[00:01] breaking down exactly how my team and I developed my short form editing style. And I got a lot of questions on that one, so I thought, why not do a full breakdown right here on YouTube right now? Because having a signature style
[00:15] can definitely help you create familiarity and recognition when trying to grow an online presence. So, in this video, you're going to learn the five pillars that I feel every signature editing style needs. Then, at the end of
[00:30] the video, I'll give you a step-by-step process that you could apply and take to find your own editing style. By implementing all that we go over today, your videos will not only feel more cohesive, but your editing will
[00:44] naturally be faster because you're not wasting time trying to decide between fonts every time you edit because they're predetermined for you. So, as always, timestamps are below. Use them if you need them, and let's jump in. The
[00:58] five pillars that every signature editing style needs is brilliant font pairing, aesthetic b-roll, go-to animations and sounds, consistent color animations and sounds, consistent color strategy, and amplifying you. Starting
[01:11] with the fun one, font pairing. This is probably going to be the hardest part because there are so many fonts to choose from, and even if you find some that you like, there's going to be playing around with different pairings.
[01:24] And then, over time, as you post and create, you will find the styles and pairings that you love. So, all that work will be worth it. Just know you might not get this on the first sit-down, so be patient with this step
[01:38] because I feel like I've developed mine over few weeks and months. I think to help get the creative juices flowing when diving into font pairing, go to Pinterest or even TikTok and look up font pairing info to get inspired and
[01:53] also see the direction that you want to go for your personal brand. Today, we're go for your personal brand. Today, we're going to build our pairing from scratch. together. So, what you're going to do is you're going to open up your preferred
[02:05] mobile editor and start a new project. And in this project, I want you to upload multiple clips into your timeline. We're not making a video. This isn't like, "Oh, let me edit a video A to Z." But, we're just adding clips that
[02:17] you feel like encompass who you are as a creator or even videos you've posted, some of your favorite videos you've posted, common places that you film. This way, you're able to test the fonts and see what they look like in almost
[02:32] every scenario of a future video you create. So, just real quick, I'm going to get maybe 3 seconds of each clip that I think represents my brand pretty well and some common locations that I film. Cool. So, I just have a bunch of random
[02:47] clips here and then I'm going to just mute the timeline so that the audio for visuals and aesthetics. Now, for your signature fonts, what you want to do, we're going to find three signature fonts together. One sans serif, one
[03:00] serif, and one script or handwriting. Is this the proper branding rules? I don't just what me and my team did. It works questions about it. So, this is what we're going to do. Real quick to touch
[03:14] serif, if you're like, "What the heck? What's one What's the difference between the two?" Serif fonts have like the small decorative strokes or feet at the ends of letter lines offering a like traditional, formal, highly legible
[03:29] look. Starting with your sans serif, this is what you're likely use as your header font. It's going to probably be like the hook text because it's going to be bigger in like weight and size, which makes it typically more legible and
[03:41] captures people's attention when they're just coming across a video. I also like that that it's a little bit more modern or maybe boring or simple to some, but that just makes it extremely versatile and allows it to work with any niche.
[03:54] So, we are going to add text and we're just going to start searching and we're finding just like simple I'll probably go to fonts and look mostly in classic.
[04:06] If you are in the free version of your preferred editor, just make sure you're have to upgrade for are usually in like the little diamonds. Let me see if I could show you. Yeah, the diamonds are ones you'd have to upgrade for. So, I'm
[04:19] going to go to classic and find like a nice bold big font that feels like me. And you could even type in like a sample text that you think you would use to see common words that you use. So, I'm just going to say grow on Instagram. This one
[04:36] has some feet in it and it's kind of wide, which means I wouldn't be able to make it big enough to capture attention. So, I actually don't love that one. We're going to do something a little more simple rounded. That's not simple.
