Table of Contents
Hey all, and happy Fridizzle.
RSV hit our house this week. All three of us. James is 10 months old, so, yeah. Not great. Maddie and I have been communicating through gestures and aggressive whisper-croaking. It’s been like living in a silent film but with more mucus. If Michel Hazanavicius is gearing up for his next Oscar winner, we will have the plot for him.
Anyway, we still had a weekend.
Saturday: divided and conquered. Maddie took a one-year-old's birthday party, I took a baby shower, then we regrouped for a Tinsel and Tequila party in Westchester, where Maddie wore her actual prom dress. It still fits: sequins and all.
Sunday was James's first Hanukkah. Very exciting. He got this toy where a ball spins around in a tower, and he's OBSESSED. We've also discovered he likes organizing things, lines up all his toys in neat little rows, and is very deliberate about it.
This is from his mother, not his father.
We were about to get a Christmas tree (I grew up celebrating), but ultimately, the mice in our apartment decided for us. Apparently, they use the tree remnants to make nests. So! No tree this year.
I taught a workshop at Foxwell this week while sounding like a dying seal (apologies for those on a call). Kept clicking the wrong buttons. At one point, a loon just... appeared on my screen? Still don't know why (had to be there).
But somewhere between the coughing and the technical chaos, I showed something helpful: how to clone ads while maintaining brand guidelines.
The secret?
Boring setup work. It’s not sexy, but it is absolutely worth it.
Let me explain.
Claude Projects: The Unsexy Setup That Makes Everything Work
Even if a brand sends you a 47-page brand book, I still do this. Why? Because that PDF is from 2019. The website is what they're actually using right now.
But here's the thing: I'm not just asking Claude to "look at this website and tell me the fonts."
That's amateur hour. And I was doing it for way too long.
The prompt I use now does something more innovative: it runs a forensic Google search BEFORE it even visits the website.
Searches for press kits, agency case studies, font forums: you'd be shocked how often the exact specs are just... out there. Then it visits the site, analyzes the vibe, and outputs everything as structured JSON.
Here's the actual prompt:
INPUT VARIABLES:
Target Brand Name: [INSERT BRAND NAME HERE]
Target URL: [INSERT URL HERE]
Role: Act as a Senior Brand Strategist and Frontend Developer.
Objective: Create a comprehensive "Reverse-Engineered Brand Guideline" for the Target Brand Name defined above, using the Target URL as the primary source.
Instructions:
Step 1: The External "Asset Hunt" (Forensic Search)
Do not just visit the website. Use Google Search to find the "source of truth" for the Target Brand Name using these specific angles:
Design Credits: Search for "who designed [Target Brand Name] branding", "[Target Brand Name] design agency case study", or "[Target Brand Name] rebrand".
Public Assets: Search for "[Target Brand Name] brand guidelines pdf", "[Target Brand Name] press kit", or "[Target Brand Name] media kit".
Tech Specs: Search for "[Target Brand Name] font family", "[Target Brand Name] color hex codes", or "what font does [Target Brand Name] use".
Step 2: The On-Site "Vibe Check"
Visit the Target URL to analyze the Verbal and Visual identity:
Voice & Tone: Read the "About Us" and Hero Copy. Is it playful, serious, rebellious, or luxury? Give me 3 distinct adjectives.
Imagery: Describe the photography style (e.g., "grainy film," "high-contrast studio").
Shape Language: Are buttons rounded (pills) or sharp (squares)? Is the layout airy or dense?
