Stage one and two
An idea with edges, a name,and a case for existing.
Most ideas arrive as a feeling with a noun attached. The first thing castoMIND does is turn that into something with edges — a name, a mark, a palette and a written description precise enough that six other systems can build from it without asking a follow-up question.
You describe the idea the way you would describe it to a colleague who is half-interested and slightly sceptical. What it is. Roughly who it is for. Why you think it might be worth building. Two paragraphs is plenty; a page is fine; a formal brief is not required and does not help.
What comes back is not a summary of what you wrote. It is a document that has made decisions — because a description that hedges every choice cannot be built from, and hedging is where most ideas go to die quietly.
What the curation produces
Four things, and they are produced together on purpose: a name that is available, a visual identity that suits what the thing actually is, a positioning that says who it is not for, and a written case that argues for building it. Separately, each of those is a workshop. Together, from one description, they take minutes.
A name
Checked for availability rather than admired in isolation. A name nobody can register is a naming exercise, not a name.
A mark and a palette
A wordmark, a mark that survives being 16 pixels wide, and a colour ramp that works in light, dark and high contrast — because the site, the dashboard and the campaign are all about to use it.
The written case
What it is, who it serves, what it charges, what it replaces, and the honest reason somebody would switch. Written as prose, because a bulleted idea can hide a hole that a paragraph cannot.
The shape of the offer
Plans, prices, what is in each, what the first customer actually buys. This one has to exist before the site, or the site ends up saying "contact us" where a price belongs.
The name, the voice, the colours.
Decided before lunch.
Where the material comes from.
The starting material is a body of brand essences — thirty-five of them, each a coherent way for a product to look, sound and behave, from the austere to the loud. An idea gets matched to the essence that suits it rather than to whatever style was fashionable the week the generator was written.
That is a deliberate limit. An unconstrained brand generator produces thirty-five variations of the same year; a curated set produces something that can sit next to a competitor without looking like a template with a different colour picked.
The part people underestimate: the written case is the expensive artefact, not the logo. Every downstream system reads it. Get the description right and the site, the dashboard, the workflows and the campaign are right. Get it vague and you have six vague things instead of one.
- 1Read backWhat you described, restated in one paragraph, so a misunderstanding surfaces now rather than at minute forty.
- 2PositioningWho it is for. Just as importantly, who it is not for.
- 3Name and markThree candidates, availability checked, one recommended with a reason.
- 4Palette and voiceMatched to an essence. Contrast checked in all four themes.
- 5The written caseRoughly a thousand words, ending in the offer and the price.
- ·Your turnYou read it and change what is wrong. Corrections here are free; corrections at stage four are a rebuild.
Nothing published yetOne document, six consumers
The stage where ideas die,
cheaply.
A fair number of ideas do not survive being written up. Not because anything rejects them — because reading a clear description of your own idea is a stronger test than it sounds. The offer has a hole in it. The person it is for turns out to be two people who want opposite things. The price cannot cover the thing it promises.
Finding that out at minute six is the cheapest possible version of finding it out. Everybody eventually finds it out; the usual schedule is after the logo, the domain, the incorporation and a quarter of evenings.
And if it does survive, you now have the document the next four stages are built from — which is why nothing after this point has to ask you what the product is.