[04:50] more simple rounded. That's not simple. Ooh, Poppins. Poppins could be a vibe. space. I like how bold this one is. Okay, I think we're going to go with either Anton. I feel like I should go with modern cuz modern Milly, but we're
[05:04] going to do Anton or Poppins. If you're curious what my font is, my font is classic two. Classic two. So, that's what I use. You could type classic and kind of going with the defaults of what pops up in these search filters. I'm
[05:19] going to go with Anton, I think. Let's do Poppins. Okay, you could play a you see a font you like, for example, Rubik, it's just so long. Sometimes you could play with like the spacing between letters. So, under fonts, we're going to
[05:34] actually switch to styles and then these subcategories, I want to go to spacing and see what sort of spacing options they have. Okay, so we have character spacing. So, we could bring it to closer together like that. Or line spacing
[05:47] would be like distance between each line. So, that could be an option if you adjust the spacing. Let's stick with Poppins. Perfect. Now that we have our sans serif that we think that we like for right now, we're going to go to the
[06:01] serif. This is more so going to be your subheading, your descriptor font. This is usually always paired with your header font. For example, let's add text. Sample text is going to say how to because we're going to say how to grow
[06:15] on Instagram. Then we're going to go to fonts, and now we're looking for the font that has more like the legs at the end of each one. So, this one is literally called serif. So, that pairs pretty well with Poppins. Luxury is a
[06:30] serif font because it has little feet at the end. So, we could go luxury. Usually the elegant column or the elegant category has a lot of serif options. So, luxury is a good one. Vogue. I want them to be like different enough, you know,
[06:47] but not too much because our emphasis creative one is going to be the next font we choose. That's not very legible. Let's go back up to Vogue was kind of cool, and I felt like it's different enough from our main. And then we're
[07:01] going to pick our fun creative one. This is either going to be like a script going to choose between the two depending on the vibes that you're going for for your brand. So, if you want a script, this is more cursive. This is
[07:15] going to be refined, subtle, elegant feel to your brand. Or, you could go handwritten. This is a little bit less elegant, but more fun and playful. So, we're going to add a text. This time we're going to have fun with it. Now,
[07:31] you could go to the handwriting category and find one that you feel is true to you, or you could search and literally search for like cursive or handwritten you're going for. I'm just going to stick to the categories to make it
[07:46] handwriting. I think I want to go more cursive. That's actually kind of pretty. Did we just do that on the first try? My gosh. Okay, sample text, how to grow on Instagram. This is like if you're under 1,000 followers. Again, I'm just kind of
[08:02] a video so I could see what it fully looks like. And I feel like it's pretty easy to read. I don't love the apostrophe in it cuz I feel like it spaces it out a little bit weird. But I mean, it doesn't look bad those three
[08:16] Okay, so it looks good here. But let me just extend it across all clips that we have so I could see what it looks like with kind of every place I would be shooting and see if it kind of fits the
[08:28] entire vibe of what I'm going for. You know, I actually like this a lot. Yeah, throughout your video as you're editing, you would a lot of people ask how I do this. Delete. I could have a whole separate video on like showing my full
[08:41] process, but this is when you would do those emphasis texts where I'd say like, "No kidding." And then I'd choose my brand color or my brand fonts. We have
[08:53] basic. I think we said Poppins. So then as you talk, it's like pop up and then you could have fun with duplicate, little animations. Seriously. Check.
[09:10] whenever you're trying to emphasize a word and yes, I do that manually for think that we have our font pairings. Basically, what you want to look for is legibility first and foremost. Can somebody easily read your text? If it's
[09:24] hard to read, it's probably not going to be great for your editing style. And can't read your text, they're going to keep scrolling past your video. Hook seconds are important so you really want to make sure legibility wise it is easy
[09:38] to read. Some mistakes to avoid when choosing font pairings is choosing more gets a little messy. So using like eight fonts per video or consistently changing oh one font for this video, a completely different font for this video, one
[09:53] this color like completely changing it up every single time. I understand testing to see what feels true to you but you will have to at some point pick just like a consistent font and font pairing that will be recognizable for
[10:07] people to understand your brand and brand image. Now, you think we're done still not done. You do need one more font. I just didn't include it in the beginning because it's not like a signature style font. This is just going
[10:19] to be the default font that's in your preferred editor and that's going to be like the paragraphs, the body, the closed captions of your text. So if I was talking to the camera or if I had the volume on on these, when you create
[10:34] those closed captions, here let's close captions auto detect. So you're going to pick like one default close caption font and this one for me, I don't like a background on it so I don't want like black background. I would just want
[10:49] something simple. So I'm going to get rid of that and we're just keeping it now throughout the video you have a simple easy to read close captioning and then you could emphasize and have fun decorate it with your signature brand
[11:03] fonts. Now that you have your brand fonts, your pairing set, the next way that you're going to create your unique editing style is by having your own signature library of B-roll that's just ready to use in your content. This is
[11:18] honestly one of the fastest ways to elevate your editing style beyond just fonts and animations. This goes into developing like your overall aesthetic with your content. Now B-roll for those of you don't know, this is like the
[11:32] showing part of your video. For example, this video here, this is just a voice-over video. There is no A-roll or video of me talking to the camera. storytelling, I had to just use a bunch of video clips, aka B-roll, to help with
[11:48] the visual storytelling of what my voice-over was saying. Now, you could either develop your own backstock library of B-roll footage that's ready for you to use whenever you want. Or if you have editors ready for your editors
[12:01] actually something I have. I literally have a organized album of B-roll with me in different scenarios, also vertical versus horizontal. This is just videos
[12:13] that I have filmed over years of creating, and that way if my video editors ever need some extra footage of me like at my desk typing, they just have that. Boop boop boop. Perfect. Millie's at her desk typing. Or videos
[12:26] voice-over video, they could just quickly pull from this B-roll library. This is possible to do, but obviously it takes time. So, if you're like starting from literally today and you don't have this whole backstock of footage in your
[12:41] camera ready to pull for this amazing aesthetic B-roll, that's okay. Develop long-term strategy, and you could actually watch this video. I'll leave it in the card above. I have a full video that teaches how to film and create your
[12:56] own aesthetic B-roll, so you can watch that video after this one. But your other option, if you don't have time or capacity to build that whole backstock of B-roll, what you could do alternatively is using stock footage.
