Kaitlin Quinn
All writing

· public-health

I made myself a tiny brand publisher

TL;DR: I built a small offline brand publisher because the tools I was using were all almost right, but none matched my exact workflow. Now the repetitive brand decisions are handled locally and consistently, so I can spend more time on the actual work.

Photo by Leone Venter / Unsplash

I made myself a tiny brand publisher, mostly because I got tired of every available option being almost what I wanted.

I had been test-driving a few different ways to make the graphics and routine content that sit around my work. Canva was useful for some things. Other design and writing tools were useful for others. But I kept running into the same little bit of friction: every time I wanted to make something, I was rebuilding context I had already decided on.

I already know what my personal brand looks like. Groundtruth 911 has its own completely separate rules. So does The Aggregation Point. I already know the colors, typography, terminology, layouts, export sizes, and the things each one should absolutely never look or sound like.

At some point I realized my actual problem was much narrower than the tools I was trying to solve it with.

So I built this.

0:00
/1:00

It is a little local publisher that lives on my computer. I choose the brand and the type of thing I am making, give it the actual thought or information, and it handles the repetitive decisions I have already made. It can format the graphic, apply the right visual system, assemble some of the routine surrounding copy, check terminology and brand rules, and export the sizes I use most often.

It is not particularly sophisticated on purpose. It does a very specific job for a very specific person.

And I love it.

I have been spending a lot of time lately looking under the hood of my own processes like this: trying different tools, figuring out what I actually use from them, noticing where the friction keeps showing up, and then narrowing the workflow when it makes sense.

There are practical reasons for that. Fewer platforms means less context switching. Local tools can mean more privacy, autonomy, and control. Smaller, deterministic workflows also do not need to call on a giant general-purpose system every time I need the same narrow thing done again. Given the very real ethical and environmental questions attached to how much technology we consume, I like having that be part of the equation without pretending there is one correct way everybody should work.

Mostly, though, this one just makes my life easier.

I spend less time rebuilding the scaffolding around my work and more time doing the part I actually care about.

Very niche. Extremely useful to me.

For further reading:

Correspondence

New writing.
No schedule promised.

What I’m making, what caught my attention, and what I’m still trying to understand.

Get new writing