A (0:00)

Hello CEO teachers and welcome back to the show. We hope you're enjoying the marketing part of this as much as we are. We said in 2025 we were going to go back to our roots and talk about all things marketing. When it comes to getting your teacher business up and off the ground or just making sure it is working like a well oiled machine, Today's lesson teachers is all about how to use this graphic design strategy in 2025. Stick around. You don't want to miss it. Remember sitting in class stressed out about the pop quiz that the teacher was going to give? Well, this is nothing like this friends. We've been working on this for so long. I love a good quiz that's going to tell me about myself and help me be a better version of me. And that's exactly what this quiz is all about. It's just for teachers. And in case you're tired of grading papers until midnight, or feeling undervalued and underpaid, or tired of sacrificing your work life balance, we get it. If you are looking to not lose time in the rabbit hole of googling and looking for answers to just sell your lesson plans or start your teacher business online, let's flip the script right here. Today I got a personalized path that will help you figure out exactly what you deserve based on who you are and what you do best, which is teaching. Would you finally feel confident enough to go all in to dream bigger and regain your passion for education in a brand new way? If so, let's take the two minute quiz together to reveal and discover your custom step by step CEO teacher fast track to starting or creating and selling your offers online as a teacher. It starts@casey morris.com quiz. It'll only take you about two minutes and the results will come flying into your inbox. And remember, it's not one size fits all. This is your gear to shine. Casey morris.com quiz is your customized lesson plan for business building teacher style. Head on over to K A Y S E M O r r I s.com quiz to get your hands on this brand spanking new personalized syllabus. Quick start today. Paul Rand said, ideas do not need to be esoteric to be original and exciting. And Saul Bass said, design is simply thinking made visual. For me, design does not come easily. I have a creative mind, but when it comes to making things look beautiful, it's just not my skill set. It's kind of like math. I can do it if I'm forced to do, but I don't absolutely love it. So I kind of had to come up with a game plan. Kind of like my math teachers had to do with me when it came to tutoring me before cheerleading practice and before school to make sure that I passed algebra 3 so that I could graduate. I had to have a teacher that really understood my learning style and could break things down for me. So when it came to teaching others about digital graphic design, because I do not necessarily excel in it, I had to make sure that I understood all of the elements I could teach myself. And then I could create a system or a strategy to be able to teach other people. So no matter if you're good at it or not, you can follow this step by step game plan. This graphic design strategy and everything that you do can look cohesive, professional and could really be the best looking thing on the market. So don't fret if you suck at graphic design like I do. Today's lesson is all about how to change that. The fun thing about graphic design is that it is different for everybody and you can make it your own. All you need is the simple measurements, understanding of what graphic design is to make sure you're doing it right. So this is framework number nine inside of our programs. It's called the CEO Teacher Clip Art Design Center. So the great thing is that even if you are not great at drawing or graphic design, you can use things like fonts, clip art, white space, visual aesthetics to make your stuff look great. It all starts with a vision of what you want to do. And of course we love a good strategy. You have to understand the rules, the do's and the don'ts to respecting and utilizing design elements. You have to truly understand design, which means you have to learn the overarching ideas behind the use of clipart and how to properly place it. For digital design, you gotta understand favorites like insider tips and secrets to finding and using the best art for your creation. And then also you gotta get good at effects. This is discovering effects and strategies to make sure you come up with the perfect designs. A great graphic designer, even if you're just a school teacher, has a variety of skills. They usually include creativity, technical skills, attention to detail, curiosity and lifelong learning. So I already know that you got a lot of those. You got creativity, you're great at attention to detail, curiosity and lifelong learning. It just may be lacking that one little thing, which is the technical skills. And if you get down to it, teachers truly possess all of these. They just might need a little bit of pruning, which means you can become the best graphic designer in all the land. So the one graphic design strategy that you need is to focus on building a strong, visually cohesive brand by choosing things like color palettes, fonts, clip art, or imagery that will align with your overall business vision. So I want you to ask yourself, are you basing your brand style on a primary style with thick black lines and tons of color? Maybe you're thinking about a watercolor design or whimsical color blocks. Maybe you like soft edges and pastels. Think about not