Halvane designs identities and packaging for food and drink brands. Most weeks the studio runs six to eight client projects at once, with review dates that clients set and rarely move.
Before: a plan that was out of date by Tuesday
Every Monday at 9:00 the whole studio met to rebuild the week on a whiteboard. Adaeze Okafor, who leads studio operations, then copied the plan into a spreadsheet and chased updates over chat. "By Tuesday afternoon a client had moved something and the board was fiction," she says.
Requests arrived everywhere: email threads with clients, the studio chat, the website brief form. Nobody owned the inbox, so small tasks waited until they became urgent.
Rollout: two weeks, one project at a time
The studio started with a single client project, Saltmarsh, and connected three calendars and the shared inbox. Muse spent the first week learning how long Halvane's work actually takes: a logo feedback round averages 90 minutes, a dieline revision about two hours.
Muse has the week drafted before we open our laptops. We spend ten minutes adjusting it, not an hour building it.Adaeze Okafor, Studio operations lead
What changed
- Monday planning dropped from 60 minutes to 10. The team reviews Muse's draft and changes two or three placements.
- Missed client deadlines fell by 31% in the first quarter, because review dates now block time days in advance.
- Each designer gets about 6.5 hours a week back, mostly from fewer status messages and less context switching.
- Handoffs are automatic. When a design review is approved, print files go straight to production with the right brief attached.
What's next
Halvane is moving client reviews into Taskmuse guest access this autumn, so clients can see review dates without another status email.