Graphic design basics, with Katie Okolita, CEO of OKOK Design Studio

Speaker A: Hi, I'm Jay Goldstein. I'm, um, the CEO and founder of Founder Leader, an executive coaching firm that specializes in equipping early stage bio and climate tech leaders for scale. This podcast, From Founder to Leader, aims to demystify what it actually looks like to build hard tech startups. Too often founders share their stories when there are newsworthy successes, the big raises and the lucrative exits. We want you to hear the real human stories that drive innovation, the crossroads decisions, the messy middles and the practical know how. We hope that these conversations will help you as you take your ideas out of the lab and build scalable solutions to improve human health and our planet. Welcome to another episode of From Founder to Leader, the human stories behind bio and climate tech startups. In this podcast episode, we are demystifying what it looks like to build a hard tech startup from the ground up by sharing the real human stories behind the headlines from the people driving innovation. In today's episode, we'll be talking with Katie Okwida, who's the CEO of OK ok. A design studio that does branding, web design, graphic design, or early stage hard tech startups. Katie, it is such a treat to have you here with me today.

Speaker B: Thank you Jay. It's lovely to be here.

Speaker A: Okay, so Katie, talk to us a little bit about your background and how you got into design.

Speaker B: Yeah, so I got into design pretty early. My dad was a, he was a tech guy. He was a scientist, like a computer scientist. Like early stage worked for Symantec Corporation. So we always had computers in the basement. We had, you know, desktop computers early on in the 90s. And um, I joined this website called Horseland which was a, it was a browser based like horse sim game. Um, so I was probably like 8 or 9 years old and like you could, you could like train your own horses and like do all these cute things online. But one of those things was you could customize your own like barn homepage and you could do that through HTML and css. It was like an old school game. So you had to actually like go in and code these barn homepages. Um, and that's how I initially got into web design and development. I started by just like totally, like totally like ripped somebody else's like horse barn homepage and like copying it and then like brought it over and like tweaked a few things and she totally called me out on it, which was fair. Um, but that's kind of like how you learn, right? Like you pull it out and like you'd fiddle with the code and you figure like how things broke and how to fix things and um, anyways I quickly started like selling my services on Horseland, uh, for horseland dollars. So building people uh, websites and homepages for their like hors barnes. So I knew going into college and all throughout high school that I wanted to do web design and development. Um, so that's how I initially got into this. And then throughout the years I've worked um, with the design and dev studios in Boston and New York and Phoenix and um, kind of all across the east coast. And back in my early 20s I decided to go off on my own and did a little stint with a venture capital firm. Um, but for the most case and working on building my own design and dev studio.

Speaker A: That is a great story that actually I did not know. And for those of you she is like a huge horse fan so that completely adds up. Um, for those of you listening also just a little bit of context. Katie and I met when I was at Petrie venture capital firm that later became pillar and also does some coaching with founder to leader. She does a lot of design work for a lot of our clients. So Katie, um, let's talk a little bit about like when a team should think about creating a brand, creating a website, creating like a polished deck for pitching. Like when do you think is the right time for early stage startups to do those things?

Speaker B: It uh, really depends on the industry the company is in. Um, but I would say roughly you want something as soon as you start going out to raise and it doesn't need to be any like especially if you're like pre seed seed stage. It doesn't need to be highly polished. When you say like a polished deck like that doesn't necessarily mean like bringing in 3D graphics and a super robust brand. Like it just needs to be simple and understandable. Investors need a place to go and land if they Google you. So it can even just be like your logo and a contact email on the splash page. Especially when you're like pre seed, you know, stage like just someplace for people to land and figure out that you're a real company and then a deck that just looks cohesive. Like a lot of you don't need to look like a series A or B company that's raising. It just needs to be clear, concise, good story M and the design shouldn't inhibit the story, it should support the story. So I think a lot of founders often get bogged down in making things incredibly polished right at the, right at the start. But a lot of times, early stage companies, you're gonna, you're gonna pivot in a year, you're gonna change the name. You'll need a new logo. Like don't spend an incredible amount, like make it nice but don't spend an incredible amount of time on it too early. Um, and don't overthink it.