Step 3: The Output (Brand DNA)
Combine the hard data (from Step 1) with your observations (from Step 2) into this JSON format. If you found exact fonts/colors in Step 1, list them. If not, make a "Best Professional Estimate" based on visual recognition.
json{
"brand_identity": {
"name": "Target Brand Name",
"tagline": "",
"design_agency": "Name or 'Unknown'",
"voice_adjectives": ["", "", ""]
},
"visual_system": {
"primary_font": "Exact Name (if found) or Best Guesses",
"secondary_font": "Exact Name (if found) or Best Guesses",
"primary_color_hex": "Hex Code (if found) or Best Guesses",
"accent_color_hex": "Hex Code (if found) or Best Guesses",
"imagery_style": "Description of photography/illustration",
"ui_shapes": "Description of buttons/borders"
}
}I use Claude Opus 4.5 for this. I've tested it against other models, and it's noticeably better at the web scraping part. (Ironically, Gemini helped me build this prompt in the first place. Use whatever works.)
The embarrassing backup plan: Sometimes the font detection still fails. When that happens, I right-click on text, click "Inspect," find the font-family in the CSS, screenshot it, and paste it into Claude with "can you update the brand guidelines with these fonts."
It's not elegant. But it works.
Once this is done, I save the JSON output into a Claude Project for that brand.
Now, everything I create pulls from these guidelines automatically.
Ad Cloning, But On Brand!
Okay, so during the workshop, I wanted to show how to clone an ad. I found this Mud Water ad: bold design, strong copy, the kind of thing that makes you go "I want that but for my brand."
The brand I was using was Go Brewing. NA craft beer. Sort of Liquid Death vibes but for people who want to wake up without hating themselves.
Here's what I did:
Saved the Mud Water ad
Grabbed a Go Brewing product shot
Went to Claude (with my Go Brewing project already set up) and said: "Using this as a reference, generate a prompt for Nano Banana Pro to clone this but for Go Brewing"
And because I had already done the tedious setup work, Claude knew exactly what to do:
So the prompt it generated wasn't generic. It actually sounded like Go Brewing.
Ran it through Nano Banana Pro.
First outputs? Honestly, pretty good. The fonts matched. The colors matched. The copy it generated—"Your Better Tomorrow Starts Here"—is precisely the kind of thing they'd write.
And Then I Turned Hops Into M&Ms
Here's where things got weird.
I wanted to show prescriptive editing: changing ONE specific element without regenerating the whole image. So I fed my output into GPT and asked it to identify every element in the image.
(Yes, GPT. Not Claude. Claude is my favorite, but it isn't good at identifying specific elements in images. I don't make the rules.)
GPT listed everything: beer can, glass, hops, ice, header copy, subheader copy.
Then I said: "Give me a prompt to change ONLY the green hops to M&M candies."
Ran it.
Result: Everything stayed exactly the same. Fonts, colors, beer can, glass, lighting, shadows. Just the hops became M&Ms.
Is this useful? I mean... probably not for an actual beer ad. But the principle is the point.
Client says, "Can you make the can smaller?" One prompt.
Client says, "Can you change the background?" One prompt.
Client says, "Actually, we're using a different SKU now?" One prompt.
15 cents. 30 seconds. No designer crying in a corner.
The Cost Part
Since someone always asks:
FAL.ai pay-as-you-go: ~15 cents per Nano Banana Pro image. This is what I demoed.
Google Ultra subscription: Around $160/month. Gets you unlimited Nano Banana Pro AND Veo 3. This is what our team actually uses day-to-day, since we're generating a disgusting number of images.
Midjourney: We still pay for it. We use it less and less. Nano Banana Pro has basically eaten its lunch in the product-focused space.
If you're starting, do pay-as-you-go on FAL. See if this workflow even makes sense for you. Then decide if unlimited is worth it.
TL;DR for the Skimmers
Claude Projects are just folders. Make folders. Put brand stuff in them. I know it's boring.
Scrape brand guidelines from the website, not the brand book. The website is actually current.
Opus 4.5 for scraping, GPT for identifying image elements. Yes it's annoying to use multiple tools. No, I don't have a better solution.
Prescriptive editing lets you change one thing without regenerating everything. This is the actual superpower.
The boring setup is what makes the fun stuff work. I hate this truth, but there it is.
Have a great weekend. Turn some hops into M&Ms.
Will