Five Logins, Five Brand Kits: Auditing a Bloated Design Stack
Objective: Given Halo Top's current six-tool design stack, apply the lesson's 'one primary, one secondary' rule to decide what to keep, what to cut, and why, before the next round of tool renewals.
You're the marketing generalist at Halo Top. Renewal invoices just landed for six design tools, some clearly overlapping, and your manager wants a cut list before the next billing cycle.
Categorize every tool by job-to-be-done, flag duplicates, and land on a primary plus secondary tool with one shared Brand Kit.
Before you start
What you'll need
Free path (everything below is enough to finish)
Free, fast to share with a manager for sign-off on the cut list
The process
1 step
Step 01 of 01
The lesson's Common Mistakes section is explicit: buying every tool means five logins with five outdated brand kits, which is worse than two tools kept current. Pick a primary and a secondary.
Halo Top's stack is Canva, Figma, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Express, Midjourney, and Remove.bg, each renewing separately. Which two survive as primary and secondary, and which get cut?
Procedure
- List each tool's actual weekly job (social posts, mockups, pixel editing, AI imagery, background removal)
- Mark any tool whose job is already covered by another row
- Pick the tool used most weeks as primary; pick one clear complement as secondary
- Cut or downgrade every tool whose job the primary or secondary already covers
Stack audit, Halo Top marketing Canva, social + decks, used daily -> KEEP, primary Adobe Express, social + decks, used weekly -> CUT, overlaps Canva entirely Figma, landing pages / dev handoff, used weekly -> KEEP, secondary Photoshop, pixel editing, used monthly by one person -> KEEP, single seat only Midjourney, hero imagery, used monthly -> DOWNGRADE, move to as-needed credits Remove.bg, background removal, used rarely -> CUT, Canva's built-in tool covers this
Healthy
Two tools survive as primary/secondary, every cut is justified by a named overlap with a kept tool.
Unhealthy
Every tool is kept 'just in case', or tools are cut by cost alone without checking what job they cover.
What this means
A tool earns its renewal by covering a job nothing else in the stack already does, not by being useful in the abstract.
So what do I do about it?
| Symptom | Action | Effort |
|---|---|---|
| Two or more tools cover the same job-to-be-done | Cut the lower-usage one and route that work through the tool already doing the job | 30 min |
| No single Brand Kit exists across the surviving tools | Set up one Brand Kit in the primary tool and mirror fonts/colors in the secondary | 30 min |
Final deliverable
A tool-by-tool audit table naming which two tools survive as primary and secondary, with every cut justified by a named overlap.
See a reference example
Stack audit, MVMT marketing Canva, social + decks, daily -> KEEP, primary Figma, landing pages, weekly -> KEEP, secondary Adobe Express, social + decks -> CUT, overlaps Canva CapCut, short-form video, weekly -> KEEP, no overlap with kept tools Unsplash, stock photos -> KEEP, free, no overlap Cut count: 1 of 5. Two-tool core (Canva + Figma) plus two single-purpose tools (CapCut, Unsplash) with no coverage overlap.
Success criteria
You're done when you can:
- Names exactly one primary and one secondary tool
- Every cut is justified by an overlap with a kept tool, not cost alone
- Flags where a shared Brand Kit is missing across the surviving tools