Positioning, visual identity and tone, plus the rules that keep material produced by somebody else a year from now still looking like you. Not just a logo delivered in an archive.
It is what remains in somebody's head after they have dealt with you. It forms from everything: how the site looks, how quickly you answer an email, what the invoice says, how the person answering the phone sounds, what the parcel looks like when it arrives.
That is why a branding project dealing only with the visual side solves a thin slice. You can have the most beautiful identity in the industry and a weak brand, if the promise is unclear or if the real experience contradicts it.
We start from positioning, meaning who you are for, what you do better than the alternatives, and why anybody would believe that. Only then do we move to how it translates into mark, colour, typography and words. The visual part done before the strategic part is decoration, not branding.
Who you address, what problem you solve, how you differ from the customer's real alternatives, including the alternative of doing nothing. Plus the evidence supporting each claim.
The concrete output is an ordered set of messages: what you say in three seconds, what you say in thirty, what you say in a long conversation. From those, the website, the presentations and the ads are then written.
The logo in every variant you actually need: horizontal, compact, on light and dark backgrounds, the very small version for an icon. Plus the minimum sizes at which it stays legible.
Around it, the system: the palette with contrasts verified numerically, typography with its hierarchy, photographic treatment, supporting shapes and graphics. The system is the part that makes a new piece of material look like you without containing a large logo.
How you sound when you write. Formal or direct, technical or plain, humorous or sober. Decided once and applied everywhere, from the headings on the site to the error message in a form.
We deliver it with paired examples, meaning like this and not like that, on real situations from your business. It is the only form of tone guide people actually use.
An identity only becomes real once it is put on something. Templates for what you actually use: presentations, quotes, invoices, email signatures, social media material, packaging, signage.
Every application surfaces problems the logo alone does not show, for example that the mark becomes illegible over a photograph or that the palette does not work in print.
A logo approved in a presentation, enlarged on a two metre screen, can be unusable in real life. It is checked against the cases where it actually appears.
| Check | What it catches |
|---|---|
| Legibility at small size | A mark that works on a banner and becomes a smudge at 16 pixels, which is exactly the size of the browser tab icon |
| Single colour | What happens on a stamp, an engraving, a fax or economy printing. If the logo depends on a gradient, it does not survive |
| Contrast, numerically | Colour pairs that look elegant on the designer's screen and become illegible in sunlight or for somebody with low vision |
| Colour blindness | Palettes in which two colours with different meanings look identical to roughly one man in twelve |
| Over photography | A mark that disappears over busy images, which is inevitable on social media |
| Availability check | Names and marks too close to somebody else's in the same industry. We are not intellectual property advisers, but we flag what we find and tell you when a specialist is worth it |
| Screen and print | Colours that look perfect on a monitor and come out completely different in print. The equivalences are set from the start |
Identities built on what is fashionable now age visibly within three years, and redoing them costs more than you saved by following the trend. We keep the visual foundation timeless enough to last, and put the freshness in the layers that are easy to change: supporting graphics, photography, campaigns. There you can follow any trend without touching the foundation.
Conversations with you, with the team and, if possible, with customers. What they think you sell often differs surprisingly from what you think.
What everyone says, how everyone looks. The point is not to copy but to see where it is crowded, so we do not come out identical to five other firms.
In writing, approved by you, before any drawing. It is the document against which every visual decision is then judged.
Two or three distinct directions, each applied to the same real materials. Comparable, not one good one and two fillers.
The chosen direction, taken all the way and tested against the checks above. This is where the real problems get solved.
Files, templates and the brand manual, plus a session with your team so they know how to use them.
The identity becomes a component system in UI/UX design and is applied directly on landing pages and in email. We make it once and use it everywhere, which is precisely the point of a system.
No, and that confusion costs money. The logo is a recognition mark. The brand is what people believe about you when they see it. You can change the logo without changing anything that matters, and if the problem was what you promise or to whom, you will have spent a budget to stay exactly where you were.
Four to eight weeks for a complete identity, depending on how many applications have to be covered. The strategy part, meaning positioning and messaging, usually takes longer than the visual part, because it involves decisions somebody on your side has to make.
Almost always yes. Often the problem is not the logo but that there is nothing around it: no defined palette, no typography rules, no tone. In that case we build the system around what you have, which is cheaper and preserves the recognition you have accumulated.
The logo in every variant and format, vector included, the palette with codes for screen and print, the fonts with their licences, templates for the materials you use, plus the manual saying how they are used. All source files are yours.
Precisely because there are three of you. In a year you hire somebody else, you work with a printer, with a freelancer on materials, with an agency for an event. Each will make a choice, and if there are no written rules, the choices differ. After ten such decisions the brand no longer resembles itself.
Whether you are starting from nothing or already have something that no longer keeps up, the first conversation settles whether you need a new identity or just rules around what you have.