Speaker A: Should folks think about hiring someone like you at this stage or should they plan on doing something like buying a squarespace and just using some templates? Like what do you think is the right use of resources at the earliest state?

Speaker B: I think it depends a little bit on like how tech savvy of a founder you are. I think most of the people listening to this podcast are going to be pretty tech savvy. Um, so I think especially in the pre seat like going out to raise a seed, you don't necessarily need my help. Like you can utilize it in a lot of different AI tools to help you ideate. Just don't over complicate it. Don't just dump your pitch deck into a website generator and put the whole pitch deck up on the website. You don't need that and you're going to get bogged down details if you try start to try doing that. So use a lot of AI tools to help you iterate and think through things. Keep it simple. Um, you don't need somebody in like you can certainly hire someone pre seed. Just don't hire a huge design agency that's going to charge you 80k for a whole brand kit and a website like in a pitch deck. You don't need that at that stage. Um, Fiverr. So Fiverr is a site where you can go and hire freelancers for pretty cheap. Um, it can often be a little bit of a management nightmare just you know, especially at that stage when you're very busy. Um, but they can help you get. If you just hire someone to do like a couple logo iterations, like they can give you a nice logo. You can also try with AI just being careful not to like AI can like think about the logo simply like a simple logo. Don't let AI over design it for you. Um, almost no, like no logo is better than a logo that looks obviously AI generated.

Speaker A: Um, when you're thinking about making some beginner, um, branding for a new startup, what are some of the things that you think about when you're doing this work for clients?

Speaker B: Yeah, so I think about number one with the logo, think about simplicity. You're going to think about how it scales. So a lot of people put way Too much detail in their logo and then by the time it becomes you know, a little icon on your website or on a business card, you can't understand the detail. So simple, um, clean topography like choose a typeface that's not Arial or Calibri. Choose something that's maybe use Google Fonts. Google Fonts has a huge resource database of open source fonts so you don't need to pay to use them. And they look a little more unique than like a Calibri or an Arial or a Helvetica. Um, but again simple and readable at scale. Don't use a script font. Like it's the worst thing you can do. Don't use a script font. Uh so I think about those uh, sort of things like readability for the logo, scale, sizing, contrast at different colors, um and then for decks. For early stage companies I prioritize editability over design touch. Obviously you want things, you want the design to help tell the story. But realistically an early stage startup founder is not going to be able to iterate with a designer back and forth through the many iterations that a deck takes. So editability is key in keeping things very simple in the deck. Use um, that brand your brand colors and logo consistently index. One of the best things you can do is just think about margin and padding, keeping it consistent. Like don't let your text run into the edge of the page, things like that. Um, and then a simple landing page like it doesn't need to like so many people stress about the website and overcomplicating it. Like put up your logo in an email. That's really all you need.

Speaker A: Um, I love that. So what tools do you suggest people use to get started?

Speaker B: So there's a bunch of different tools out there. So chatgpt is pretty good at image generation so you can start ideating a logo there. Um, you can also reference a lot of different like um, like inspiration channels. So Pinterest for Love it Hate it. It's full of AI generated content these days but you can use it to start ideating different styles and logos that you might want to, might want to try. Also Dribble is another website that has a really great resource for like different brand kits and designs. Um there's another site called arena that is a little bit more trendy. It's for, it's more for like Gen Z, er type content. Um so like really trendy design which isn't necessarily what you always want in like pharma or biotech. Um but could be for a sustainability and you might want to be a little more trendy. Um, so arena is a great site for that kind of digital content. To get inspiration, look at your competitors. Um, Claude Design is great for expanding a brand once you kind of establish that base. So it could be like a font. So choose a font from Google. Um, Google Fonts do a simple logo pick a color or two and then cloud design can help you expand that brand into a couple different, more colors that are complementary. Um, it's pretty good at that. It'll give you a very basic deck template which oftentimes requires tweaking, but it gives you like a good starting base as to what this could look like. It can even give you different like heading styles and things like that. You can download that. It gives you hex codes and colors that you can start using in your, your brand assets. From that you can even start ideating then into a simple landing page design. So it's kind of my flow. You can also give um, cloud, um, design some prompts for I like this website or I like this style. So like upload screenshots or links. Give that to Claude design to be able to help you architect kind of a V1 of that brand.

