Speaker A
Hey guys, hope you guys are doing well. Um, it's been a while and yeah, it's it's been a while and it's officially 2026 now that at the time of this video and yeah, we're so back to work right
Huy shares how he built a client website in 4 days and discusses design studio plans for 2026 with insights on process and AI use.
Key Takeaways
- Clear client communication and existing brand assets can significantly speed up project timelines.
- Iterative design with client feedback is crucial for aligning with brand vision under tight deadlines.
- AI tools are valuable for coding and knowledge management but require user expertise to maximize results.
- Complex technical challenges can be overcome with research and leveraging online resources.
- Intentional content creation helps share meaningful insights into creative workflows.
Summary
- Huy discusses launching a client website within a tight 4-day deadline for a production house acting as consultants.
- The project involved creating a temporary splash page with a hero section to support a major conference event.
- The client provided extensive business context and brand materials, enabling a fast discovery phase.
- Huy and his collaborator Ivra iterated multiple design drafts based on the client’s clear brand vision and feedback.
- Development challenges included creating complex shader gradients, which Huy researched extensively.
- Huy leveraged AI tools like Claude for knowledge management and coding assistance but emphasized the need for prior knowledge.
- The final website features interactive elements, microraphics, and a clean design aligned with the client’s industry.
- The project was completed successfully on time, coinciding with the Silicon Valley Video Summit conference.
- Huy aims to create more intentional behind-the-scenes content showing his design and development process.
- He shares insights on effectively using AI in coding by combining research, specific prompts, and iterative feedback.
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
now. We've recently launched a few projects and there's actually one project I wanted to kind of walk you guys through as well that I'm incredibly proud of. And also, again, I want to add a bit more intention for these kind of
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videos as well for like these vlogs. Rather than just having random sequences of my life, I want to kind of add more intention when it comes to showing the process and showing the behind the scenes of let's say how I design my
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work, how I deliver work for my clients or how I, you know, develop my projects and develop my creative websites. I want to be more intentional about that. So, tonight we're going to walk through a project that I'm incredibly proud of.
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So, just for context, this project that we've been doing is for a production house or they're not your traditional production house. They're more of like a consultant. So, in a sense, they reached out to us back then and then they told
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us they needed the website within four freaking days. When they told me during the call, I was like very hesitant. But after having like a a conversation with them and just kind of listening on this current situation, I knew I wanted to
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take the project despite being such a tight timeline. I usually don't take on projects within 4 days. But luckily, it's it's only a splash page or only like a temporary like website. So, only a hero section. So that was fine, but 4
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days is still pretty tight. But I took it regardless because they seem genuinely like passionate about what about what they do and also they also seem like they respected what we do a lot. So they basically said that we're
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going to be your best clients and we're going to give you all the creative freedom to create this work for us.
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Yeah, we took the project and uh we spent the weekends to one day for discovery, one day for design and then two days for development and QA and then we launched right in time for their event. Um they had like a conference
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that's really really big and they're pitching their services there I think. So that's why they kind of want a temporary website to kind of funnel people in after the conference. I think the conference itself is a very big
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conference. I think it's called um Silicon Valley Video Summit. So a lot of big companies are there. So, it's a really big opportunity for them to kind of funnel in and then build interest for their um startup as well. Um here's the
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final project. I'm going to show to you guys straight from the get-go and then we can break down through the quickly the design process and the development process as well. So, here's the current website. Very clean. Very very proud of
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this as well, especially now that it's been done within like 4 days. Yeah, just a quick value proposition here. Building credibility and authority with like name drops. We have this pill shape here with like a contained shader and gradient.
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And the best thing about it, you can hold and interact with it. Really, really cool. And then we'll also build out design out some microraphics that kind of align with kind of the industry that they're in. And we also have this
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analog contact form just to break down the kind of the design process. So contextually in order to able to finish this within 4 days, we had to again like lock in so hard. But luckily before they engaged with us, they already had like a
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lot of business contact. So they had a document of their capabilities deck. They had a brand questionnaire that they filled out from like a previous agency that they've engaged before. So we kind of had all the business context with. So
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technically we didn't have to do a very uh thorough and we didn't have to spend a lot of time within the discovery process. We only spent like around like 34 minutes to really understand a bit deeper about their situation and just
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ask any personal questions that we generally curious about. So we took all that information and kind of put it into Claude. And if you guys are not aware, we usually do this for every project as well is that once we have all the
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business contacts, all the documents that they provide, we put into claude and kind of use Claude as like a knowledge hub of the brand. So if we're like curious about anything, we can just ask Claude. And I think it's just really
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helpful to rather than just going back and forth with the client, you can have all this information within Claude and you can ask to source from the documents that the clients provide us. And then when it comes to the design process
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itself, luckily the client had an aura deck where I like how they called it an aura deck when it's just like a mood board. But they had a very clear vision of how they want the brand to feel or what kind of
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visual language they want to convey for their brand. So luckily we had that and we did a lot of iteration based on that.
