A brand your printer, your social manager and your next designer all read the same way
A logo is not a brand. A brand is the logo plus the rules that keep everything consistent once more than one person is producing things in your name. We build the identity and then write down how it works, so it does not quietly fall apart six months after the designer leaves.
What is included
- Brand strategy session. Who you are for, what you are not, and how you want to come across, before any visuals.
- Logo and supporting marks. A primary logo, a compact version for small spaces, and a favicon or app icon.
- Colour palette with the exact values for screen and for print, and rules for which colour does what.
- Typography. A typeface pairing licensed for web and print, with a size and weight scale.
- Brand guidelines. A PDF covering logo use, spacing, colour, type, the do and do not list, and examples on real materials.
- Starter templates. A social post template and a document or letterhead template set up in your brand.
- Naming, if you need it. For new businesses or sub brands, a shortlist of names with domain and handle checks.
What is not included
- A full website. That is Website design and build, and branding is often the step before it.
- Ongoing design production such as decks, menus and campaign art. That is Graphic design, or a retainer.
- Trademark registration. We check a name is not obviously taken. A lawyer handles the filing.
What we need from you
Two hours of your attention, spread across the project, and honest answers in the strategy session. The single most useful thing you can bring is examples of brands you admire and, more importantly, brands in your own field that you think get it wrong. Knowing what you do not want narrows the work faster than anything else.
If you have existing materials, send them all, including the ones you are embarrassed by. An old logo somebody made in Word tells us what has to be replaced and what your customers already recognise you by.
How it works
- Strategy call. Positioning and personality first. If you have existing materials we audit what is working and what is not.
- Direction. Two or three visual directions as mood and type, not finished logos. You pick one.
- Design. We develop the chosen direction into the full identity and show it on real applications, your sign, your invoice, your Instagram grid, so you see it in context rather than on a white square.
- Guidelines and handover. Editable source files, exports in every format you will need, and the written guidelines.
What you get
Editable source files, logo exports in colour, black and reversed, the colour and type specifications, the guidelines PDF, and the starter templates, all in one organised folder you keep.
How long it takes
Typically two to three weeks. Naming adds about a week.
What it costs
Quoted per project once we know the scope, which means whether it is a new business or a refresh, whether naming is involved, and how many applications you need designed. Fixed before work starts. It is frequently the first phase of a website project, in which case it is quoted as one number rather than two.
An example
Advocacy for Human Value needed an identity that held up across two very different audiences, donors and scholarship applicants, before we built their site. The brand work set the tone the website then ran with.
Questions people ask about branding
- I just need a logo. Can I buy only that? Yes, but a logo with no colour, type or usage rules tends to come back to us within the year to be fixed. We will quote both and explain the difference rather than deciding for you.
- Do you do rebrands, or only new brands? Both. A refresh keeps what people already recognise and repairs what has become inconsistent.
- Will the brand work on the website you build? If we do both, they are designed together. If you bring an existing brand we work within it, and we tell you early if something will not hold up on screen.