I built an app called Noodal

I started this newsletter for the same reason I built Noodal.

I want creatives to be able to do their best work without the wasted movement that quietly drains it out of them. That's it. I learned the tools and techniques in school. The way of working came later, on the job, through repetition and frustration and a slow accumulation of fixes I had to figure out for myself. This newsletter exists to shorten that gap for the people reading it.

Noodal exists to close another part of it.

I've used everything. Google Docs. Slides. Notion. Dropbox Paper. Milanote. Figma. Miro. Pinterest. Frame.io. Are.na. Savee. The whole stack.

Most of them I've used for years. Some of them I've loved, in moments. Most of them weren’t built for the way creatives actually work; much less for the entire creative process.

I hate working in Google Docs for creative briefs. It's rigid, and rightfully so; it was designed for enterprise office workers, not for designers and artists trying to direct a piece of work. Reviewing visuals, embedding non-Drive video, dropping in a sketch, organizing a mood board, capturing feedback on a frame; the format fights you every step of the way. Notion is the next best thing, and I'd say it's the closest most creatives have come to a real creative workspace. But even inside Notion, I'm constantly hopping out to Figma, Milanote, Dropbox, Miro, an AI tool, and back. The apps don't feel intuitively connected.

Dropbox Paper has been a favorite of mine for a long time, but Dropbox is incentivized to push you into their file system, not solve your creative process. Milanote is beautiful, but I can't deliver final work in it because clients expect a familiar doc format. And the AI tools I use for research, synthesis, and complex thinking sit in their own corner of the workflow, completely disconnected from where the actual making happens.

So I've been doing what every working creative does. I've been stitching it together. Seven to ten apps for a single project. Multiple logins, multiple subscriptions, multiple places to lose the same file. And the cost isn't just time. It's the part of creative work that only happens when you stay close to your idea long enough to hear what it's trying to become.

The creative process is both fluid and rigid. The tools we use only serve one side at a time.

That's the thing I couldn't stop turning over. When I'm thinking, I need a tool that lets me throw spaghetti on the wall. When I'm communicating to a team, I need a tool that holds structure. When I'm presenting to a client, I need a tool that looks like the format they're used to. And when I'm researching, prototyping, or playing back complex files like Lotties, I need a tool that doesn't break.

What I wanted was a single workspace that could do all of it. Something that felt dynamic when I was thinking and grounded when I was communicating. Something that could hold the messy front-end of a project, the structured middle, the polished output at the end, and everything in between.

It's called Noodal. And the question it answers is the one I ask myself ten times a day.

What do you do when you have an idea? – you Noodal on it ;)

There's a lot inside Noodal, but I want to tell you about the three features I personally use the most. The ones that have actually changed how I work.

Annotation. I can sketch directly on any page, any image, any video, any document, with a single click. When I'm on a call directing an artist, I pull up the work and draw what I mean. They see it in real time. It's the closest thing I've found to standing next to someone at a monitor. No more vague feedback. No more "let me explain it again differently." Just draw the thing.

Canvas. This is where ideas land first. It's a free-form page for the spaghetti-on-the-wall phase of a project; sketches, images, half-formed sentences, voice memos, color, video, whatever's in my head. I can see everything at once and start finding the connections. It's the digital version of the studio wall I used to pin index cards to. Except this one travels with me.

Library. Every reference I see online; a still from a film, a frame from someone's portfolio, a photograph, a color, a piece of branding; gets right-clicked and saved into my Library through the Chrome extension. Done. Forever. And the Library is smart enough that I can search by description; the mood, the color, the subject. No more "I know I saved this somewhere." If you read last week's article on reference, this is the tool I wish I'd had for the last fifteen years.

There's more. Mind Maps for organizing thinking. Docs built specifically for creative deliverables. An Assistant for research that's never trained on your work. Embeds for code, Lottie playback, and live prototypes. Time-specific video feedback. Stickies. The point of all of it is the same

Here's where I need your help. I’d love for you to test it out for free.

Noodal has a Free plan for you to see if it’s a good fit. Sign up, spin up a project, and put it through the kind of work you actually do. If it fits the way you think, you'll know quickly.

For the readers who want to take it further, I'm putting together a small group I'm calling the Founders Cohort. The first 100 readers who upgrade get a courtesy coupon for 50% off any plan for the next 12 months. It's my way of thanking the people who help shape what Noodal becomes in this earliest chapter.

Just use promo code: FOUNDERS100 if you’re interested in upgrading as a Founding member.

Founders also get a few things I can't offer at scale. A personal onboarding demo with me, one on one, so you start with the workflow set up the way it'll actually serve you. Direct access to me through a private Slack community where I'm building in public, listening, and shipping based on what you tell me you need. And a more personal line of support than anyone else gets.

This isn't a launch sale. It's a small invitation to a small group of people who want to help build something with me. The product is already good; it's already replaced four tools in my own workflow and I trust it with real client work. But the next phase gets shaped by the people in this Slack, and I'd rather build it with you than for you.

The Free tier is the only thing you have to commit to right now. The Founders coupon is there when and if you want it.

This is the product I wish I'd had at 22, sitting at the bottom of a blank canvas wondering why the tools never quite fit. It's the product I wish I'd had every time a client's Google Doc sent me into a three-app rebuild. It's the product I want every creative reading this newsletter to have, because I've watched too many great ideas die in the friction between tools.

Reply when you're in. I want to know what you make first.