Visual Marketing Tips for Non-Designers with Jim MacLeod

What do you remember about your favorite brand? Chances are, it's a color, a logo, a look—that’s visual marketing at work. In this episode of Rocky Mountain Marketing, I’m joined by Jim McLeod, designer-turned-marketer and author of The Visual Marketer. We dive into the power of branding visuals, how to use them effectively even if you’re not a designer, and what AI means for the future of brand identity.

Key Takeaways:

• How design impacts brand trust and sales

• The difference between visual branding and brand strategy

• Why consistency is the most powerful brand asset

• How small businesses can compete visually with the big brands

• Ethical considerations in AI-generated visuals

• Tools that marketers can use (without going to design school)

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Visit Jim MacLeod's social media pages:

Website: https://book.jimmacleod.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-macleod-72509a6/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jimmacleod/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@JimMacLeod

  📍 📍 When you think of your favorite brand, what comes to mind? Is it the logo? Is it the colors? Is it a image that makes you stop your scroll? Well, that right there folks, that's visual marketing. And in a world where attention, man, it's a currency. This these days, I mean, but your brands visuals are either making you money or they're costing you.

But here's the kicker. Most marketers are missing the mark. We're not doing it right, folks. They're churning out content without a strategy. They're creating visuals that get lost in the noise. So today we're gonna change that. If you've ever wondered how to make your brand stand out, how to create visuals that actually convert, or how to leverage AI without losing your brand's soul.

While you're in for a masterclass with today's episode.

 This episode is brought to you by Metrical, from planning to publishing, to understanding what's actually working. Metrical gives you data-driven control, and with their built-in AI tools and competitor tracking, you'll stop guessing and start growing. Just click the link in the show notes for 30 free days of premium access and make sure to use the code KD 30 all.

Let's get into today's episode.

  📍 📍 📍 Welcome back to this week's episode of Rocky Mountain Marketing. Today I'm joined by Jim McLeod. He is a designer turned marketer who has. Man, he has mastered the art of creating a memorable brand experience. Jim recently wrote The Visual Marketer, which is a book that dives, man, look at me, AI, and myself here.

It dives deep into how marketers can create effective visuals, and we're gonna dive into this journey from design. All the way to marketing. We're gonna explore the power of visuals in brand strategy, and we're gonna get his take on how AI is transforming the world of marketing and design. So Jim, thank you so much for joining me on the show today.

  📍 Absolutely. Thanks for having me. I'm, I'm excited about it.

 Well, and you and I, we've met at CEX, we've met at a few conferences, and it's always great seeing you. You're, a very nice guy. I, I, I always enjoy our conversations and you're a phenomenal artist. And so when I found out that you were writing this book and that it had come out, I was like, oh, I gotta get you on the show to talk about it.

So let's, let's start at the beginning. You started as a designer, but eventually you shifted into marketing. I. Can you take us back to that transition and really what made you decide to combine the best of, of these two worlds?

  📍 yeah. It was kind of an interesting journey, but it makes sense in hindsight, but I wouldn't have imagined it moving forward.

Yeah, so I started as a traditional graphic designer. I went to school in the nineties, you know, so the web was like barely a thing at that point. And then I got into, once I saw that it was taking off, it's like, okay, I wanna learn web design. Okay, well now I wanna learn web development. Okay, now what do websites need?

So it's like you need content, you need all these additional things. And then I was, I was lucky enough to be situated within a couple different marketing teams that were high performing teams. And I learned from some really impressive people that it's like, okay, I have all these little pieces, and now if I start to put them together, tie in social tie in SEO and analytics and everything, like it all just kind of comes together in that complete package where.

It just started in design, but then it, it branched off into so many different directions.

 Well, and we're both published authors now. Uh, you know, I went through the Tilt publishing as well. And were you the first, I, I was one of the first to go through the process, and I just wanna talk about what made you decide to write a book about being a visual marketer?

 Yeah, I still remember it clear as day. It was a little over a year ago. I was standing in South Station in Boston waiting to catch my bus home. I was listening to known from Mark Schafer Uhhuh, and he was talking about like, you know, you need to be known. You need to be known, which is the premise of the book.