Speaker A: So once you're ready to go from brainstorm to execution, what do you do next?

Speaker B: So to execution. So you can depends on where you're starting from. Um, there's a lot of different resources you can use to polish your. So start starting to think about polishing your deck. Most people use PowerPoint or Google Slides. Um, if I could convince more people to start using figma, I would. Um, both PowerPoint and Google Slides are not design software and they're a little bit older. Uh, but there is a learning curve to learning something new like Figma or Canva. Um, but they tend to be a little more robust. Um, anyways, taking Your design into PowerPoint or Google Design, one of the biggest things you can do to start like polishing your content, obviously saying assuming your content is ready to go for your pitch deck is you can go into your deck settings or your template settings and put in literally rulers and guides that show you, you know, keep, keep margins this far from these elements, keep it this far from the top of the deck. Um, you can apply general ST like standards for how charts look and how different graphs look. And then think about less is more. Too many people, too many people put too much content on a slide deck like on a single slide. Think uh, about breaking it up as much as into more concise and digestible content, short sentences, bullet points, things like that call out to the important points in bigger text numbers, things like that. For the website, there's a couple different really good platforms you can use. Like you mentioned before, there's Squarespace, um, which is a, like a pretty easy uh, drag and drop interface. Uh, they have super cheap plans. Um, you can go to. Another good platform is Framer. So Framer is kind of like a website. So webflow. I almost wouldn't use webflow for an early stage company. It can be a little more robust and it's a lot of, it's a bigger learning curve. Um, but Framer is kind of a nice in between. If you're pretty tech savvy and design savvy, um, you can use that as a platform. It has a drag and drop kind of visual builder. You can even pull screenshots that maybe Claude design created for you and give it to um, give it to Framer as a prompt. So um, if you do end up learning Figma, another cheat is you can, you can take Figma frames straight into Claude design or into um, Framer or webflow, if you did choose that route. There's also um, Lovable is a great tool for people who are just getting like a very simple website up. Um, it allows you to prompt design a website, just being careful to not look like a generic AI sloth generated site. There's kind of some red flags you can look out for there, but generally simplicity is better and try to avoid any like AI very obviously AI generated imagery, um, and AI generated icons that really don't make sense.

Speaker A: What do you, what do you think makes something look like it's super AI generated?

Speaker B: Yeah. So this is something that like you kind of have to get an eye for by just seeing it and working with AI content. Um, you can look for like artifacts that don't make sense. Like something in the photo that like, I don't know, it's a crowd of people and the faces don't look right. Hands are always a good one. Like AI is terrible with hands. Um, a lot of times it's actually just looking closer at the photo and saying does this look like real or does this look like a real 3D render? Or does it look like something that's obviously been AI generated? It's almost like too polished, it has the sheen. Another thing I often recommend people do is like ask people like, does this look AI generated? Um, you can certainly use AI generated imagery if it's highly polished and doesn't look like AI Generated imagery. But you really don't want to run into a situation where you lose credibility because it just looks like somebody spend five minutes prompting a website and throwing up AI generated content. Um, uh, investors are getting pretty savvy to that.

Speaker A: Yeah, it says a lot about your reputation, right?

Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah. And like less is more. A lot of these times like if the image isn't great, don't use it. If it doesn't add value, don't use it. Like so many people put in an abstract image just for, to add something there. And it's better to not use something and use nice clean topography instead to get your point across.

Speaker A: So, um, what kind of a budget should people be putting aside, um, for the various stages? Do you think of like pre seed? Seed A for doing design work?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I would say pre seed, you can probably get away with doing most of it on your own. Um, you could hire someone for you know, a couple hundred bucks, under a grand to come in and give you advice as soon as you know, you start getting a site up or like reach out to a designer or a good friend that you might know who is design, uh, savvy and kind of get a pulse. Check on that, on that, um, seed stage company oftentimes like you could probably budget around four to five grand and that will help somebody get you like a, a little bit more polished of a logo, a brand kit, um, you know, a PowerPoint template, a website kind of like a header and footer for like Google Docs or Word Docs that you end up using. Just something to start making you look a little more polished and brand cohesive. Um, once you move into the series A and B, again it depends on the type of company you are. If you're a SaaS company, you're going to spend a lot of money on a marketing website. Um, it really depends on the phase you're at. But for A, I, I would assume no more than like 30 grand for a website. Moving into B, you might start getting into more agency or internal, like internal teams at that point, um, building your, your marketing materials.

