ART 418 · Charleston Southern University · Fall 2026
Milestone 4: the brand book and the landing page
Where the semester lands: the finished brand book, with the product-market fit plan as its go-to-market chapter, and a landing page for signup, both made from the brand's own rules. Say what the machine did.
The run
Every due date is a class day. Work is turned in on Blackboard, presented in class, or both. The late-work policy is in the syllabus.
Milestone 4: the brand book and the landing page
Where the semester lands: the finished brand book, with the product-market fit plan as its go-to-market chapter, and a landing page for signup, both made from the brand's own rules. Say what the machine did.
MonSep 7no class
Labor Day
MonOct 12no class
Fall Break
MonNov 16checkpoint
The brand book, drafted
The brand book in draft, holes marked as holes. Three parts. The brand: what it is and who it is for, the mark and how to use it, color with exact values, the type scale, layout and spacing, voice with worked examples, and misuse drawn from real mistakes. How it sells: the audience, the channels, the message in each place, the offer and its price, and the result that would prove people want it. The appendix: every color, type, and spacing value written as data a machine can read. I mark up the draft overnight and it comes back Wednesday. The finished version, page-numbered and free of placeholder text, is due December 2.
MonNov 23checkpoint
The landing page, first build
The signup page, first build: the brand's rules driving a real page with one call to action, and what failed on the way. Bring the run that made it: the prompts, the rules, the commits. A first run that fails is normal and useful.
WedNov 25no class
Thanksgiving
WedDec 2milestone, presented
The brand book and the landing page
The close, presented: the finished brand book, its go-to-market chapter included, and the landing page live enough to sign up on, produced with the machine under your rules. A one-page handoff README comes with it: what it is, how to run it, and what it gets wrong. The work is due December 2 for everyone; the room presents across the last two class days, half on December 2 and half on December 7.
MonDec 7presented
Presentations, day two
The second half of the room presents, same format: run the system, show what it made, name what it got wrong. The work was due December 2; nothing new is turned in today.
Final versions
Everything is due by the end of the last class, December 7: the final versions of the brand book, the landing page, and the personal statement, in the repository and turned in on Blackboard. There is no exam-week meeting and nothing is due after the last day. The room has already seen every part of the project.
Dec 7
The last class
What is in the repository at the end of class is what is graded.
Finding the audience
Your personal statement points at the audiences you already know. Bring three candidates, each found in one of these four places, due Sep 9.
- A world you know
- A craft, a job you have held, a subject you are inside. You already know what the people in it buy and what they complain about.
- Your community
- A group or place you belong to. You can ask people directly what they need.
- Yourself
- You would use this product if someone sold it to you right. The risk is that you are the only one; the research will tell you.
- A wild card
- An audience that simply interests you. Held to the same evidence as the other three.
Problem framing
Problem framing is discovering and defining a problem your audience shares. It comes from design thinking, which puts people at the center of the work. Skip it and nobody can see what your product is for. Answer four questions, then compress the answers into one statement.
- Who
- Who has the problem, and how do you know?
- What
- What is the problem, and what signs show it?
- Why
- Why solve it, and what does it cost unsolved?
- Where
- In what circumstances does it show up?
Your problem statement is the four answers written as one short statement from the audience's side, due Sep 14.
The creative brief distills what the pitch settled: the client, the budget, the date, the audience, and the business problem. It is the reference every later phase answers to.
The deck
You prepare and present a deck of your research and initial insights: nine slides, three minutes.
01
Cover
The subject, one line saying what it is, your name and the date. No version number; the repository tracks versions.
02
The product
What it is and what it can do, compressed out of your problem statement. One slide. The source is on it.
03
The audience
Specific people, named the way you would name them to a client. Not a demographic bracket.
04
The problem
One sentence, set large, alone on the slide. If it needs a second sentence it is two problems.
05
The evidence
What you actually found, sourced. This slide decides whether the problem is real.
06
What they buy today
What the audience uses instead, and what those choices cost them.
07
The four questions
Who, what, why, and where, answered short. This is where a bad problem gets caught early.
08
What you do not know
The open questions, written down as questions. Every honest deck has some.
09
What the machine did
The three lines. Same format as everything else you hand in.
How you show your work
The work lives in one repository, with a running log of what you decided and what the machine did. How to set both up, and what a good entry looks like, gets its own note early in the term.
- The stand-up
- Work sessions open with three minutes each, screen up: what moved, what is stuck, what you will have done by next time. Participation is graded here. The rest of the session is yours to work in, with me in the room.
- Say what moved
- When a piece is re-presented, one line on what changed and why: critique, evidence, or the machine.
- What the machine did
- Three lines closing every piece you hand in: the tools you used by name; what you asked for and what came back; what you changed, cut or overruled. "None" is a complete answer.
- The rule under all of it
- Use AI on anything in this course, and defend everything you turn in as your own decision. Check every fact a model gives you; when one fails in the room, the error is yours.
How it is graded
Every piece of work is graded on the same four counts, each a quarter of that piece's grade. Participation and presentations are graded on their own; their weights, and each milestone's, are in the syllabus.
- Process · 25%
- Contributing to discussion and critique, and improving the work as a result of research and iteration.
- Concept · 25%
- Responding to the problem inventively, and thinking critically about the work in light of critique and reading.
- Resolution · 25%
- Making work that is effective and appropriate to its concept and its context.
- Craft · 25%
- Care in the manufacture of the work, and technical ability in the making of it.