Daniel Newman

I’m building HasMyBrandChanged in public. The idea is simple: Upload your brand rules once.
Check anything you’re about to publish.
Know if your brand has drifted before your customers do. I’ve spent 25 years seeing brands slowly lose consistency. Now I’m trying to fix that. #BuildInPublic

Every week someone sends out a PDF, deck or web page that a lot of people can’t read. Faint text, undescribed images, buttons with no words. Nobody’s job to check. I built ChecksTrue to catch that, plus brand mistakes, before it goes out. Free page check: checkstrue.com/scan

Thanks for those who have tested my SaaS app so far. If you want to see how your brand has unknowingly drifted with the content you or AI are getting out please DM me and I’ll let you test my app free.

When building a SaaS app, why is 90% of the time spent on the last 10% of the app?

I’m looking for 5–10 people to test HasMyBrandChanged before I open it properly. Best fit would be designers, marketers, founders or anyone who deals with brand assets. No sales pitch — I just need honest feedback from real users.

I’m looking for a few people to test HasMyBrandChanged. It checks whether a brand asset has drifted from the approved logo, colours and fonts. It’s still early, so I’m not looking for praise — I’m looking for honest feedback. Anyone up for trying it?

Is vibe coding still looked down upon or is it more accepted nowadays?

If any of the last two weeks hit home — come build this with me. Early access is opening soon: you get in first, you help shape what gets built, and your first brand review is free. Join the list at hasmybrandchanged.com. That's the whole pitch. Thanks for being here.

If you're new here, the whole idea in 5 lines: 1. Your brand is a promise — people should recognise you instantly 2. Drift breaks it quietly 3. Guidelines don't check anything a PDF can't see 4. So measure it — score every asset against one Blueprint 5. Catch it before publish, not after That's HasMyBrandChanged.

Two weeks ago this account had 2 new followers and a lot of explainer posts. Then I switched to showing brand drift, real examples, and the actual build. More replies, more "I've lived this," more useful feedback than the two weeks before combined. Lesson logged: show it, don't describe it. Onwards.

Designing the trust side of this now, and I'd rather ask than guess: What would make you actually trust a tool that scores your brand? – Clear explanations of why? – Being able to disagree with it? – It never being overconfident? Tell me what would win you over.

"Brand consistency only matters for huge companies." Actually, smaller teams drift faster — fewer people, more "just ship it," no brand police. Consistency is a shortcut to looking bigger and more trustworthy than you are. Drift quietly throws that advantage away.

Sometimes an asset is just... off-brand. And the tool should say so clearly. Wrong logo variant, off-palette colours, substituted font. A 44, not a 68. But even here it stays constructive: here's what's wrong, here's what to fix. Never "you failed." Always "here's how to make it right."

The more I build HasMyBrandChanged, the more I realise the product is only half the battle. The other half is explaining the problem in a way that makes someone say: “Yes, I actually have that problem.” That’s harder than I expected.

Brand compliance, measured. If you run a brand, a studio, or a content pipeline — and "is this on-brand?" is a question you ask a lot — I'm building this for you. Early access is opening soon. Join the list and you'll be first in.

Generation is basically solved. Judgement isn't. AI can make you 50 options in a minute. Almost none of the tools can tell you which ones are actually on-brand. "Is this on-brand?" is the question I think every content pipeline will need to answer automatically — soon. That's the bet I'm making.

A brand isn't a logo. It's a promise you keep — visually — every time you show up. Every consistent asset keeps the promise. Every drift is a tiny broken one. Most are too small to notice. Until enough of them add up to "this doesn't feel like them anymore."

Honest question: how do you keep your brand consistent today? A) A shared PDF nobody opens B) A person who "just knows" the brand C) Vibes and hope D) Something actually systematic No judgement — most teams are in the first three. That's kind of the point.

What the first version of HasMyBrandChanged checks: • Logo — stretch, recolour, rotation, cropping • Colour — perceptual CIE Lab, not just hex • Fonts — letterforms vs your approved type • Layout & spacing — alignment, hierarchy, clear space • One weighted, confidence-aware score Deliberately focused. What would you add?

Your brain says "same blue." The data often disagrees. Two shades that read identical at a glance can be a real, visible distance apart. HasMyBrandChanged checks colour in CIE Lab — the way the eye actually perceives difference, not just raw hex values. That's how you catch the drift you can't quite name.

Why is it that the last 10% of the app takes 90% of the time?