My Brand Currently...
This is My YouTube Channel as it stands. It showcases my current logo, as well as a channel banner and a showreel. I upload all of my video content here. There isn't much organisation or synergy here, however, I try to upload as regularly as I can.
On my YouTube Channel, there is no sense of direction. Everything uploaded here doesn't feel connected at all, and as a viewer of my portfolio and online output, it is easy to get lost among random side projects, old college films and videos, and relevant university output from recent years. As well as this, almost all of my videos are lacking in relevant and professional thumbnails and just all-around polish. All of this impacts negatively on my brand and gives an amateur feel to my online presence, even if my output is of a professional quality.
My Current Logo and Channel Banner are Sufficient as they stand. However, I created them back in college when I was 16 years old and had a different trajectory in mind for my filmmaking career. I struggle with Graphic design, so I think a logo and brand redesign could be an excellent way to better myself at this discipline, and create a new brand identity that fits better with how I want to represent myself online.
My professional Instagram is severely neglected, and not very professional in my opinion. I don't post on here very often, and it is very out of date with who i am as an online creator, filmmaker, and as a reflection of my content that I create.
The purpose of my Instagram is to serve the purpose of promoting myself and my portfolio. whether it is to just act as a positive extension of my creative endeavours, like behind-the-scenes videos and photography, to promote the projects I am working on, or to potentially get work from clients by showcasing my photography; all of this should allign with a consistent online brand image.
Right now, my Instagram does little to represent this mission. I have 2 posts on this account, both of which don't have any relevance to my professional output or how I wish to represent myself online. My Bio is a stupid joke about being a "certified baddie," which I thought was funny at the time, however, is to a huge detriment to my credibility and professionalism as a creator, in my opinion. I do have a link to my YouTube channel on my Instagram page, which is a positive step to creating synergy between my platforms, but I think, as it stands, this is the highest praise I can give myself regarding it.
Instagram has a "reels" feature built into its platform. This could be a really useful tool to promote myself to a wide audience due to a huge rise in short-form vertical content. My page has neglected this feature entirely, and is something that going forward I intend to use to my advantage as an up-and-coming creator
I currently do not have a Professional Website that is in use. I currently do not have any other additional platforms or documents that I can use to promote myself and forward my brand visibility and relevance to audiences and clients.
Constructing my Brand
How do I want to represent myself online?
Last year, I wrote an "about me" bio for a mock-up website. I decided to start here to look at how I wanted to represent myself then and use that to rewrite it how I wish to represent myself now. From this, I would then have a better idea going forward in creating an online brand that represents who I am, what I do, and what I want to do in the future.
This is my new "about me" bio.
"How's It Going?
I'm a Film-Maker, Photographer, Documentarian and Traveller. My passion for media and the outdoors has driven my lifestyle since I was 6 years old. I have completed the bronze DofE award, am a committed member of the Scouts Network, and an all-around obsessive film fan.
First picking up a camera back in 2021, my love for the art form has only skyrocketed, some of my photography has been featured in the Open 32 art exhibition, my Leicester Guildhall documentary was screened at the Leicester Documentary Film Festival, and I've been collaborating with outdoor organisations across the UK ever since; Developing my unique style and niche in the factual film sphere.
At the heart of what I truly love to capture however, is people, and their environment around them. I believe that there isn’t a better way than film and photography to share these stories.
I want to take my camera and creativity into the outside world; inform, educate and just have fun. Let's tell some stories baby!"
After writing this, I have a better understanding that I want to portray myself as an outdoor leader and practitioner, as well as prioritising a focus on factual filmmaking and personal stories, including my own. I know I wanted to showcase all of my creative endeavours within my brand and online persona, including my filmmaking, photography, and music endeavours too. I also wanted my brand to have an emphasis on self-promotion, as a way of seeking future employment within the industry. it is also important to me that there is an element of my personality within my brand, incorporating an element of "big", "bold", and "brash" design elements and rhetoric.
When designing the framework of how I wanted to initially structure my online branding, i intented to split it up into 3 different sections:
Each would have separate pathways to contact me and view my work regarding each area.