And then all of a sudden it just hit me. I'm like, oh, I have the design side and the marketing side. And I've talked to so many marketers, you know, that have said, I wish I had your abilities. My job would be so much easier. So I started to kind of put together what that might be. In the meantime, I was working on a newsletter called After Design, which was to help graphic designers start to transition out of design, because a lot of design roles are going away due to ai.

Mm-hmm. So I wanted to try to help them kind of follow a similar path to what I've done, which is like, okay, you started design and then you move over to something else, or grow into something else. But then I realized, well, all that work is going to somebody. It's going to marketers. So now it's like, okay, now I've got the clear direction on the book of let's write this book for marketers so that they understand what designers know and how to make their visuals better.

 So do you think that your background and being able to think like this really helps you give. People that read the book and, and give yourself, I guess, a little bit of an edge compared to marketers Without that design background, I didn't go to design school, you know, so I mean, you definitely feel like it gives you a little bit of an edge.

 Absolutely because there is, there's so much science behind design and that's why chapter two is called the science of seeing Where I get deep into how people see what kind of, what the biology behind, how people see, how they interpret things, which is cultural. So it's a, a mixture of nature, nurture. So knowing those type of things can help you create visuals that will, will engage the people without them even realizing what you're doing.

 So let's talk a little bit more about the visual marketer. It, like you said, it really emphasizes on the power of visuals and marketing. What is it that makes that's different between visuals and marketing and maybe an entire brand strategy?

 So visuals are part, so within a brand strategy, visual needs to be a massive component of it.

And in a lot of ways it's the shortcut to branding. You know, you think of that Coca-Cola red, you think of the golden arches, you think of the Facebook F, right? Like these things, they're images that just pop into your head. You know exactly what I am, what you're picturing, what I'm saying. Because they have, they've, you know, gone all in on their visual brand so that, you know, when you see that, what you're going to get out of it.

And so a lot of the times what happens is companies will, will put a lot of effort into their visual identity because it ends up being a shortcut so that when you see a banner ad on the side of the page, and what I mean by shortcut is like the people already know what they're seeing when they first see it.

So when you see a banner ad on the side of the page, if you do see the McDonald's red and the golden arches, they don't need to explain who they are and what they sell. You already know that instinctively. 'cause because they've built their brand and because their visual brand is so, so strong, now you can skip through the, is this, who is this?

What are they trying to sell me? Why do I care? And then you just get right to, here's the offer. Now I want it. It just makes things so much easier. Visuals just solidify all of that.

 So for marketers or for small business owners that are listening and they're like me, they're not a designer, what are some practical tips that they can use to create those memorable visuals for their brand?

 I would say the first thing you want to do is be consistent with all your, with all your visuals. You know, you do a great job of that with the, the light pink and the gray across everything you do. So as soon as anybody sees that thumbnail or they're scrolling through LinkedIn or any other social platform, they know, oh, okay, this is, this is Katie and I wanna, I want to consume it.

And then the next thing is setting your visual hierarchy. So you don't want to throw a whole bunch of things at one person in one image. Because you don't want to confuse them. Like, should I look at the headline? Should I look at the image? Should I look at the CTA? Should I look at the logo? Make it real clear, part one, part two, part three, part four.

How are they supposed to move through your canvas, however, your whatever platform you're creating it on. But then also remember that people tend, in the western world, tend to read in a Z like fashion. We start on upper left, go to upper right, then go down to lower left and finish on lower right. So if you know that you can guide the viewer's eyes around their visual and you're not trying to break their natural habits of how they want to scroll through the page visually.

 I love that. And I think it's, it's something that if you're not a designer, you can kind of overlook that. It's like, oh, well I need to, this, this just looks better on paper. And it's like, well wait a second. This is not how the eye actually flows for the a stranger stumbling across your page. You knew right where to look because this is your page, or this is your account.

So let's, let's talk about how you can use, you know, your, your visuals and make 'em memorable. Can you share a few examples of different brand? I mean, and you talked about McDonald's and Nike, like what are some, I guess, smaller businesses that, that do this really well and what can we learn from them?

