Ines Halloran

Brand and product design direction

Design director · 16 years, brand agency then in-house, now fractional for Series A–C teams

Synthetic expert — a composite written by Avva as a worked example. Not a real person.

Synthetic demo

Sixteen years of brand and product design for venture-backed companies: an agency decade on identities, then in-house at a fintech, now fractional for Series A–C teams. The calls below are about what to redesign, what to leave alone, and when the brand is the problem rather than the product.

What to redesign, what to leave alone, and when the brand is the problem rather than the product: rebrands and logo changes, redesign scope from onboarding flows to dashboards, design systems and when to build one, accessibility and contrast floors, usability research before build, visual direction, and motion.

Rebrand or refreshRedesign scopeDesign system timingAccessibility calls

Updated September 2, 2026

Calls Ines Halloran actually made

2 of 88 decisions in this model, in their own words. This page prints them in published order — it has no way to know your situation. Your agent receives them ordered against it.

  1. Seed-stage B2B startup, 11 people, 40 paying customers, no clear positioning yet. The founder wanted a full rebrand — new name, new logo, new site — before the next raise.

    No rebrand. Fix the homepage headline and the product's empty states; leave the name and mark alone.

    A rebrand before you know who you are is theatre. You will rebrand again the moment the positioning lands, and you will have spent the one design budget you had on the wrong problem.

  2. Series B, 3,000 customers. The company moved from SMB tooling to a mid-market platform and the sales team kept apologizing for the site 'looking like a side project'.

    Rebrand — but typography, photography and the site first; the logo last, and only if it still fights the new register after everything else changed.

    There is a real story here: the audience changed. That is the one condition under which I touch identity. Even then the logo is the smallest lever and the most expensive to move.

How Ines decides

What their model weighs first, and what you can hand your agent to ask. Avva writes no verdict: your agent reads Ines Halloran’s material and answers you.

What this expert weighs first

Identity moves only when the story movesMUST WEIGH
Watch before you redesignMUST WEIGH
Protect the habits of daily usersMUST WEIGH
Readable and operable by everyone, before it is prettyALSO WEIGH
One message per surfaceALSO WEIGH
Build the system when the second product needs itALSO WEIGH
Trust signals are real or absentALSO WEIGH
Differentiate the surface, keep the markALSO WEIGH
Motion explains, never delaysTIE-BREAKER
Somebody stays with itTIE-BREAKER

All 10 are listed here. What each one looks for, plus stop rules and context switches, arrives when your agent asks. This is a reference model, so it answers in full to everyone — no key, nothing held back. A real expert’s model answers a caller without a key with a slice of itself, and in full with a free key.

What you can ask them

  • Check this before I commitA full pass over a plan or a draft
  • Which of these two?A call between options, their stop rules checked first
  • Anything here they would reject?A quick scan against their hard lines
  • What should I settle first?The questions they ask before choosing an approach
  • Is this even their field?Where their judgment applies, and where it stops

Each returns a protocol to follow, not a finished answer. Where the model disagrees with generic best practice, the model wins.

Connect Ines Halloran to your agent

The connector works now, with no key. This is a reference model, so it answers in full to everyone — no key, nothing held back. A real expert’s model answers a caller without a key with a slice of itself, and in full with a free key. The standing note is what keeps Ines Halloran getting asked.

You remember to ask

One URL, no key

Paste it as a custom connector. It works now and returns the complete published model.

https://avva.chat/mcp/design-direction-ines-halloran

You have to remember to ask your agent to use it.

Your AI remembers

A standing instruction

A line in CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md or GEMINI.md makes your agent consult Ines Halloran without being asked.

Finish setup ↓

Catches the decisions you would not have thought to ask about.

  1. Add the connector

    Pick where your agent runs, then paste the line below. It connects without a key, and a reference model answers in full either way.

    https://avva.chat/mcp/design-direction-ines-halloran

    Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector. Works now and returns the complete published model — this is a reference model, so nothing is held back. A real expert’s model answers without a key with a slice.

    A real expert’s model answers a caller without a key with a slice of itself, and in full with a free key. Here a key buys only a higher daily limit. The key appears once, in this tab only, and anyone who has it shares that limit.

    One work email so we know who is using the beta. It is stored separately from the key — never joined to it, or to anything your agent asks. No account, no card. We send the key there too, so closing this tab does not lose it.

  2. Make it standing

    This is the point of the product. Paste it once into CLAUDE.md — or wherever this client keeps project instructions. Your agent then works under Ines Halloran’s rules the whole way: it asks their questions before locking an approach, gates drafts on their stop rules, and reviews against their bar before anything ships. Not a one-off second opinion.

    # CLAUDE.md — standing advisor (Avva: Ines Halloran) For brand and product design direction work: - Early in a task, call `expert_questions` before locking an approach. - Use `red_flag_check` as a cheap gate on drafts/diffs. - Before finalizing a significant decision, call `review` with context + proposal; follow the returned protocol exactly — the model wins over generic best practice. - For A/B choices, call `compare_options` (hard stops apply before scoring). - Unsure this domain applies, call `about_expert`. It states what a packet costs, so budget with the real number rather than guessing. - Not on mechanical work: renames, typo fixes, formatting, questions of fact, or anything trivially reversible. Once per decision, not once per message. - Err toward calling. A packet you did not need costs some context; a decision finalized without one is the failure this advisor exists to prevent. If `review` returns "reject", revise before proceeding. Coverage labels describe approved-decision breadth, not predictive accuracy.

    Or try a single review first

    Paste this in your next message once the connector is in. One decision, one protocol.

    Use the Avva expert Ines Halloran before we finalize this. What we're deciding: <paste your plan, doc, or diff here> Call the review tool with that as the proposal, follow the returned protocol exactly, and give me the verdict and any required changes before you continue.

    Not legal, medical, financial, or other professional advice. Terms of Use

What this is
  • Written by Avva. A reference model — a worked example so you can see what a published model looks like and connect an agent to one. Labelled Demo wherever it appears.
  • Not a real person. The name is invented and the record is a composite, authored in one consistent voice. No real expert's positions were copied.
  • Same protocol. Your agent receives it exactly as it would a real expert's model: the cases, the forces, the fitted order, the stop rules.
  • Steps aside. When a real expert publishes in this domain, this model leaves the shelf.