The Secret Colour-Coding System I Use to Hype Myself

Hiya 🌊,

I'm never one to let a good rebrand or a new website go to waste because it is a perfect Hype Yourself moment.

And like a book launch, many people invest in a rebrand, show it off for a day or two, and then never speak of it again.

I worked with my favourite designer, who is so exclusive that I've been his only client this year because he has another full-time job. He is the co-founder of my children, so there was a real high-risk project set up, but we survived.

I'll do a complete 'Borrow Everything I Know' on branding in December, and why I don't actually recommend rebrands lightly.

Today, I wanted to talk about how we came up with the colour palette and why I use visual buckets to hype myself.

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A colour palette to reflect where I am today

The short version of the new colours.

For years, my brand had a very London agency feel. It started with The Wern agency teal green. Which evolved with more colours and into our DIY platform Hype Yourself when Hadrien worked with me.

They were very punchy, loud, neon-adjacent and probably a pinch more of his personality than mine.

My work and life are different here. I started my agency when I was single, 31 and out every night. I'm now 42, in bed at 8:30 most night with a child in tow.

My days tend to begin and end with looking out at the lake and surrounding forest. I wanted my new brand to reflect the colours that frame my Provençal worklife.

I handed over some doodles in my scrapbook and pointed at the view in our garden to show the sort of style I was looking for.

Hadrien created all my assets in Photoshop and sent them to me in my Adobe Express account so I could instantly apply them to my old presentations, social media posts, and workbooks.

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My colours became part of my hype system

I was looking at colour theory and organising my new content on the website and wanted to create some visual buckets to help my audience navigate the content.

• Peach → personal essays, softer thoughts, the heart stuff
• Yellow → free content for everyone, generosity, sunshine energy
• Green → continuity from old brand, the main signature of my work, education based (like the forests in my view here)
• Blue → big thinking, directories, resource-building in the more strategic land

I've started to colour-code my newsletter and other social media content. Not in an obvious rainbow-grid way. More like a subconscious system.

And whilst I do have an overarching editorial calendar, I often find myself energetically creating social media or newsletter content based on what I think is useful or topical.

The colour coding helps me to keep in check.

If I’ve gone too peach, I know I’m oversharing.
Too blue, and I’m lacking personality.
Not enough yellow, time to create some wider resources and give back to my community
Heavy green, and I’m setting too much homework.

In one of my one-to-one mentoring calls this week, I spoke with a therapist who has different arms to her work, and I could see how applying visual bucketing could help her talk about the various arms of her business.

Most of you also have multi-arm businesses: different offers, themes, seasons, moods.
Colour could be a helpful framework for showing them and not getting lost when promoting several things.

Which leads me to this week's resource.

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Borrow my visual bucket hype system.