 It's interesting 'cause the smaller businesses that do this well quickly become larger businesses that do it well.

Oh. Because they, you know, you just kinda learn and you, you get to that, that point faster. So the big thing is consistency. Like I said, and, and I say it throughout the book, for anybody that's read the book, they'll probably just get tired of me saying Be consistent, but. It's reinforcing the exact message I'm trying to say, which is be consistent.

So I say it a bunch of times. The tricky thing is we are creative people. Like people are creative. We want to try new things, we want to challenge ourselves, but that becomes a negative when it comes to brand identity, right? Like you need people to understand what you're doing, what you're offering, and if you're trying new things every time, now they need to spend time to relearn what it is that they're looking at.

As far as your question, with actual small brands that are doing that, it's, it's hard to say. I, I can't really give any real examples. I mean, other than Katie Wrinkley and, you know, next step social o other than me. That's, that's obvious because, you know, I mentioned it already. You see it with, there are people that own their visual brand and they'll do it in a, a small way, right?

Like Rand Fish can, when you see his thumbnail with him standing next to a whiteboard, you know what it is? Like he has a visual brand and you know, whenever you see his stuff, it's always him. And he is always well coughed and you know, it's gonna be high quality. That's not, you know, it's big in the marketing world, but maybe not multi-billion dollar business wise.

He uses consistent visuals to let people know what he's promoting.

 I, I definitely feel like, uh, Joe Puli, you know, our, our friend Joe Orange. Anytime I see orange. Yeah. And it's not even, it's orange. There's orange over there. I wonder how Joe's doing. There's orange. I mean, like, he's always wearing orange.

He's got, you know, if he's not wearing an orange shirt, he is got an orange hat on. He's always an orange. Jesse Cole, you know, from the Savannah Bananas. Another guy, like, he's always dressed in his yellow suit. Like those are people that I'm not, I guess I don't necessarily, you don't need to wear the brand, but those are two people that I think of as.

Like I see a color and I immediately think of them because they've really embraced all of that kind of color for their brand.

 Yeah, and there are some companies that, or businesses that really highly index on color. I. Like Home Depot Orange or T-Mobile Magenta. Like they actually, some of these actually try to trademark their colors, the insulation.

Pink Panther insulation, right? Like the, and I write about it in the book where that was actually a mistake that the, the insulation became pink and they just decided to double down on it and it became their visual identity.

 Oh, I love that. I love that. Tiffany. Tiffany's blue is another totally Tiffany's blue.

 Everyone knows exactly what that bird's egg blue or whatever it's called, is.

 Well, and I, I think it kind of moves us right into that discussion of ai. I mean, AI is changing things, you know? And for someone that is in design and, and you have a background in design and or in marketing, I'm curious, how do you see AI impacting both of these worlds?

I see it impacting both the positive and negative way, because sometimes it can be hard, like let's say you're using midjourney or chat GPT to create your visuals. It can be hard to do little tweaks, you know, some of 'em are better than others, but Midjourney completely starts over from scratch. Every time you say like, okay, now make that person's shirt orange, it's gonna redo the entire person.

And now it looks different than what you wanted the first time. So there, there can be some setbacks with that. But on the other hand. You can take that image, bring it into Photoshop and Photoshop's. AI's a little iffy at times, but you could say, make the shirt orange if, if you don't actually know how to do that by like, you know, selecting it and changing.

Yeah. Adjusting the, the colors within Photoshop. The other thing I recommend is for those who use Canva, is actually, this is a place where spending money on design can really pay off. Hire a designer to build all your brand templates. Because then, and lock it down, because you're always gonna have like random marketers doing, you know, random acts of marketing to make the logo bigger or change the fonts or change whatever.

But if you have your templates preset and locked down, then you can be sure that everything that's going out to the public is on brand.

 Yeah. And it's so important to stay on brand. Like if, if people haven't picked up on that by this part of the episode, like that's, and I like that you said like spend the money on a designer to build out the brand assets, the brand templates, because then from there you guys can all go crazy.