1. Adventure
This relates to all of my work regarding outdoor content and adventure-related and adjacent work that I work on professionally. This includes adventure films, photography, and outdoor work outside of the media space.
2.Professional and Personal
This refers to any work not related directly to outdoor content, such as work with businesses, personal film projects, and anything else I would want to pursue in the future. This would also serve as the primary place to contact me for projects and enquiries.
3.Music
This final area would cover any and all music-related content that I would want to create. I have a YouTube series called "Dorm Demo's" so something like that as well as things like music videos I create would go here as well.
In my head, this idea of compartmentalising my skills and versatility would allow me to stick to 3 different niches and have everything neat and tidy. I have seen other brands and businesses structure their brands like this, such as Adidas and Warner Bros, with their respective "Originals" and "Music" sectors. I've seen this be done with individual creators as well, this works for creators like Tom Scott, who has his Primary YouTube channel and also a side podcast and other projects he works on.
I do think this structure could work for me. However, I spoke to collaborators and people in the industry, such as Stori Cymru, and Brett Aggersberg. I also spoke to close friends and family who serve as general audience members and viewers. Both sides gave me similar responses that this structure is just too confusing for people to understand my branding. as a small independent creator and brand. It can be easy to lose the different areas among audiences and give the opposite impression to how I wish to present my skillset, being that I intend to carve a set of niche media works that I want to create and be hired for. This is because the structure gives the impression that I am a jack of all trades, meaning I am less likely to be hired for the specialist work I want to work on and to be known for.
I decided to keep the branding simple. Keep everything under one umbrella, and instead put my focus on ensuring everything is neat and tidy with a focus on user accessibility and simplicity. This allows for a more in-depth main identity that's rich with content, information, and clarity. Sometimes simplicity is the better option, such as in this instance. One person, one brand, all in one place.
Colour Palette
An important part of constructing a consistent brand is a colour scheme. Having a colour palette that represents your brand identity helps viewers associate those colours with your brand and identity, making your online presence more recognisable. It can also be used to help guide audiences understand what vibe your brand has, and can guide the viewer into interacting with your brand with certain emotions. different saturations, colours and hues can all impact how a brand is perceived. it is important for me to take advantage of this to provide a deeper association and relationship between clients and viewers with my online branding.
I wanted to go for a predominantly green colour scheme with dark, muted colours, this is to give the impression of a sleek, professional look, and to provide a strong contrast against lighter backgrounds. It was important to me that there was a bright pop of colour incorporated within the colour palette for both contrast and as a representation of my often loud personality and ideas. I went for a primarily green set of colours to really lean into the connotations of nature and the outdoors, as well as a subtle air of intrigue. I'm personally really happy with the colours I went for in the end, and I think that they work effectively together. Something I have struggled to succeed with in the past.
PDP
A PDP is a personal document for yourself which logs your personal progress as a creative and allows you to set goals and aspirations for you to achieve. It is an opportunity to reward and critique your progress and achievements, and to set in place a plan for your next steps in your career. This is helpful as not only something to look back upon in the future, but to assist and motivate in achieving a clear direction for my career trajectory.
CV
When constructing my CV, I thought it was important to keep it bold, eye-catching, and simple. I used the colour scheme I established for my brand so that employers and clients can relate it easily to my portfolio and presence online on other platforms. I ensured that I included important links and contact details, and that everything felt similar and cohesive. I put a large image of myself at the top of the CV so that others can get an immediate impression of me and who I am.
I decided to add a selection of high-profile (at least for me) work experience opportunities at the top as well, I hope this will help me seem more credible and perhaps create questions for an employer to get in contact with me to follow up on. I added my qualifications in a slightly different font and colour to help them stand out on the page.
In the skills section, I decided to go for a bar chart system to show in a visually interesting way how qualified and experienced I am at those specific skills.
Logo
It was important to me that I had a logo that represented my online brand as authentically as possible. I decided to completely redesign my logo and YouTube channel banner to better reflect this, and as a new opportunity to improve my graphic design skills. As a part of this, I also had to come up with a brand name that best represented myself and what I do as a creator and practitioner. It was easier said than done, though.
