This is your calibration cycle. The nonprofit client receives real, professional-quality work, but the stakes are intentionally lower so you can find your rhythm. Your orientation lead asks the first principles questions out loud so you learn the language. Every critique is also a teaching moment.
There is no kickoff meeting. The client completes the Discovery Workbook before the cycle opens, so on Monday of Week 1 it is already in your hands. Week 1 is reading the workbook and running your own independent research alongside it. Week 2 is where the team makes strategic positioning decisions from that combined evidence base. Your lead will review everything before it ships.
Rhythm to memorize: Studio sync with your Interactive and Motion teammates every Monday. Vlog every Wednesday. Office hours and critiques on Friday.
Cycle 1 timeline: Opens after the in-person Opening Experience on Sat Jul 25. Cycle 1 work runs Mon Jul 27 through Sun Sep 6. Midpoint regroup the weekend of Sep 5–6.
The client filled out the Discovery Workbook before the cycle opened, so it is in your hands on Monday. Read it through carefully. Note what surprises you, what contradicts itself, and where the client seems clear or confused about themselves. This is your raw material for the week.
Branding-Skills / ac-branding-discoveryAlongside the workbook, run your own research. Industry positioning, market context, audience signals, category conventions. You are not limited to how the client sees themselves. By Sunday you should have research you would feel comfortable defending on your own.
Visit competitor websites, social media, and any public-facing materials. Study visual brand presence (logo, color, typography, photography style) and verbal brand presence (tone, messaging, taglines, how they describe themselves). Document what you see. This is how you find the white space.
Ask Claude to use the discovery insights skill to turn the completed workbook and your research into a Discovery Insights document. Use it as a working document, something to think through and bounce ideas off, not a finished answer. Push back on it where it disagrees with what you found.
Branding-Skills / ac-branding-discoveryRequired weekly, every Wednesday. Report where things stand: what you learned from your independent research and what stood out in the client's workbook. Vlogs serve internal progress reporting, accountability, and the program's public content engine.
If you would like time with your mentor this week, book one of the available office-hours slots. Office hours are there whenever you want another set of eyes on your thinking. You do not need to wait for a formal critique.
The team meets Monday with both the completed Discovery Workbook and the Week 1 research in hand. Read everything together. Highlight what surprises you, what contradicts itself, and what feels underdeveloped. Where is the client clear about themselves and where are they confused? Where does your independent research disagree with how the client sees themselves?
Branding-Skills / ac-branding-discoveryThis is the team's thinking, not Claude's. Based on everything in the workbook and the research, what are the current gaps between where the organization is and where their brand presents them? What opportunities are they leaving on the table? Write these down clearly.
Answer the three core strategy questions with your own mind: What value does this organization deliver? How do they think about that value differently from anyone else? What would be lost if they did not exist? If you cannot answer these clearly, go back to the research.
This is where your thinking becomes a deliverable, and it is manual on purpose. You will be given a Strategy & Positioning template. Fill in each section yourself: the gaps, the unique positioning, the brand elements, and the audience, each backed by your research. Your strategy in your own words, not generated for you.
Before presenting to your lead, have Claude review the presentation with a critical eye. Is every claim grounded in real research? Is the positioning defensible against the competitive landscape? Are there any assertions that sound good but are not backed by evidence? Claude flags the weak spots. You decide what to fix.
The Wednesday vlog is your mid-week checkpoint. Record it, send it to your lead, and report where the strategy stands. Your lead reviews and responds asynchronously. Use the feedback to sharpen before Friday's formal QC review.
Formal end-of-week QC review. Present your positioning findings before touching any visual work. Your lead evaluates strategy rationale, not aesthetics. Does the positioning answer the three first principles questions? Be ready to defend every decision. If the strategy is not defensible, it goes back.
Once your lead approves the strategy direction, lock it. This is your foundation. Everything in the development weeks must trace back to this document. No visual decision without a strategic reason.
