I have talked quite a bit about the different pieces of your brand that you need to make decisions on, but I haven't taken the time to talk about this in between step I always do in order to make those decisions. It's basically shopping for your brand. This is the process I use for myself and my clients. Its the nitty-gritty detail of how I find and choose different pieces of the capsule brand. I'm not sure I've talked about this step in as much detail before, so hopefully this is helpful to some of you in the process! Here is the process: You find several avenues you could go down for each piece of your capsule brand, that you don't have fully fleshed out. Let's say you have most of your capsule brand filled in, but you're not sure what your background texture and your illustration style should be, this is what you should do: 1. First, you look at your messy moodboard to spot patterns and think about what the overall "vibe" is that you want your customers to see and feel when hanging out with you. 2. Notice what people in your messy moodboards are doing, think about any overall themes or concepts you use in your brand, and try to come up with ideas for what a good background texture might be. 3. Typically, a background texture could be an image style, a texture, or a pattern. So go shopping for those things and see what you find! 4. Gather all the options you like inside a Canva whiteboard (or whatever) so that you can look at all your options at once. 5. Do this for all the gaps in your branding. So in this case, find options for your background and your illustration style and cluster them together. 6. From there, just like when you're shopping in the store, you need to "try it on" in order to know if it even fits, let alone if it's your "style." You can't truly know how these things look until you put them into a design with your content to see how it works. 7. Use that information to narrow down your direction even further. 8. Then think again about these three questions: "Do I like it?" "Is this the vibe I want my customers to have when they hang out with me?" and also check in on your design envy to see if your designs have the same general energy you were looking for. 9. Choose one option to use for the next 90 days, you can always add or change it in 90 days if it isn't quite working.

Hello! Hope your year is going well so far! Mine has been (knock on wood) quite wonderful. I love the post-holiday cozy season. Today I just wanted to do a once over on why I chose each piece of the capsule brand, to help you hopefully understand why it's helpful, and just walk through it all in one go. 00:00 Hello 03:00 Intro 08:20 Color 13:22 Fonts 15:48 Corners 19:00 Background 24:30 Line 28:55 Shadow 30:40 Image Treatment 31:55 Icon/Illustration Style 34:40 Mockup 36:06 Bonus Slots 38:00 Wrapup ChatGPT Recap: Monday, January 12, 2026 Monday Morning Shrug Session Recap (from me, Sophie) I kicked off the first Monday Morning Shrug Session with the goal of making our weekly design tasks feel lighter and less intimidating. The plan is to do these every Monday with a mix of tips, quick teaching, and whatever topic feels most useful based on what I’m seeing in the Shrug Club and in comments. Today I did a full walkthrough of my capsule brand and explained why each piece matters. The big idea is that capsule branding is 16 small decisions you make up front so that every design task after that takes way less brain power. It is a heavier lift at the start, but it pays you back every time you open a template and need it to look like your brand. I used the Thoughtless Brand Starter Pack workbook inside the classroom to guide the session, specifically the “Choose Your Capsule” section. I also explained where the whole seasonal capsule concept comes from: capsule wardrobes. You reduce options, reduce decision fatigue, practice with a smaller set, and then adjust after 90 days once you actually know what works. Here are the capsule decisions I covered and why they help: - Colors (first 4 decisions): a white-ish, a black-ish (not harsh pure white or pure black), plus two accent colors. I want you to keep it simple for 90 days, get comfortable, and only add another color later if you notice you keep reaching for it consistently. I also talked about value (light vs dark) so your designs have contrast and stay readable. - Fonts: start with two fonts, not a pile of them. One headline font for vibe, one “everything else” font that is clean and versatile with a bigger font family (multiple weights and italics you actually like). Two fonts can do more than people think. - Corners: choosing your corner roundness and sticking to it makes templates look cohesive fast. Buttons, boxes, frames, shapes. It’s subtle but it adds up. - Background: this is the biggest surface area, so it has huge impact. I shared my own background theme (sheet textures over color to get a soft, painterly look) and explained that any consistent background choice works, including totally flat backgrounds. Pick a theme you can repeat and evolve slowly over time. - Line (outline weight and style): decide your outline thickness and use it consistently across shapes, frames, arrows, and any outlined elements. If you use stylized “hand-drawn” lines sometimes, match them to your chosen weight so everything still feels like it belongs together. - Drop shadow: even if you “never use shadows,” you will eventually need them. Make a decision now about how you treat shadows so you’re not making it up in a panic later. - Image filters: pick a look for photos and try to match it across the tools you use (Instagram, Canva, CapCut, etc.). Favorite or document the filters so you can repeat them easily. - Icon/illustration style: you will need icons at some point. Choose a consistent style (outlined, filled, retro, hand-drawn, detailed, emoji, etc.) and make sure you can find what you typically need in that style. - Mockups: pick mockup styles ahead of time (illustrated vs photo, flat lay vs in-hand, device types you use most) and save them somewhere easy. Mockups are annoying enough without re-hunting them every time. - 3 “choose your own” slots: use these for whatever you need more flexibility with (extra color, extra font, pattern, tape detail, paper texture, scribbles, borders). The point is still to be specific so it actually functions like a brand rule.

This one is all about Lowering Your Standards for yourself in 2026 so that you can hit your goals whilst staying sane. Forgive my ChatGPT recap but...here it is if you don't want to watch :) In this first official Monday Morning Shrug Session, I wanted to start the week with a reset. Not a hype-up, not a “new year, new everything” moment, but a way to look at your design and content tasks without immediately feeling overwhelmed. Over the break, I noticed myself slipping into a pattern I fall into a lot. I start building these very elaborate content plans. One YouTube video turns into a blog post, which turns into carousels, short-form videos, emails, pins, stories, and suddenly I’m staring at a week full of work I don’t actually want to do. The question I had to stop and ask was simple: do I want to do all of this, or do I feel like I’m supposed to? That’s what led me back to the What’s Your Brand With activity. It’s something I’ve used for years, both for myself and with clients, especially when things start to feel heavy. I don’t see it as a rigid planning tool. I use it as a check-in. A way to figure out what actually deserves my time right now. In the session, I walk through how I use this activity to look at everything I’m creating and ask a few honest questions: how long does this really take, how does it feel to make, how often do I use it, and what else depends on it? When I do that, patterns always show up. For me, the big realization was how much everything flows from one core thing: my YouTube presentation slide decks. When I make those, I already have most of the graphics I need for blog posts, emails, pins, and Shrug Club lives. That makes it worth the time, even though it’s a heavier lift. Other things, like carousels, take me forever and drain me every single time. That doesn’t make them bad. It just means they’re not a Q1 priority. So for this quarter, I’m intentionally focusing on fewer things. Getting a YouTube video out every other week. Turning it into a blog post. Sending emails. Making pins. Spending more time inside the Shrug Club. Anything beyond that is optional. If I have the energy, great. If I don’t, I’m not allowed to beat myself up over it.