I deliberated over a brand name for a long time, initially opting to go for the name "Staff Only", due to its significance in common spaces in daily life, its relation to my name - Max Stafford, and how the use of semiotics would ensure that my brand would have an exclusive feel to it for the future.
These were some initial logo ideas under the "Staff Only" name. I experimented with font choices and different colours to try and convey different elements of what I do. Red, white, and black work well to capture the feel of a film brand, with connections to the symbolism of companies like Canon and elements like a red record button on a film camera. The green colouring obviously has connections to nature and the outdoors. I experimented with vector elements of outdoor imagery, things like mountains and trees, as well as cameras and silhouettes, that aimed to capture my people-focused goals and ambitions in my films.
On reflection of these logos, I still thought they looked a bit amateur and not as polished as I would have liked. I also didn't like or relate to the name as I initially had. I found it was restrictive in its language. The use of the word "only" didn't leave much open for collaboration, something I wanted to do a lot of in the future. I also didn't like that the name was vague about what it actually was that I did as an online creator. I decided to go back to the drawing board and brainstorm ideas that I liked and would better represent myself online.
I decided to ask AI for some potential ideas for a brand name that would better represent the outdoor and media elements of the brand.
I also gave AI other prompts to brainstorm words that relate to adventure and words that relate to film and media with the intention of combining them into something interesting and relevant to me. With some help from Chat GPT, I curated a list of names I liked and tested them with friends to get their opinions
Summit Vision
Peak Focus
No Signal
Lost Signal
Summit Signal
M-axis
Boulder Edit
Sea to Summit
Summit to Screen
Sea to Screen
Scene to Summit
Summit Scene
Basecamp Studio
Summit Studio
Maximus
The name I opted for in the end was "Maximus Adventure X Media" and was something suggested by a colleague with no aid from AI. However, I still found it valuable to see what sort of thing Chat GPT could help me with, even if what was generated wasn't completely relevant.
I like the name for its connection to my name and its grandiose feel. Maximus means biggest and "greatest" in Latin, something I believe relates perfectly to my opinions on nature and the outdoors. I decided to add the "Adventure X Media" part to the name to make it clear what my brand relates to.
I am really proud of the final logo. I decided to go for a condensed logo in a rectangular shape, which adds to its versatility in different visual settings. I settled on the main colours from my colour palette and added a subtle vector image of a mountain in the background that connotes the outdoors and the "Maximus" rhetoric. I took inspiration from brand logos that I really liked, such as the Oasis Logo and the Patagonia Logo. All of these elements incorporated further solidify the logo as personal to me and as a reflection of my personality as both a musician and mountaineer.
YouTube Channel
It was clear that my YouTube channel needed an overhaul. I started by organising my portfolio into clear and easy sections for audiences to find. I separated my films from my standard YouTube videos and arranged them at the top of the page as I deemed them to be the most important. followed by my music series "Dorm Demos" and the rest of other miscellaneous videos beneath.
At the bottom of the page, I added a section to link to other collaborators' YouTube channels. This helps strengthen close networks and potentially find other people's projects I've been a part of.
The next thing I wanted to implement on my YouTube channel was thumbnails for my videos. This was to create a sleek and professional page on my YouTube channel; to keep series and related content cohesive, and when linking films and content on other platforms - such as a website, they stand out. i put a lot of work and effort into creating those videos, so it's important to me that they are displayed and presented with the same amount of care.
Examples of some thumbnails I created for my projects:
The final step was to create a channel banner for my page. The channel banner serves as an introduction to a YouTube channel and summarises the entire feel of the page. I decided to keep mine simple and tie it in with my colour palette and established branding scheme.
I decided to place a black and white photo I took of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park and put my logo in front. This further emphasises the outdoor theming of my portfolio and brand. I'm really pleased how it turned out, and it adds a contemporary and modern feel to the whole page, in my opinion.
My Website
I created a website for myself that represents my new branding and to act as a central hub for all of my online materials, portfolio and social media pages. It also acts as a place for clients to get in contact with me and request my services.