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As you can see here, it's a lot of different iterations. And again, this project, we collaborate Ivorra and I, we worked on this together. And we did a lot of iterations, mostly Ivra as well.
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But eventually, we end up with these initial drafts of these two over here, these three with also these microraphics. And a lot of it was just back and forth with the client as well.
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Like when we had an iteration that we we liked and we felt confident, we just texted the client right away. We got his feedback. And then we have more iterations here. And then eventually it nailed down to these uh these four. And
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then eventually after just getting feedback from them, we finalized to down to this one. So once that's done, we kind of move straight away to the devel process. I won't go too deep into this, but one of the most challenging thing
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was definitely the shaders, the gradient. I didn't have any specific experience with creating like shaders gradient, but I did have a basic knowledge in it of how it's constructed.
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And there's also documentation that you can follow as well. So I kind of used like documentation from the book of shaders and a lot of resources online as well from I think from Maxim Heckle and also Oliver Larose. So there's a lot of
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resources online when you search it up. So I kind of combined just did a lot of research on my end about those kind of initial knowledge and also with the help of AI of course did a lot of iteration
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based on um kind of the documentation of the code examples as well kind of dropped it in AI to help me iterate a shaders or or just help me spin up a a project that I can experiment I I can
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tweak around with and I think one of the biggest thing about using AI for coding is that you need prior knowledge somehow like you need to know what you're doing when you need to know what you're specifically asking AI for. I feel like
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you won't get good results if you can just ask AI, oh, can you create a shader gradient for me with vanilla JavaScript?
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Most likely you would get a very mediocre result or you either have to constantly go back and forth with Claude to get what you want or eventually you get frustrated. My usual experiences with coding with AI is have prior
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knowledge. Do a lot of research on your own and learn on your own first. And then once you have that kind of jargon, that kind of basic knowledge of how things are constructed, then you can specifically ask Claude for a very
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specific output. So rather than asking for a basic shader, you can ask, oh, I want this shader gradient with uh mix of three and four colors. Also, I want to be able to manipulate the amplitude, the frequency, and it show should also be in
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a sine wave. So, if you're that specific of what you want, then the results from AI is usually so much better as well.
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And then we eventually created something like this. So, yeah. Um, and overall, we're very proud of this kind of project, especially given that it's been done within 4 days. And then now we're also working on the final version of the
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landing page. So, this is just a temporary page, but now we're also designing um the full landing page, the full kind of story storytelling experience. So, yeah, stay tuned for that. But I won't go any deeper than this and hopefully you found it helpful
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somehow u regarding just any of part of the process. Yeah, I won't keep this too long. I'm feel like I've been yapping forever. So, I'll probably wrap it up for the night since it's getting pretty late. Yeah. And then we'll be doing some
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climbing tomorrow. All right. Good night. Cheers, guys. And now somebody the mic the mic the mic resurrection make the mic Wherever you are, keep walking.
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Wherever you are, so close. I've been working on Yeah, I've been working on this for quite some time. Few weeks. Is it the furthest you've been?
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Uh, I think slightly further than I've been, but I think I I last time I also fell at the a similar spot.
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It's rough. It's so bumpy. It was the scary. Yeah, cuz it's like one clip above. It's built built into the sport.
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It's like Yeah, it's bungee joint is built into the sport as well. I'll rest and I'll try again.
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that you can't predict like a book that you can't resist and sing along a song that's oh so sexual bring along a make it keep going how do you feel truly tragic truly truly how many hoes away are you
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like three hoes away oh my god Uh, next time. Yeah, if you guys can try climbing, I highly suggest it.
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Peak dopamine and peak flow. You mean leading, right? Not just any climbing. If you're already climbing, you should try to climb lead climbing.
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Hey guys. So, I actually want to take this moment to kind of reflect more a bit about um the business for 2026 or for the new year's. If you guys don't know, I'm a very introspective person.
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So I think a lot when it comes to on like how to grow the business or how to collaborate with more awesome creatives or how to work with the right clients.
