Understanding Your Brand

To start a brand, you need to understand the brand that you want to build. On Day 2 of marketing Lu’Cretia, our Creative Project Manager, initiated a dialogue with our mentees about how to better understand their potential brands. Different videos were played to demonstrate how different celebrities use their values to establish their brands. She discussed how Lil Nas X uses his platform to create music, but also partners with other brands, like Nike, to create products that target his audience.

Our Mentees created their own social media selfceare manifesto that included: what they want to gain from social media, how long they want to spend on each platform, and what they want to share on their platform. This workshop was a success and super informative!

Photo. Credit: Mariah

Intro To Marketing

Photo Credit: Mariah

Marketing is a big part of how brands and businesses take off. For the first day of week 6, Lu’Cretia, our Creative Project Manager and mentor to lead this workshop. Lu’Cretia went over all the basics of marketing. She engaged in a conversation with our mentees about what marketing is & what goes into it. She also taught them how to create ads for various businesses, all while staying on track with branding styles, colors, and fonts. It was fascinating to see our mentees work together as a team to create their ads for TFD.

Photo Credit: Mariah

A Field Trip to Gente Fina

Photo Credit: Mariah

This last weekend, our mentees went on a field trip to Gente Fina, where they got the opportunity to ask the co-founders, Manny & Abraham, different questions about the creative field. They learned so many new things about creating a brand and what it takes to start. Niches, vendors, manufacturers, money, ideas, and networking were all mentioned throughout this dialogue. We cannot wait to partner with them again soon!

After we got back to the firehouse, Sandra, our Mentorship Coordinator, assisted our mentees in digitizing their work into Adobe Illustrator. Illustrator is a very long process to learn but in the end it is all worth it. It is an amazing skillset to have and we love having Sandra to be able to pass on her knowledge to our mentees about this amazing software.

Photo Credit: Mariah

Mental Health & Creativity

Today, we welcomed back Sarah, from Yo Soy Ella, to lead a workshop called “Progress Over Perfection”. During this workshop, our mentees had a conversation about how you do not need to be perfect to succeed. Everyone has their ups and downs, but as long as you put your mind to what you want, you will succeed. Our mentees really enjoyed this workshop and the chance you dive deeper into what success means to them. Sarah has now led a total of four workshops with TFD, how amazing!

Our mentees made a transition to the tables to go over illustrator once more! Each group was given a prompt to create a design in Adobe Illustrator and present it at the end. Illustrator has so many unique tools to utilize, but we are taking it one step at a time!

Photos: Mariah

Building A Brand

Everyone knows of someone who owns their own brand but have you ever thought about how they formed it? We just started our fifth week of mentorship that all about branding. Our board President Deon Bonaparte of Agency Evolve, led his 4th workshop with TFD on “How To Build A Brand".” Deon went over the steps on how to build your brand with three steps: build the foundation, brand strategy, and a business plan. The most important information that our mentees learned was to clearly articulate what they want their brand to be, look like, and feel. Deon left the mentees with a quote from Walt Disney. “Walt Disney was asked, “How do you feel on your deathbed knowing that you will not be able to see Disney world come to life?” Walt Disney replied “I already have”. You need to understand your brand before you start it.” We are so appreciative of our Board president and cannot wait to welcome him back during our Summer mentorship!

Photo Credit: Mariah