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. In Week 1 the client completes the Discovery Workbook independently while you and your team run parallel research. By the end of Week 1 you have both the workbook and the research in hand. Week 2 is where the team makes strategic positioning decisions from that combined evidence base. Your lead will review everything before it ships.
Cycle 1 timeline: Opens after the in-person Opening Experience on Sat Jul 18. Cycle 1 work runs Mon Jul 20 through Sun Aug 30. Midpoint regroup the weekend of Aug 29–30.
Deliver the workbook to the client on Monday with a clear return-by date (end of week). Include a short orientation note on how to fill it in. There is no kickoff meeting — the workbook is the structured intake.
Branding-Skills / branding-discoveryWhile the client works on the workbook, you run your own research in parallel. Industry positioning, market context, audience signals, category conventions. You are not waiting on the client to start thinking. By Sunday you should have a research dossier you would feel comfortable defending alone.
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.
The client returns the completed workbook by end of week. Read it through once on receipt to confirm it is complete. Do not begin synthesizing yet — that work happens with the team on Monday in Week 2.
Required weekly. Document what you learned from your independent research before the workbook landed, and what stood out on first read of the client's answers. Vlogs serve internal progress reporting, accountability, and the program's public content engine.
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 / branding-discoveryFeed Claude the completed workbook and your Week 1 research. Ask it to identify patterns, contradictions, and areas that need deeper exploration. Claude will surface things you might miss on a first read, but you make the final call on what matters.
This 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. Tell Claude what you decided about the gaps, the unique positioning, the brand elements, and the audience. Explain your reasoning. Claude uses the branding-strategy skill and your research to build a Google Slides presentation that supports your decisions with evidence. You are the strategist. Claude is the production tool.
Branding-Skills / branding-strategy Google Slides ConnectorBefore 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.
Drop your strategy draft in your team channel. 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.
Document the strategy lock. What did your lead push back on? What got sharper between Monday and Friday?
Go to khroma.co and make color preference 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.
Use fontjoy.com to explore 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.
Use Gemini to describe and generate multiple logo concept directions. Direct the tool based on your strategy, not the other way around. You should know what the logo needs to communicate before you start prompting. AI executes your vision. You do not curate AI output.
End-of-week studio session across the cohort. Present your divergent color, type, and logo directions. The cohort sees your range. You see theirs. The session is calibration, not critique — you have not converged yet.
Baseline how you are using AI tools so far. Are your prompts specific? Are you using Claude and Gemini as input or output? How many iterations did it take to get the directions you wanted?
Document the exploration. Which directions surprised you? What was hardest about generating volume?
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.
Finalize the color system: primary colors, secondary colors, and any accent or neutral tones. Define specific hex values, and consider how the palette works across digital and print applications. Document the rationale for each color choice.
Lock your typeface selections and define the type system: heading styles, body copy, captions, and any special treatments. Specify sizes, weights, and spacing. The typography should reinforce the brand personality defined in the strategy.
Feed Claude your finalized logo, font selections, and color palette. The brand implementation skill applies best practices to generate starting-point versions of core brand deliverables (business cards, letterhead, social templates, presentation slides). These are your baseline. Review them before refining in Week 5.
Skill needed: brand-implementationEnd of week, share the converged direction with the client — logo concept, color, type, baseline collateral. Confirm the direction feels right before Final Production. This is a temperature check, not a review — you do not want to surface major changes in Week 5.
Document the convergence. Which direction won and why?
Take the AI-generated starting points and make them yours. Adjust layouts, add creative treatments, push the templates beyond best practices into something that feels specific to this brand. Every template must demonstrate the brand system 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.
Skill needed: branding-guidelinesDefine how the brand shows up on social: post templates, story formats, color treatments for different content types, and guidelines for imagery. The framework should be flexible enough for daily use but consistent enough to be recognizable.
Full visual system review. The question is: does this visual system serve the strategy? Your lead will walk through each visual first principle: What is the hierarchy? Is the contrast intentional? What is repeating, and why? Be ready to defend every visual decision with strategy.
Final internal pass. Logo files reproducing correctly, colors matching across formats, type rendering as specified, no typos in guidelines, no missing assets in the package.
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.
Document the production. What did Critique #2 catch? What got sharper before delivery?
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.
Skill needed: branding-client-presentationDeliver the brand system to the nonprofit client. Your orientation lead observes but does not rescue. If the work is below standard, that is the lesson. Own the room. Present with confidence and be ready to answer questions and defend your decisions.
Use the 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.
brand-logo-productionOrganize everything into a clean, client-ready folder structure: logo files (all formats and color variants), color specifications, typography files, brand guidelines PDF, collateral templates, and social media framework. The package should be self-explanatory to anyone who opens it.
Deliver the organized brand package. Walk the client through the folder structure so they know where everything is and how to use it. Make sure they have everything they need to implement the brand without you in the room.
Within a few days of delivery, capture the client's reactions and any early signals. This is part of the deliverable trail and part of the Cycle 1 case study.
What worked? What did not? Where did the strategy hold and where did it drift? How did the client respond? This debrief is as important as any session in the cycle. Be honest about what you would do differently.
One 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. How did the client respond? 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 Aug 31.