I had never created a professional website before, and I wasn't sure how to start. I didn't know what I should include on a website or how it should be presented, so I researched other websites from similar creators and filmmakers in the industry to see what worked about theirs; what didn't, and what I could incorporate into my website.
Levi Allen's website for "Leftcoast Media" was a big inspiration for my website structure and design. I love the simplicity of its structure. keeping everything on only a few pages. His home page incorporates a lot of important sections that don't necessarily need their own dedicated page, such as being able to request a proposal, a showcase of his film projects, and different high-profile organisations he has worked with. I love his use of adventure photography and behind-the-scenes pictures incorporated into the visual aesthetic of the website, as well as his use of large text and slogans that align with his creative manifesto and core values, almost as a basic call to action and reflection of himself. A lot of these design principles I ended up adapting in my own website to suit my own personal brand ethos. He keeps his "about me" section short and sweet, which I like as well, but I think my own website needed its own dedicated page for this as I want my brand to allign closer with my own personality and to have more of a direct link between the creator and the content produced. Levi has a close synergy with his other platforms connected to his website too, so i made sure that my website did the same.
Adventure Filmmaker and personality James M Levelle's website is also an exceptional example of the type of website I wanted to create. This website is a bit more in-depth with a few more pages, but I love how he really leans into his personality and media persona. He uses large text and jam-packs his website with content. I like that he has a news page, which allows people to get a glimpse into what he gets up to in his professional life. He has a dedicated "about me" page as well as a "contact" page, which I incorporated into my website.
Both websites are consistent with brand colours, and both are written in the third person, something I decided to do differently. I decided to write my website in first-person language. This was to try and be as personal as possible and to try and give a bit more of a laid-back and casual tone, something that represents who I am as a person. It also allows me to add an element of humour to my website in a friendly and more organic way.
My home page takes a lot of inspiration from the websites above, as well as others. I created it on Wix, after experimenting with software like Squarespace and WordPress, it proved to be the most robust software that worked best for me. My logo is front and centre, and I chose to keep pages as few as possible. This is because it makes navigating the website much easier for clients and audiences, and it also keeps it less confusing as there are fewer areas and pages to get lost in.
I added a behind-the-scenes photo and an inspirational quote that I like to further relate back to myself as a brand and creator, The quote is by famous adventurer, writer, and conservationist John Muir. This ties back into the outdoor focus I want my brand to have. There is a button with a link to the contact page to make it really easy for clients to contact me, and below this are a few films I am proud of that I believe best represent me as a creator in 2025. There is also a section that showcases some clients I have worked for in the past. This is to make myself stand out and give my brand some credibility.
My about me page is dedicated to who I am as a person. I have added the bio from earlier and a link to my creative CV for people to look at. Underneath are some photos of me. None of the images on my website are stock images. All of this allows for people to get a better understanding of who I am as a filmmaker and as a person.
On my Contact page, I have kept really simple. There is my primary contact information, such as my phone number and email, along with a link to my relevant social media platforms. Underneath that is a custom form I created so clients are able to request a proposal from me and generate more work and further my career in the industry. I have chosen a behind-the-scenes photo from one of my shoots to put in the background. This gives an insight into my workflow and what to expect from getting in contact with me for professional work.
I also have a music page on my website for future projects, however, there is currently nothing on there yet. I do plan to create more music content in the future, I just thought it would be good to accommodate for this while I am ahead at an earlier point.
For my Instagram, I decided to strip it back a bit. I changed my profile picture to something more modern and relevant to me. I have also updated my bio to something more professional and less childish. It's straight to the point and inviting. I have changed the username to something that is consistent with my branding and brand name.
I intend to post on this account more regularly, keeping my followers up to date with everything I am doing in my professional life - acting almost as a blog as well as a portfolio showcase. I have plans to make use of the reels function on Instagram too, this is so I can promote myself to a wider audience and keep my content modern and relevant.
I have created a LinkedIn profile in order to network with other creators and companies in the industry. I've used the same banner for my LinkedIn as I have for my YouTube to keep everything cohesive with my brand. It incorporates my logo for other creators to see how I represent myself online. I intend to start reaching out to network with similar filmmakers in the area to try and start generating work and projects for myself.
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