But once you know like, this is the brand, the visuals for it, we have to stick to within this guideline,

 yeah, I was gonna say one additional thing with Canva that a lot of people don't know is if you have Canva create a logo for you, you can't trademark it because it was created with AI and it was created through this third party tool.

So you can't actually own that logo. So if you're trying to save a couple bucks and make something on your own, somebody else can be making and using that exact same logo,

 I. Yeah, that's something to think. I mean, like, what else might some people that are not designers not realize with AI and what they can and can't do?

 Yeah. Ai, because it's just a, a really complicated guessing machine. It's going to take, it's going to give you the average of everything that it's ever consumed, which means a lot of your outputs are going to be average, which is not what anybody in marketing wants, you know, it's cheap, it's fast. It's not good, right?

Like the, the Venn diagram of how do you want this? Yeah, it's cheap and fast, but it's not good. So, you know, do what you can with it. Use AI as kind of like a thought partner or, or kind of a brainstorming machine. But if, if you've got the budget, then hire somebody to actually execute that idea at a higher level that I AI can't get to.

 So you talked about Photoshop ai. I'm mostly for, for my, I'm, I'm in Canva. I live in Canva for making things. I have a designer on my team that, that does a lot of the higher end designs. 'cause I don't even wanna mess with Photoshop because I didn't go to design design school. Like I don't know this stuff.

What are some other tools that maybe designers are aware of, but you know, the traditional business owner or marketers like myself? Might not even realize that is available and at their fingertips, and something that they should maybe get outta chat GPT for a week and spend some time with this AI tool because it's gonna change things.

 Yeah. So there is a, there's a complete design suite called Affinity, which I believe Canva recently purchased, and that is, and it's like a lifetime license, I think it's $150 and you get their equivalent to Photoshop, illustrator and InDesign. And that that doesn't have the complexity and 30 years of history that Photoshop has built into it.

'cause the learning curve on the Adobe Creative Suite is really high. Luckily, I learned it, like I said, back in the nineties when it was much simpler like it, I remember when they introduced layers in Photoshop, like that was a brand new thing that my professor was all excited about. But with the Affinity Suite.

You can, you can use some, a lot of these tools that are more basic, they're still design oriented. They're aimed at designers, so they're kind of pro level. Otherwise there are, you know, like we were talking about Canvas, great, Firefly, which and Adobe Express are out there for kind of some of that, that more consumer grade products.

One of the things I do in the book is I have two separate chapters on design software. One that's pro level, one that's more consumer level. 'cause I know most people, 99% of the people reading that book are never gonna be able to open Photoshop 'cause it's a mess the first time you open it.

 Well, yeah, and then I, I've opened Photoshop and I've been like, there's so many things.

I don't even know where to click here. I'm clicking the arrow and it's not doing anything. Apparently I need to click a magnifying. I, I don't even know. And I think that that's where a lot of, again, a lot of us that didn't go to design school, like might get overwhelmed and be like, well, I'm just gonna type it into chat GPT, and they're gonna make it for me and that the computer will make it for me.

But as you mentioned before, there's a lot of ethical. Things to consider when you are having the robot do it. What are, what are some other, aspects of ethical AI and, and image creation that we should be aware of? So the one thing that the Adobe Creative Suite does well is it only trained its AI engines on images that Adobe has licensed.

So unlike Chatt PT or Midjourney that just went out there and scraped the entire internet against our wills, um, Adobe has actually done that part. Right? Of course, there is kind of the push and pull of designers saying, well, Adobe, why are you creating these tools that are going to put me out of a job?

I've supported you for all these years, but Adobe knows. AI is the wave of the future, right? Like it's, you're fighting gravity if you're trying to fight AI at this point.

 So let's talk a little bit more about it being the wave of the future. Like what do you think that this means for designers? It should be, is it, are we, are designers now facing the same thing that a lot of copywriters were facing a year ago?

 Yeah. Copywriters and developers and, and all those folks and, and designers are gonna be facing it where the, the best ones will be fine. You know, like that won't be a concern. But if you've got a team with seven designers, maybe you only need three or four. So that's where, that's where things are gonna get tight.

