With clients
From the first draft to the printer.
A new identity takes shape in the workbench, the client sees the directions through a link, comments and chooses, and the choice becomes the first version. After that, printers and developers get a page with everything they need.
The workbench for a new identity
nexbrand is not a drawing program. You keep drawing logos in your own tool and upload them. But colours, fonts and sizes can be designed here so that they read well from the start.
“New client” opens the wizard in six steps: client, start, colours, fonts, sizes and logo, finish. Next to it, a sample page with header, navigation, heading, text, button and cards runs all the time, and so do the checks. “Next” tells you why it cannot go on yet.
- Client: name, sector, a first project and a few words on how the brand should feel, such as “wine merchant, fine, premium, warm”.
- Start: three directions from the description, close to it, with a counterpoint and reserved; from a picture, whose colours are counted in the browser; from one colour; or empty, to record existing guidelines.
- Colours and fonts: names, roles, values, plus six font pairs with their mood or a free choice among nine free fonts.
- Sizes and logo: base size and ratio, and a logo as SVG or PNG. Without a logo, word marks stand in.
Readable from the start
When nexbrand proposes a direction, it darkens the main colour until a button with white text and a link on a light ground reach 4.5:1. A colour you enter yourself, on the other hand, stays exactly as it is; if it is not enough for text, you see a hint with the nearest colour that is, and take it or not.
With your own AI, if you like
If the operator allows it and you have entered an AI service of your own, “Propose with AI” suggests hue, font pair and reasoning for each direction. nexbrand still computes the colours itself. If the AI fails, the directions come from key words again.
The review with the client
At the end of the wizard, or on any draft, “Send to the client for review” creates a review. You give it a sender, a few words to the client, the name the version should carry once chosen, and up to four directions with their reasoning; other drafts of the client go along as alternatives. The link is valid for 7, 14, 30 or 90 days. With a mail server set up, nexbrand mails it as well.
The client needs no account. For each direction they see the agency's drafts large to browse, a sample page in the identity, the colours and the reasoning. They comment on the whole draft or on a single picture, and with “Choose this direction” they choose for good.
- Answer comments
The tab Review lists every comment, and someone from the agency answers right below. nexbrand counts what is new from the client on the tab, on the client card and in the sidebar until someone opens the review.
- The choice is published
When the client chooses, the direction becomes a version at once, with the name set beforehand, valid from today and with a note that the client chose it. For a new client this is version 1.0.
- Withdraw
Whoever sent the review or manages the client withdraws it. The link shows nothing after that.
Pavo saysOnly people who may write for the client see the link of a review. With the link, after all, one could choose on the client's behalf.
Public pages for printers and developers
Once the guidelines are published, someone without an account needs them: the printer, a developer outside, the client themselves. In the tab Public pages you create a page for them.
- For whom: a name, such as “Printer, autumn flyer”, so you know whom you gave the link to.
- Which version: always the current one, or fixed on one, so a reprint stays as it is.
- Valid for: 7, 30, 90 or 365 days, or no end.
- Password: if you like. Whoever has the link then needs it too.
The page shows the version's colours, fonts, logos, examples and rules, read only, plus “As code” with the same four formats as in the app. You see how often it was viewed, and you end it with “End the page”; the link then shows nothing. A project gets pages of its own too.
What stays inside
Off by default
Public pages and reviews exist only once the operator switches them on. Switched off, every link answers as if it had never existed.
No checks
Public pages show no checks. What the agency still wants to improve about the guidelines is nobody's business outside.
In-house fonts by name only
A font with an internal licence appears on public pages and in reviews only by its name, never as a file.
Only what the version names
Only files that belong to the version shown can be downloaded. The client's other files stay out of reach.
Not for search engines
Every page of nexbrand, every public one too, tells search engines that it does not belong in the index.
Brakes
Comments and password attempts run through a brake per page and sender, so nobody floods a review or guesses a password.