Speaker A: If, if I were the CEO of an early stage startup and I was looking to find a designer that would be a good match for me. Like what would you advise like you know, me to do as I'm exploring looking for someone?

Speaker B: Um, I would say ask your, ask your uh, investors. Um, they will often have a ton of resources for you. Um, and they will also probably be investing in your area. So they will have designers that are specifically used to working on Your type of startup, um, so ask your investors, ask friends, ask other startups. Referral, um, is the best way in this industry. Um, and just keeping in mind especially the earlier stage, you are to not go for that 30, $40,000 branding, uh, exercise, um, too early. Uh, it's definitely incredibly useful as you scale and grow, but it is not something you need to get swindled into too early.

Speaker A: Um, how many, Just out of curiosity, like how many different startups do you think you help at this?

Speaker B: Ah, ah, that's a good question. Um, I would say hundreds between decks and websites. I've been doing this for almost 20 years now. Um, so I built quite a few websites and quite a few pitch decks. Um, yeah, I'd say safe to say in the, in the hundreds. And you start to, at that point you start to recognize what's working, what's not working. Sometimes I get a deck that I'm like, like the story isn't quite there yet. And you can tell that even like, like the best design doesn't change a story or change a company that clearly isn't going to raise. Um, and that's through lines you begin to see. Having worked in venture capital when we worked together, Jay. Um, and then also just having seen quite a m. Quick few of them at this point.

Speaker A: Yeah. So it's helpful to work with someone before you bring a designer in to make sure you get that story really well done and make sure you're showing data and the right things and then the designer in at the end to just polish it up. Right.

Speaker B: Yes. Especially as you get like earlier stage pitch decks, they're kind of, they need to be built for flexibility and changing your story quite a bit. Um, but then as you get later stage and you're, you're raising quite a bit more money and a lot more is riding on this deck. Like, wait until it's pretty solid. It's never going to be 100% right. Like decks pivot and change based on investor feedback and pitches you take. Um, but don't bring in a designer too early when you're going to end up remaking every single, every single slide. Um, it's just a waste of time. Or you might get to the later, like late enough in your company building that it doesn't matter. You can hire that designer to come in and do every single iteration. But, um, it costs money and takes time for a designer to do turns. So.

Speaker A: All right, Katie, so what are your absolute best tips for our listeners?

Speaker B: I think reiterating the one I've said a couple different times which is don't over design too early. Um, don't stress about putting up a website that's perfect and full of content and you know, has every little bit of research you've ever done. Um, just get something nice, a place for investors to land if they're googling you. Um, don't let the design of the deck inhibit you moving forward with the deck and moving forward with the story. A lot of times I find founders, um, they want to see the design before they refine the story. And as we've talked about this Jay, like it's, it takes time for a designer to come in and, and help refine the deck. Definitely leverage AI tools. Don't be afraid to leverage AI tools but still use your judgment at the end of the day like you still know what's great for ideation, you still know what's best at the end of the day for your company and what's differentiating about you.

Speaker A: Katie, thank you so much for taking the time. Um, a lot of people are always wowed by the work that you do and it's a bit of a magical mystery journey on how you get there. And so all of are really helpful for folks especially as they're trying to do some self serve work at the beginning as they're sort of before they have a ton of resources of course. Thank you for joining. From founder to leader. Full transcripts of the podcast are available on our website foundertoleader.com that's founder the word T O leader.com and if you're looking for more concrete tips, tools and guides to accelerate you as you build, check out the Founder Leader toolbox. You can buy a membership as an individual, as a team, or as an enterprise for your accelerator or portfolio. And if you're looking to skill up with a coach, please reach out. We'd love to meet you, hear about your goals and explore how we can support you. Building hard tech doesn't need to be so hard. We got you.