The Brief Creative Newsletter
November 8, 2025
052 - Do good work, fast
How we launched a new brand and website in only 9 weeks
The Deep Thoughts
This is what I'm thinking about.
Big week, folks… OhSnap! launched it’s first public rebrand! We partnered with a company called Modus Create (check out that sweet, new website) to create a new brand strategy, visual identity, Figma design system, and website.
That’s a new brand, new look, new feel, and new website (this included a replatform from Wordpress to Sanity). And we did it in just 9 weeks…
Yes, you can do both
Now before we get started, this isn’t a “good, fast, cheap, pick two” thing. The timeline was what it was for actual business reasons. What I want to cover today is the two key things that made this doable in such a short time period. The first was having a plan and the second was decision making.
Make a plan and stick to it
Once the scope was determined and the deal was agreed to, we needed a plan. Traditionally, this is where we’ll build out a full project plan with tasks, subtasks, approvals, and all the bells and whistles in Asana. We didn’t have time for that on this one so we started with a spreadsheet.
A high level overview of the project
You can see there are still questions in here and things we just weren’t sure of at the time. As the project continued we filled in those blanks, but setting this up on day one helped level set exactly what was going to happen across the 9 weeks and who was responsible for what (gotta shout out our partners at Webstacks who we tag teamed the design system and website with).
Over the course of the project if a wrinkle came up or anyone was unsure of what was happening, we referred to the sheet—even after we set up the Asana board.
A lot of times when we have large, cross-functional projects we tend to only focus on our part. When everyone does this the work is inconsistent or late or disconnected. That’s why project management is worth it’s weight in gold! By creating the plan upfront here, what we did was immediately highlight what the dependencies are. Even if we didn’t have all the answers, we knew that the design system couldn’t be finalized without the visual identity, we knew we couldn’t create messaging without a brand strategy. Yes, this is obvious stuff, but in the moment it’s easy to forget that these different workstreams affect each other. Having that reminder and high level plan, kept everyone on the same page.
Be clear on roles and decision making
You know I love me some DACI and we immediately created one for this. Jenn and I were the drivers; the Modus CEO, Sharon, was the Approver (btw I love when the CEO is involved because it means the brand will be a part of the whole company); their CGO, Kevin, and VP of Marketing, David, were strongly consulted; and their company was informed.
|
D - Driver |
A - Approver |
C - Consulted |
I - Informed |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Dmitry Jenn |
Sharon |
Kevin David |
Modus team |
This DACI didn’t include the Creatives working on the project but those sub-DACIs exist too.
The first thing you’ll notice looking at the DACI is the small working group. This was intentional. In my experience, 99% of the projects that miss their deadline have too many stakeholders and it’s not just that too many cooks spoil the broth, too many cooks also take forever to provide feedback or make decisions.
By keeping the working group tight we were able to book meetings when necessary, make quick decisions, and not have to go through 20 different levels of “I wonder what so and so thinks.”
If the timeline is the map, the DACI is your crew and keeping it tight is critical.
I love it when a plan comes together
Don’t let this make it seem like we didn’t run into issues or have to improvise in certain places. That happens in every project and that’s totally normal. The difference is that when we ran into those situations, we knew what would be impacted and who to talk to.
With everyone on the same page we got to launch a thoughtful new brand that’s focused on bringing humanity to a traditionally cold industry. We gave the team the strategy they need to go to market, a visual identity that has room to grow, a design system that we put to the test immediately, and an easy-to-use website that will scale with them as they grow. I’m proud of it and although at times I wish we had more time, I’m blown away by what we were able to get done. Let me know what you think.