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So with that said a few days back I did a bit of journaling of where I want to be for the business-wise for the studio for monologue. It came with a few things when it comes to this year's goals. When I set goals for
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myself I tend to not set very practical goals. I guess I tend to set goals are a little bit bigger picture. So for 2026, one of the biggest goals that I want to move towards to or at least achieve this
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year is work on extremely fulfilling projects. Even though last year I took on on only seven projects, those projects were were very profitable, but um some projects didn't really fully align with creative side of things or the mission of the founders or the
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clients I was working with. So in a sense, there are still good projects but not dream projects. So this year, instead of seven projects, two or three are like dream projects and four or five are good or okay projects. I actually
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want make it this year where they're all dream projects, like 7 to eight dream projects. And now that I'm hiring, I'm collaborating with more creatives. We could bump that to like seven to 10 uh dream projects where the mission of the
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founders or the clients that we're working with really align with us. And when we choose clients, we really want to focus on if the mission of the founders are incredibly ambitious, were very personal to us. That's when we put
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all of our effort, all of our creativity, all of our energy into that to create really awesome work that creates insane results for them. So that's kind of the main vision for 2026 is extremely fulfilling projects where every time I finish a project, I want it
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to be more of like a long-lasting relationship where rather than like a fully transactional relationship, we're actually helping each other out. If the client needs something or if on our end if we need something, we can reach out
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to them as well. So more of like a beneficial mutual relationship where we truly connect founder to founder rather than like a client to freelancer or a client to an agency. So that's one of the biggest goals for this year. And
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number two is deliverability. So one of the biggest problem that we've had last year is finishing projects on time on deadline. So I would say most of the projects we've done last year go over the estimated timeline. So usually we
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would say this project needs to be done within 2 months but it would get extended to 3 or 4 months. And then imagine we work when we work on like two or three projects at the same time and
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the delays kind of carry over and we start new project at the same time kind of damages our margins in a sense where we're still stuck with this project and then we're starting new projects as well. Because of that, we are not able
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to kind of put all of our attention into the new projects because we're trying to like a speedrun like finishing the the projects that we're that is supposed to be done a month or two months back but we're trying to wrap it up because you
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know we're still waiting clients to give us content or we're still waiting for clients to give us copy or two is that we're just so busy with things that we're not able to finish it on time. So that was one of the biggest problems or
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one of the biggest challenge I want to solve uh for the studio is nailing the deliverability of the project and meeting the the deadlines so that number one we're saving margins number two we're maximizing for client satisfaction and number three we're also putting all
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of our attention and energy on the current projects rather than the ones that were that is supposed to be done um already. So that's the main goal. And then number three, I would say as I'm kind of scaling the studio, I'm also
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kind of exploring the potential or the opportunity of expanding more on the brand strategy side of things or the brand visual identity side of things as well. Kind of expanding beyond web uh for this year. So rather than you know
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just focusing explicitly on web I mean I think that's something that we still want to be on the edge with like that's our unfair advantage is being extremely good on the web and delivering website designs and like experiences that you
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know really create strong results for our clients. We also want to explore like the brand strategy side of things of I guess building a brand from start to finish rather than a website itself.
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Even though it's just something that we're kind of exploring, but as I was kind of building the monologue studio or building the brand itself, there's just so many like kind of small things that makes a brand feel something, you know?
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I think a I've been inspired a lot by studios like mouthwash studio or Pentagram, other studios that create really awesome branding and like I guess brand experiences that makes you feel something. I think that's just really makes me feel really captivated in that
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kind of dimension. So that's something I want to explore in the future as well. I think one of the biggest biggest playground for me to experiment with that is my own like studio. So monologue right now we're kind of like really
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focusing on the narrative and this storydriven side of things of you know brand and the web. So just something that feels incredibly grounded in the human side of things and just expressing the empathy and the caring side of our
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work. So that's something that that's kind of the foundation of the studio. So it'll be very interesting. Right now, we're kind of exploring how we can communicate that visually as well, especially that we're also a very technically and very designdriven studio
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as well. So, how do we connect this technical technical side of things and merge it with like a very human and very personal and very empathetic uh feel of the brand? How do we merge those two together? So, that's kind of like the
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visual direction I want to kind of bring this the studio or bring the brand into one piece. But yeah, so those are kind of the goals at the moment right now.
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Overall, I'm very very excited. Hopefully, I'm expressing my my thoughts and my goals here well here. Usually, I communicate or I note it down very clearly, very I guess organized on my journal, but it's a totally different story when I speak to the camera or
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about my goals. Yeah, I think that's kind of the vision I want to head because the world is constantly changing uh especially with AI and everything.
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So, I don't know where I'm going at this point. I'm kind of just kind of yapping and spitballing at the moment. But yeah, those are kind of the goals for this year and I really want to really nail
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down those three things for this year and I actually want to take you guys throughout the journey as well and see if I actually commit and follow through with those goals. So yeah, that's pretty much all I'm going to I'm going to end
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it here. So yeah, take care and uh till next time. Where do we go?
Topics:client website4-day projectdesign processdevelopmentshader gradientsAI in codingClaude AIcreative workflowSilicon Valley Video Summittemporary website