[13:09] Now, this is also something that I use for my business. I mean, you saw in real time, and you've are seeing it in real time watching this video right now. My video editor probably has been cutting to B-roll that I didn't film. This helps
[13:23] keep my videos engaging for the viewers, and it also saves me time from having to film additional B-roll for my videos. So, to do this, what you're going to do is use Storyblocks, who's also the sponsor of this video. Now, Storyblocks
[13:36] brings together a high-quality, human-made library of footage, music, sound effects, templates, and workflow-enhancing tools all in one place. So, that way you could focus on storytelling instead of searching across
[13:51] multiple platforms. Let me show you what I mean. For example, if I'm doing like a day in the life vlog, and I didn't get enough outdoor shots of maybe me going to the beach or me walking around town, I could literally look up beach or shots
[14:06] that I need to find the videos that are going to match the aesthetic and vibe that I'm going for. You could also filter by orientation, too, depending on if you need vertical or horizontal footage. Now, what's really cool is if
[14:20] there's horizontal footage or a clip that you really like and you want to use it for a short-form or vertical video, all you have to do is just make sure it's a 4K clip. That way, you can use it, add it to your project timeline
[14:36] that's vertical, and then when it gets cropped in, it doesn't compromise the little go-to hack when there's horizontal footage that I want to use you'll come across in the Storyblocks library is 100% human-made, created by
[14:52] contributors who are filmmakers and artists from around the world. And the best part is that everything is royalty-free and pre-licensed. So, as you're growing as a content creator, if you're monetizing your YouTube videos or
[15:06] working with brands, you don't have to stress about licensing issues. They also have motion graphic templates for different editors. For example, if you're editing in Premiere and you want to have or create a signature title
[15:22] animation or intro sequence that could be part of your signature editing style, you can do that. So, to start telling better stories with tools I also use, head to storyblocks.com/modernmilli. And right now, they're actually offering
[15:37] And right now, they're actually offering 15% off any annual plan for a limited time. And that discount is only available through my link. So again, go to storyblocks.com/modernmilli or click the link down in the
[15:49] things a lot of your favorite creators have probably just nailed and they know their aesthetic when it comes to B-roll. So, again, just like with the font pairing, B-roll aesthetic takes time to develop what your unique perspective and
[16:03] aesthetic will be. So, don't be afraid to play around, test around with it. And I'll be sure to leave that video linked that teaches you how to create aesthetic thing that I feel like every signature editing style needs is signature
[16:17] animations and sound effects. This is deeper than like, "Well, I really like bouncing for this video." Because I feel like animations kind of communicate personality in a way. So, bounce feels very playful, whereas like blur in is
[16:33] kind of modern, typewriter is instructional or vintage, and then like fast pop is energetic or slow fade is calm. You know, like each animation kind
[16:45] of has its own personality. So, for me, we looked for three to five go-to animations and we just stuck to them. We just use only those in every video. We repeat them. It makes my content predictable, but recognizable. Same
[17:01] thing with sound, we chose signature sound effects. I feel like sound triggers memory faster than visuals do, especially if like my face isn't on screen right away. So, we chose signature sounds. One typing sound that
[17:16] we only use that typing sound, one whoosh, one pop, one mistake or blooper sound. And then again, we stuck to those. So, with this text that we have, let's already play around with some stuff. Let's find signature typewriter
[17:31] for this emphasis text here. So, we're going to go to animations. In we have typing cursor, text fill, sequential reveal, firing row, clown squad kind of
[17:43] looks typewriter-esque where it's like we're looking for letters to appear one we're looking for letters to appear one by one. Falling fast could be one. I love just a classic typewriter, but I want a free one. Is there a free one?
