Fun with branding
Now that I’ve quit Twitter like a rat leaping from a burning ship into the cold, dark, open ocean, it’s time to spruce up my newsletter. My personal brand on here, visually speaking, is currently “don’t care, don’t bother me”—or maybe, more generously, “if you know, you know”—which was true enough for a time. But I do care! And I want more people to know!
Eventually my hope is to hire an actual human designer to define and unify a “web presence” fit for a bestselling author, but for now, there’s Canva, the subconscious of the millennial internet. Below are some newsletter banners I made using its templates. The first two I actually like, the rest cracked me up, and none of them look good in real emails. Please enjoy this journey through my possible identities.
For some reason (typewriters?), this makes me think of Can You Ever Forgive Me?, the movie in which Melissa McCarthy plays a crotchety writer who ruined many New York City book parties in the 1990s and eventually turned to forging letters from more famous writers to earn money. I definitely don’t hate it.
Accurately captures my real-life mid-30s style, neutral with a shadow.
www.reallygreatsite.com !!!
Manifesting my dreams. TED, call me.
Organic!
“I wish I’d lived in the 2010s,” someone will say in 50 years, as they hang a poster of this template on the wall of their dorm room. “I really missed my era.”
True facts.
Thank you Canva, I will be keeping that subtitle.
I need a nap.
Have I been brain poisoned by too much Canva? Because I kind of like this.
But only if you subscribe!
I’m scared to ask, but:
Further reading
My decision to quit Twitter looks better by the day. My internet is overflowing with infuriating articles about what, exactly, is happening at the company and incisive analyses about what it means for the platform/public discourse/our psyches/our souls. One piece I found tremendously clarifying is “The Age of Social Media is Ending” by Ian Bogost in The Atlantic, which explores the distinction between social networking and social media and the consequences of the transformation of the former into the latter. I felt this shift happening from the very first time I saw Facebook’s newsfeed and haven’t been able to put it into words until now. Thank you Ian Bogost!
And for when I get that Twitter itch, there’s The Tweet Museum, collecting and commemorating the best the platform had to offer. I got to the second one before I was crying-laughing. (The order reshuffles with each refresh, but for me that one was “your dad small as hell.”) I maintain there will never be anything as funny as the Mr. Peanut tweet, and it is a relief and comfort to have a place to visit it.