only what makes you happy, but also what could resonate with your audience. And don't overlook things like typography as an important element of graphic design. Meaning make sure that you understand that fonts are really special when it comes to building out the perfect brand. Basically, it means if you're creating resources for high school, you may not want to do some crayon inspired fonts because that's not going to be the best thing to bring people in to let them know, oh wait, this is someone that's teaching me about high school things. Or if you're creating something, maybe, let's say for elementary science, it may not be a good choice to use things like the periodic table or cursive fonts in your designs because those things are more reserved for high school students. When we specifically think about design elements of our teaching resources, our lesson plans, our brand and all the content we create, the question then comes up again and again and it is, where do we find the good clip art, the images and the design elements? Well, this is your business and if you want your products to be bigger and better than all of the competition, you do have to invest in yourself and your business. We are not going to steal Clipart. Offline. Clipart was originally designed and served as a shortcut for those of us who lack those artistic skills I was chatting about before or something just to save you time that looks beautiful and is design worthy. Prior to the instant availability of today's Clipart options, creating images was largely the person who was doing its job. But great news is, is that Clipart today is infused with amazing people from all over the world that have the ability to create images for your business and they don't actually cost a whole lot of money and they don't mean that you have to create the actual artwork. So ask yourself, is it cost effective to purchase a few tried and true sets of clip art and design elements? And if so, I mean, the answer is yes. It's time for you to go out and find them. Then after you get these clip art pieces that you're looking for. In order to make the perfect graphic design for social media, for teachers, paid teachers, for Facebook, for YouTube, for your podcast, you must understand white space, the style of content that you are going for, how to include your own spin and also some basic graphic design styles that will gain confidence for your own design strategies and your branding style. According to Adobe, the premier software for graphic designers, minimalism is in in 2025 with a much stronger and bolder impact. So bold typography and color palettes and simple designs are something that everyone is looking for. So remember the days of busy and chevron are definite the past. According to Elementor, which is WordPress builders template, it says that micro interactions and interactive 3D elements will also be hot in 2025. So these are subtle yet impactful animations or responses to user actions that breathe life maybe into your website and enhance engagement while creating an immersive space. For example, if you're scrolling on a website, this could mean that whenever you scroll there are some down arrows or there's bubbles that pop up. Everything that makes things feel a little bit more interactive. And according to Showit, which is how we post our website into the world, a drag and drop website builder for creatives, we absolutely love it. We will be seeing even more of a retro trend emerging with websites that bring back the nostalgia from scrapbooking days and washi tapes, banners, stickers, doodles and asymmetrical layouts that feel personal and unique. But most importantly, everything must tell a story as the user scrolls on your website. We are in the heart of revamping the CEO teacher page, Casey morris.com and I can't wait for you to see just some of the new pages and elements that we're going to be adding to our website as well. Here's a few things to remember. Understand when and where you can use clipart things like washi tapes, stickers and doodles. There's a difference between personal use, which means it is for your own classroom, and commercial use, which means it is available for products that you are selling. If you find the clip art or elements in the public domain, they are typically also free to use. But to avoid any legal issues, you must abide by each creator's rules when using their clipart and elements to sell your final product. We still use and share about how to use PowerPoint for resource creation. Even though we love Canva, it is amazing for marketing and creating images for your brand, but we have determined after chatting chatting with someone on Canva's staff that the terms of use are too gray and confusing for resource creation. Meaning if you're just using Canva to sell your products on tpt, we would strongly advise against it. So what design elements and font choices are you taking into the new year? Is your brand ready for a refresh? And if you want to learn more about how design elements play into your overall brand, come hang out with us on Instagram, Casey Morris or the CEO Teacher. We're going to going into detail this week about just some little fun design elements that you can implement inside of your brand today. Thanks so much for listening to today's show. I hope that you could use this graphic design strategy in 2025 so that your resources sell like hotcakes. As always, remember, your best is yet to come. We'll see you right back here next Wednesday.