[17:56] Let's just stick with type one. You don't see like the cursor, the typer, whatever it is. I'm going to click that and then I want to change and adjust the speed. Let's make it slower. So, that is going to be like our signature type
[18:10] effect. You could also, if you have an account, press the save button there and all your fonts, sounds, effects, they'll all save, so they're easy to go to. And now we're going to pair it with a signature sound. Audio, sound effects.
[18:37] it go till the typing is done, split it, delete, and then we're lowering the volume on that. Nice. And then you do the same thing with like pop and the effects that you enjoy and that you
[18:50] video. Fourth thing that we're going to talk about for a signature editing style is color strategy. And believe it or not, I'm not talking about choosing brand colors. We're not talking about choosing the color of your text. That's
[19:03] doing. Because I've actually found that most videos perform well with default most videos perform well with default white or black as the main text color. White works because it's universal. It's funny because I actually initially
[19:16] picked out brand colors for my fonts in terms of short-form video editing, and we barely used them. We didn't really use them. And when we did use them, those videos didn't perform well. So, we only started using color every once in a
[19:30] while to emphasize certain points, and like I mean like occasionally. So, if choose our brand colors and that we're going to use in our text," like what am I talking about? Instead, what my team and I did, we chose brand colors based
[19:44] on my environment and what I was filming around. This is kind of what I already picking brand colors. I was like, "Okay, let me look at my closet and see what I wear a lot of." My closet, neutrals. White, tan, browns, greens. That's kind
[20:01] just leaned into that because I was already wearing those colors. And then, my home now, when we were like reevaluating, "Okay, brand colors, what text color should we use?" My home is very neutrals, too. The earthy tones,
[20:15] warm brown. I drink a lot of coffee, so that felt very representational of me a warm coffee and like even green. There's lots of green accents in my home. So, instead of using brand colors in text, we actually leaned into wearing
[20:31] brand colors and filming in areas where brand colors could be emphasized. So, that's what I want you to do. You could look around you in your home and see what colors you are filming around, what colors you wear. Those are going to be
[20:44] your brand colors. Then, to develop your aesthetic even more, what you're going to add to it to kind of up level your videos after you film is color grading. This is basically just like picking a filter and applying it to every single
[20:58] one of your videos, like your signature color filter that you're going to use all the ding-dong time, and that's going to create that like aesthetic Instagram feed. You know that aesthetic content creator you love? It's because they have
[21:10] a consistent color grading strategy that they're sticking to that makes all their content feel like moody or aesthetic or vintage? They're color grading or using filters and effects to lean into the brand and the vibe that they're trying
[21:23] to give off. To show you what I mean for color grading, again, in whatever editor you're in, you just go to filters and you're going to have a ball. You're just going to click on filters and if you find a filter you like, let me show you.
[21:35] So if we really like Oh, there was one that was like super moody. Film's kind that was like super moody. Film's kind of cool. There Oh, shadow. Shadow's kind of a vibe, so let's do shadow. We're going to first apply it, let's zoom out,
[21:48] apply it to all of our clips. And then, usually, usually when you choose We're going to press adjust. When you choose a filter, you don't want it max capacity. This one is really subtle, so I mean it doesn't look bad at 80, but like if I go
[22:03] to this, like that looks a little wild. That looks overly done. We don't want actually do more harm than good. Over editing just feels lower quality. And so, this one, those colors don't look natural. So what I would do, whatever
[22:19] filter I use, I am using it at 30% or lower. So now this looks a little bit more normal. It doesn't look like I slapped on a heavy filter. And so, if you see before, after, before, after, it just adds a little hue and a little
[22:35] warmth. I really do like shadow if you're going for more moody vibes and shadow at 80% doesn't look horrible. Film, see that just doesn't look like true color, so we're going to lower that down to 25 looks good for that one. The
[22:49] one that my team and I use, we use clear. So go to search, clear. If we're editing in this app, we use clear. Clear too, down to like 25. That's usually the
[23:01] go-to filter that we add to every single video. There are thousands of different filters that you could apply depending on what mood you're going for, and even
[23:13] me suggest different filters depending on vibes. Let me know, that's actually day. I did like how to create your own photo editing aesthetic, like color-wise for photos. So, I'm curious if like a video version of that would be something
[23:28] cool for you, just let me know down below. Finally, our last pillar, pillar number five, that helps you create your signature editing style is amplifying you. Now, this is actually a filming and editing tip that I feel like not a lot
[23:44] of people talk about, and it's to simply find ways to emphasize you, your find ways to emphasize you, your personality, your interests, all within your video. For example, a lot of people associate me with coffee because I've
[24:00] created that brand consistency over time. Coffee is a very Milly thing, even in my own personal life. Everybody knows that I love coffee. Last year for my birthday party where I just had all of my friends and family over so that I
[24:15] could make them all my signature latte recipes that I was working on. Coffee is very much part of my personality, and because of that, I wanted to find a way to incorporate that part of my personal life into my brand as well. So, what I
[24:32] chose to do is with my videos, I'm either holding a coffee for short form. in short form, I'm either holding a coffee or I have like coffee bean bags in the background of my videos, or I'm literally like making a coffee while
[24:48] doing like a voiceover. I just have coffee kind of around me because I want that association, and I want people to feel like they're getting to know me and what I'm personally interested in even more. That's also why every once in a
[25:02] while my YouTube videos are filmed at a different angle. There's another angle behind me and I feel like my bookshelf is that representation of my personal life, my personal interests, and gives people a little bit of insight into me.
