Post-Pivot, OpenBrand Launches Delivery Service To Become A DropBox For Designers

Originally launched as a way for companies to manage their branding assets in-house, OpenBrand has since pivoted to offer a SaaS for designers, agencies and their clients to collaborate and share what they are working on — logos, business cards, ads, illustrations etc. — something along the lines of a BaseCamp for designers, perhaps. However, it’s recently launched a new ‘Delivery’ feature which boils down the startup’s proposition somewhat further and, potentially, repositions the London/Prague company to become a ‘DropBox for designers’.

The idea behind the new Delivery service is to enable designers to send “clearly presented and well-organized creative works” to their clients. This can be anything from logos, photos and illustrations, to a website design, a piece of advertising, business card, or t-shirt. In fact, OpenBrand has ‘blueprints’ for over 600 types of creative works, while each blueprint has placeholders for the designer to add related information (and prompts them to do so) to ensure that the client not only receives a link/file that is easy to access but also technical specifications and guidance, such as a colour palette, for example, or various different file formats.

Designers can also edit the creative work after the link has been sent, as well as be notified when the client opens the file for the first time.

With the Delivery service alone, it’s easy to see how, for designers who need to share and keep track of their ‘work-in-progress’ and the finished articles that they send to clients, using OpenBrand might make a lot more sense over something like DropBox. And it certainly seems a no-brainer to have this happen in the cloud.

However, perhaps most fun of all is OpenBrand’s up and coming feature which will see it able to generate a preview of what a design/piece of branding will look like actually in context. So, for example, you’ve created a design for a business card which is ready for production, using OpenBrand, you’ll be able to show the client what it will look like in somebody’s hand, on a desk, etc. Something similar will also be possible with billboards on buildings, t-shirts on models, ads in magazines, and so on.

“Designers have been doing this manually for more important clients, we’ll make it completely automatic, yet it will look great”, says OpenBrand co-founder Mirek Burkon.

I’m told that the new preview functionality utilises the Daisy API and, I have to say, it looks pretty cool.

OpenBrand is backed to the tune of £150k by a private Czech angel investor, funding that it’s used to get to an MVP. Meanwhile, the company is currently in the process of relocating to be wholly based in London.