And I, I had a post like a year ago on LinkedIn that that took off. And I looked at it at one point, and I think it was, it was about design, and I wanna say it was, it was maybe about 60% of the people that liked it had the green open to work. Half circle. And so it's, it's really rough out there for designers right now.

And that's why I started, after design originally to kinda be like, okay, yeah, it's tough out there. But the thing I wanted to stress to them is everyone likes different parts of design. You know, like design is a whole thing, but some people like typography, some people like color, some people like layout.

So depending upon what, what they prefer and what they want to do, there are adjacent jobs that they could then get into. Branding is a great example. Like if you know your visual brand really well, you can get into overall branding and get into all the other aspects that come with branding outside of your logo and colors and typography.

 So if someone were to say, man, Jen, this is awesome. I realize how much I didn't know. I'm gonna go pick up a copy of your book, the Visual marketer, what is one of the biggest takeaways that they are going to have from picking up your book?

 Of stuff that I haven't already mentioned. 'cause the big thing is, is just repeating yourself over and over again.

And the book is not 200 pages of me saying Don't be creative. But one of the things that, I found interesting was somebody that I've worked with for years, close to 10 years, he read the book and he just posted a review on Amazon talking about one section where, where I talk about doing a SWOT analysis for all of your competitors, competitors visuals.

So that can be as simple as just creating a Pinterest board. Anytime you see an ad for one of your different competitors or some of their assets, and so what will happen is you start to see kind of the white space, like you start to see what isn't being offered by your competitors, and it tells you, okay, this market, this area is being underserved.

Here's an area that I should attack. I don't know if that's one of the bigger takeaways, but it, it's something that was just called out, yesterday or the day before.

 Nice. I think that ads are sexy, you know, because you can, you can get in front of the right people and it only costs you x amount per month or whatever.

Uh, you know, going viral, that's something sexy and like, oh, just create enough videos on TikTok. You're gonna go viral and your, you know, your life is gonna change. But I think that my biggest takeaway from this is all of that is fine, but that's, it's no different than just kind of the spaghetti at the wall method.

It, you have to have the foundational pieces when you know the visuals for your brand, the tonality for your brand, the visuals make someone feel. That's what's going to, to stick and make people say, oh yeah. Jim, he, he takes the great notes at the conferences that are all in visuals. Mm-hmm.

I remember that for about you. You know, I'm like, that's, that's one of the takeaways that I have. And I think that that draws people, the right people into that say, I wanna, I wanna talk with you more. I want to learn more from you.

 Yeah, and it, it's the class, it's content marketing 1 0 1, right? Like give a lot of value.

And people learn. Once they learn that you are a source of quality, high quality content, they wanna come back for more and then potentially hire you to. Solve that problem for them.  Well, we have covered so much in today's episode from the importance of visuals in your marketing to ai, like what's ethical, what's not ethical.

Jim, for the listeners that want to learn more about visual marketing and maybe check out some more of you online, they wanna pick up your book, where can they follow you and connect with you?

 So LinkedIn's my, my number one location right now and I'm just at Jim McLoud on there. The website for the book is visual marketer.co.

[email protected], which I'm in the process of rebuilding. But yeah, pretty much at Jim McLoud on any platform.

 Amazing. Well, and you know, if you haven't had the opportunity to sit next to Jim at a a conference, make sure or hear him speak at a conference. Make sure you do. 'Cause he takes the best notes.

Like I said, I love checking out those visual marketing notes that, that you take. So, be sure to grab a copy of Jim's book, follow him on social media, and start making your 📍 visuals unforgettable. Thank you again so much for sharing your insights and joining us on Rocky Mountain Marketing today.

 Thank you. I loved it.

 Thanks so much for listening to this week's episode of Rocky Mountain Marketing. I hope you're leaving with valuable insights and the inspiration to lead your market. If you've enjoyed our time together and found today's podcast episode useful, I have a small favor to ask of you. Please hit that subscribe button to stay updated with the latest episodes.

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And be sure to pick up your copy of my new book, the Social [email protected] slash book. Thanks again for tuning in. I'm Katie Brinkley, and I can't wait to dive into more strategies and stories with you on the next episode of Rocky Mountain Marketing. Let's keep on taking your marketing to new heights.