Explore color on your own, or use khroma.co as a starting point. Make color decisions based on the strategy. What emotions does the strategy call for? What does the competitive landscape look like in terms of color? Generate multiple distinct directions. Do not converge yet.
fontjoy.com can be a good starting point for Google Font pairings that serve the strategy. Consider: does the brand need authority (serif) or modernity (sans-serif)? Warmth or precision? Generate multiple pairings and evaluate each against the brand personality.
Document the exploration. Which directions surprised you? What was hardest about generating volume?
Send your divergent color, type, and logo explorations to your studio Slack channel and share them with your team. Your teammates see your range, you see theirs. This is calibration, not critique. You have not converged yet.
Close the week with office hours. Bring your explorations and your open questions. This is where the divergent work gets its first outside pressure before you converge next week.
Your studio of brand, interactive, and motion meets every Monday. This week, brand communicates where the brand is at, what is working, and where things are going. Your teammates' work depends on your direction, so keep them current.
Evaluate your explorations against the strategy first, then against brand first principles and design first principles. Use the first-principles prompt documents from your lead. They are built to help you decide what is good and what is not. The direction that survives all three tests is the one you converge on.
From your explorations, narrow down to a refined logo direction. Develop the full suite: primary logo, secondary mark, icon, and any lockup variations the brand needs. Every version must work at multiple scales and in multiple contexts.
Narrow the color system to the direction that serves the strategy: primary colors, secondary colors, and any accent or neutral tones. Document the rationale for each color choice.
Lock your font selections. The typography should reinforce the brand personality defined in the strategy.
Share where you are at and how things are going. Which direction won and why?
Close the week with office hours. Bring the converged direction and be ready to defend the call with strategy and first principles.
Color palette and type locked at the end of Week 4. Now hand them to your web and motion teammates so implementation happens together. Update them on where things are going and flag anything that has changed with the final direction.
Put the brand onto things the client could actually use: print pieces, patches, hats, merch. Work from the brand guidelines as you go. The point is to pressure-test the system in the real world, so every application should demonstrate the brand in action, not just follow the rules.
Compile everything into a cohesive brand guidelines document: logo usage rules, color specifications, typography standards, spacing and layout principles, and do/don't examples. This is the document someone outside your team uses to execute the brand correctly.
Branding-Skills / ac-branding-guidelinesYour Wednesday vlog doubles as the visual system presentation to your orientation lead. Walk through the full system and defend each visual decision with strategy: What is the hierarchy? Is the contrast intentional? What is repeating, and why? Your lead runs quality control against AlabamaCreates standards from here.
Present the full system as if delivering to the client. Your orientation lead plays the client and asks the uncomfortable questions. This is your rehearsal. If you cannot defend a decision here, you will not be able to defend it in the room.
Book a time to present the full brand to the client next week. Get it on the calendar before the weekend so delivery week starts with the finish line fixed.
Last Monday sync of the cycle. If anything has changed with the final brand, make sure your web and motion teammates have everything they need to finish their deliverables.
Build your presentation deck walking through the brand system: the strategic foundation, the visual identity, and how it all connects. The presentation should tell a story, not just show deliverables. The client should understand the "why" behind every decision.
Branding-Skills / ac-brand-presentationPresent the full brand system on video. It is a recorded walkthrough that will be sent to the client. Present it as if the client is in the room: with confidence, with the reasoning behind every decision, and at a quality you would be proud to stand behind live.
Use the ac-brand-logo-production skill to generate all logo color variants across SVG, PDF, PNG, and JPG formats in an organized folder structure. Provide Claude with your EPS source logos and brand color definitions. Claude handles the file production pipeline. The AlabamaCreates team handles the handoff to the client from here.
ac-brand-logo-productionOne page: what you would do differently, and what you now understand about brand that you did not on Day 1. This is for you, not for show. Be specific about where your thinking changed and where you still have questions.
Document the delivery. What did you learn about your own process across the full cycle?
Full cohort regroups the weekend after delivery. Share the work and the lessons. Reset expectations for Cycle 2. You start Cycle 2 the next day, Mon Sep 7.