How I Built My Brand Profile with Claude Design

I run four things. Incuv8or, Tech Queen Academy, Launchpad, and Mission Control, which I'm still building.

And they all look like they came from the same place. Dark backgrounds, stars, bright colours, a sort of floating-through-space feeling. It's on the websites, it's on every lead magnet I send, and it's on every proposal that goes out to a client.

That is not because I'm a designer. It's because I did the work once, properly, and turned it into a template.

The websites came first - I built those with Claude Code, and the look came out of describing what I wanted rather than knowing how to make it. Then I took that same look and turned it into a PDF template, and now everything I send lives inside it. Proposals. Lead magnets. Guides. I never think about design again, because the decision was made months ago.

This post is how to do that bit. The next one is how I actually write the proposals that go inside it.

Where I started (which was not glamorous)

My proposals used to be Google Docs.

Perfectly decent ones. But every time I sent one I was fiddling with fonts, wondering if the spacing looked odd, and quietly aware that it looked like a document rather than something from a business.

So here's what I actually did: I downloaded a few of the proposals I'd already sent to clients, took every piece of their information out of them, and used those as the raw material.

That matters, so I'll say it plainly: strip your clients out before you upload anything. Their name, their company, their numbers, their pricing, their strategy. You're keeping the structure and your own writing, not their business. Same principle as templatising a build - the shape is yours, their content isn't.

Step 1 - Collect your references before you prompt anything

Don't open Claude Design and start typing. Spend twenty minutes collecting first, because "make it look nice" gets you nothing.

Get together:

• Websites you love. Not competitors - anything. The links are enough.
• Screenshots. Anything that made you stop scrolling. A packaging design, an app screen, a book cover.
• Fonts you like, if you know any names. If you don't, that's fine.
• Colours you're drawn to. Again, just describe them if you don't have hex codes.
• A few of your old documents, client details removed.

And one thing that's worth more than all of it: a sentence about how you want people to feel when something of yours lands in their inbox. Mine was that I wanted it to feel like it came from a proper business, not a freelancer with a Canva account.

When I built the Tech Queen Academy site I described floating through space with stars around you. That sentence did more work than any reference image, because it gave Claude something to design towards rather than copy.

Step 2 - Build the brand profile

Open Claude Design. It's the one built for this - you can give it references, screenshots and links, and you can point it at your vault so it knows your business before it designs anything.

Hi Claude - I need a branding profile for my business, & then some template
documents that match it.

First, the business: [what you do, who you do it for, & how you want someone to
feel when something of yours lands in their inbox]

Have a look through my vault & my core context documents so you understand the
business properly before you design anything.

Here's what I'm drawn to: [attach your screenshots, paste the links, name any
fonts or colours you like, & describe the feeling you're after]

& here's what I don't want: [the styles that aren't you - corporate, twee,
whatever it is]

Give me THREE different directions. Properly different from each other, not
three versions of the same idea. For each one:
- a colour palette with hex codes
- font pairings for headings & body
- the overall feel, in one sentence
- a sample page so I can actually see it rather than imagine it

Then tell me which one you'd pick for my business, & why.

Ask for three, and insist they're different. If you ask for one you'll get something reasonable and you'll accept it, because you've got nothing to compare it to. Three forces a decision, and the one you react to instantly is usually the right one.

"A sample page so I can actually see it" is the other line that matters. A palette and a font list tells you nothing. Seeing it laid out on a page tells you everything.

Go back and forth until one of them is right. Then have it written up properly and download it - palette, fonts, spacing rules, how to use it, what not to do. That document is now the reference for everything you make from here.

Step 3 - Turn the brand into templates

This is the step people don't do, and it's the one that makes the whole thing worth it. A brand profile sitting in a folder isn't doing anything. A template is.

I've picked direction [X]. Write it up as a proper brand profile document I can
keep - palette, fonts, spacing, how to use it, what not to do.

Then I want templates that match it.

I've attached some of my old proposals - I've taken all the client details out.
Read them so you can see how I structure a proposal & what I always include.

Build me a proposal template based on that structure, in my new branding.

Structure it as:
1. Front page
2. An intro letter
3. Who I am & my experience
4. What I think they should do for their business
5. The proposal itself

For the "who I am" page - go through my vault & my core context & write it for
me. It should read like an introduction from a person, not a CV.

Don't write the proposal content itself. That changes every time. I want the
template - the layout, the fonts, the structure, the placeholders.

Two things about that.

Your old documents teach it your structure. You already have a way of doing proposals, even if you've never written it down. It's in the documents. Let it read them rather than trying to explain it.

The intro letter is the bit most people skip. I never open a proposal with the proposal. There's a letter first, then who I am, then what I actually think they should do - and only then the offer. By the time they reach the price they already know why it's the price.

Then do the same thing for your lead magnets. Same brand, same template, different shape.

Step 4 - Put it where you'll use it

Save the finished templates into a templates folder in your vault, next to everything else.

This is not admin - it's the entire point. A template you have to go and find is a template you'll stop using. A template sitting in your vault is one Claude can reach for on its own the next time you say "write me a proposal for this client."

Which is exactly what happens in the next post.

The bit worth hearing

I am not a designer. I've never opened design software in my life and I have no intention of starting.

What I did was describe what I wanted, react to what came back, and then lock the decision in so I never had to make it again. That's not a design skill - that's a taste plus a system. You already have the taste. This is the system.

And the compounding is real. Every lead magnet I've made since then took no design time at all, because the design was already done. Same for every proposal. The work was one afternoon, and it's been paying out ever since.

Next

Once your template exists, the proposals themselves get quick - and that's the post I'd read next: how I actually write them, pointing Claude at the client's folder and my past proposals at the same time.

If you haven't got your vault set up yet, that's the thing all of this sits on: The Co-Founder Setup.

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