Build with Oswald

Build with Oswald is the Horizon-creation path where the brand owner describes a Horizon to Oswald in plain language and Oswald drafts the structure and content. The result is a Horizon draft in the visual editor that the brand owner edits and publishes. This page covers the brand-owner experience and what makes prompts work. The mechanics from the Horizons side are documented on Build with Oswald in Tab 2.

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When Build with Oswald is the right path

Use it when:

• You know what the Horizon should cover but have not yet decided on the structure.
• The Horizon is a recognisable type (sub-brand, campaign, regional adaptation, partnership) where good defaults speed the work.
• You want a draft to react to rather than a blank canvas.

Use the visual editor instead when:

• You know exactly what you want and would type it faster than describe it.
• The Horizon is unusual enough that the standard templates would mislead more than help.

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Prompt patterns

The most useful prompts follow a four-part structure:

1. Horizon type. Sub-brand, campaign, regional adaptation, partnership, internal, product.
2. Subject and scope. What the Horizon covers and what it does not.
3. Constraints. Budget, timeline, partner relationships, audience restrictions.
4. Tone and form. How the Horizon should read, who reads it.

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Example: sub-brand

Draft a Horizon for our sub-brand “Ascent” — a premium-tier product line under our main brand. It uses the parent palette but leans on the navy + gold pairing. Typography is the parent system with the headline weight slightly tighter. Photography direction is more atmospheric than the main brand. Voice is calmer, more spare. The audience is all team members; the studio handover for this sub-brand happened last week.

Returns: a Horizon draft with sub-brand definition, parent-brand relationship, lock-up rules, colour overrides, typographic adjustments, photography direction notes, voice notes, and a “do and don’t” block. About 4-5 minutes of editing turns this into a publishable Horizon.

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Example: campaign

Draft a Horizon for the Q3 launch campaign. Timeline: 1 August to 30 September. Audience: existing customers, with a secondary audience of analysts. Tone: more direct than our usual, slightly fewer adjectives. Lean on the long-form photography we shot in May. We are not creating new visual assets for this; the campaign uses what exists.

Returns: a campaign Horizon with definition, visual system referencing existing assets, photography notes pointing at the May shoot, tone notes adjusting from baseline, cadence recommendations, asset list. Tight prompts produce tight drafts.

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Example: regional adaptation

Draft a Horizon for our Arabic-language adaptation. We are launching in the UAE and Saudi Arabia in Q4. The Arabic typeface we have licensed is GE SS Two. The headline weight is Bold; body is Light. Cultural notes: be cautious with photography of people in religious settings; the main brand’s lighter touch on the brand’s history should be more present here. Audience: regional team members.

Returns: a regional adaptation Horizon covering typography for the new script, photography direction adjustments, voice notes for the regional team, cultural sensitivities, and a checklist for material being translated.

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Example: partnership

Draft a Horizon for our partnership with Acme Corp, which runs January through June. Co-branded lock-up uses our wordmark with Acme’s positioned to its right, separated by a 1px rule at brand-primary colour. The partnership covers joint marketing on web and email; no out-of-home or paid media. Acme’s brand guidelines require their wordmark to never appear smaller than 20mm; we honour that.

Returns: a partnership Horizon with definition, lock-up specification, channel restrictions, the partner’s constraints, the brand owner’s escalation path, and the expiry date.

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What to expect from the first draft

Oswald’s first draft is usually:

• 80% of the way there structurally. The right blocks in the right order, drawing on the right brand-record material.
• 50% of the way there in content depth. The text needs human refinement; the references to existing brand material are usually accurate.
• Conservative on novel choices. Oswald defaults to the brand’s existing patterns. If you want a deliberate departure, name it in the prompt.

A useful pattern: get the draft, identify the two or three blocks that need the most work, ask Oswald to rewrite just those with more specific direction, then edit by hand for final polish.

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What to publish, what to edit, what to discard

Three signals for each block in the draft:

• Publish as-is. The block is correct and the wording is acceptable.
• Edit. The block is structurally right but the wording or specifics need adjustment.
• Discard. The block is wrong for this Horizon (Oswald imported a default that does not fit).

The visual editor makes all three easy. Discard liberally; the test is whether the published Horizon serves the work, not how much of Oswald’s draft survived.

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Saving good prompts

Recurring Horizon types (a quarterly campaign, a partner template, a recurring regional rollout) benefit from saved prompts. Settings → AI → Oswald → Saved prompts. Save the prompt skeleton with placeholders for the parts that change. A team that runs three campaign Horizons per quarter saves a campaign prompt skeleton once and gets three faster drafts each time.

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