopefully my design vision here will be strong enough to guide the designer to something amazing.
🤓 Learnings:
People processes: I followed up with my latest interviewee four times about getting her friend’s responses. Next time instead of my interviewee looping in a friend, I’ll ask for the name and email and I’ll do the looping in. That way I can follow up with the friend without badgering my guest.
Strengths: I learned what my top five strengths are, as determined by the Clifton StrengthsFinder assessment: Learner, Ideation, Adaptability, Individualization, and Strategic. Turns out all of my top five are in the Relationship Building and Strategic Thinking categories, and none are in the Influencing or Executing categories. Hmm...
🍪 Asks:
Do you have any big ideas for Statement Mondays artwork? I’d love to hear them!
🙌 Shoutouts:
Thank you Wendy Foo for introducing me to several potential podcast guests.
Thank you to everyone who is giving me feedback on my first episodes.
Thank you to my teammate/PM/manager at Facebook, Brit who surprised me with a journal and a podcasting microphone after we launched my big feature (at my real job).
Thank you Julie for introducing me to StrengthFinders and deciphering my strengths with me.
Thanks for reading! I'll be in Germany next time you hear from me :). And if you need a reason to be bold today, here it is -- today is Statement Monday.
Natalie Muenster
Founder | Statement Mondays