[25:17] You could also create a signature look. Like for me, my signature look was a high messy bun. A lot of people associated my high messy buns with me. If you've been with me since that long, let me know down below. A lot of people
[25:31] tutorial on how you do your buns?" And so like for a long time that was my signature look. I only did buns in all of my videos. Now I have more like the slicked back pony look because pregnancy, mom, postpartum, got lots of
[25:45] little flyaways that would not look very good with a messy bun. So we're going for more educator professional look right now. But there's even content creators or educators, they wear the same shirt in every single video because
[25:59] of brand consistency. Dan Martell only wears blue shirts because of brand consistency. So when you're filming, there are ways to add like fun elements of you. I know some creators, they always hold an iPad pen, Apple Pen, so
[26:13] it's called Apple Pen, because they're like they do design work on their iPad and so they want that association and they'll always hold that Apple Pen while they're talking. Some people I see them wear glasses as educators and those
[26:25] So it's like what you wear, what you hold on to, what you surround yourself things, but in the editing side of things, you can do the same thing with your editing style and like emphasize elements of you. So if you have a sense
[26:40] of humor and you want to find ways to incorporate that sense of humor in your editing style, you could play around with leaving in bloopers or zooming in and out on those key moments where you want to emphasize a joke that you're
[26:55] saying or for me when I'm talking I use like different voice inflections. That's conversation in day-to-day life. I'll be like, "Oh, and then you do you do this." influencer she was like, "And then well Millie, I mean you know, like I just use
[27:10] how I talk. It's a natural thing I do and because it's already what I do to emphasize that even more when editing, we're going to add animation on top of that or add in like the voice fluctuation where if I'm talking in a
[27:23] sound like I'm a man or if I'm talking in a high voice, we're going to make it extra high. Again, this is something that takes time to develop but over time you'll start to find ways to emphasize you in your videos. So, how can you
[27:38] step. Step one, I want you to go to your favorite content creators and just pay attention to the fonts that they use on repeat. Also, the pacing of their videos. How many cuts are they making per 10 seconds? What does their B-roll
[27:52] look like? What coloring are you noticing? Is it warm, cozy, dark, moody? emotions are you feeling when watching those? Then I want you to create a likes and dislikes page of everything you're observing. What do you like about that
[28:07] creator's editing style? What do you not like? And then step three, I want you to implement what you like. Pick one thing from your likes list and implement it on your next edit. Every time you go to edit a video, you're going to do that
[28:22] likes list and you're going to implement it on your next video. And you don't have to implement it copy for copy or like word for word copy that creator, you know, but you're going to implement what you like and find a way to make it
[28:35] your own. Now, the real challenge, step four, if you could do this every day for 30 days, over time of implementing little bits of what you like, you will discover and find your own unique ways to apply them and basically create your
[28:49] own signature style by the end of 30 days of creating and posting short-form content. Honestly, I know this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to creating your own editing style and there's so many more tips that I could
[29:01] give like in-depth rabbit trails I could go down for each aspect that we talked about today. So, let me know what extra questions you have down in the comments below on this topic so I could create a follow-up or a part two to this video.
[29:13] see you in the next one. Follow your joy. Bye.