Build a brand people remember.
Just starting out, or long overdue a rebrand? Either way the job is the same: decide once what you look like and sound like, write it down, and then never have to decide again. That is what turns a business into one people recognise. And recognising you is the first step to trusting you.
Six places your brand turns up. Switch the guidelines off to see what most businesses actually look like after five years of decisions made one at a time.
-
Website
-
Email
-
Social
-
Leaflet
-
Shopfront
-
Product
One logo, one pair of typefaces, one set of colours, applied the same way every time. Nobody consciously notices this; they notice the version where it is missing, and what they feel is that they are not quite sure who they are dealing with.
01 The logo
A primary lockup plus the versions you will actually need: small, single colour, on dark, on light, square for a profile picture. Supplied as vector files that will still be usable in ten years, not a JPG off someone's desktop.
02 Colour
A full palette rather than two favourites: a main colour, the supporting ones, and the neutrals that do most of the actual work. Every value checked for legibility before it ships, because a brand colour nobody can read on is not a brand colour.
03 Type
One typeface for headings, one for everything else, both licensed for web and print so you are never told you cannot use your own font on a poster.
04 Tone
How you sound in writing, with real examples: the words you use, the ones you avoid, and what a normal sentence from you looks like. This is the part most guidelines skip and the part your customers actually read.
05 The guidelines
One document that says what to do, short enough that people read it. It is what lets a printer, a signwriter, a new starter or us get it right without ringing you to ask.
06 Applied, not just specified
We put it onto the things you use: email signature, letterhead, invoice, social profiles, a leaflet template. A brand that only exists in a PDF has not been delivered.
07 Ownership
Every source file is yours, in the original editable format. You will never have to come back to us to get your own logo resized.
Nobody decides to trust a business because the leaflet matched the website. They decide not to when it does not, and they rarely know that is why. It reads as carelessness, and carelessness is the one thing nobody wants from a company they are about to pay.
Getting this right once is also the cheapest thing on this list. Every decision you write down now is a decision nobody has to make again, badly, at half past four on a Friday.
- Recognised before they have read a word
- One answer to "what colour is our blue?"
- New staff get it right on day one
- Printers and signwriters stop guessing
- Look the size you actually are
- Every future job starts from a decision already made
If your brand is fine, we will tell you.
Plenty of businesses come to us for a rebrand and leave with a tidy-up and their money still in the bank. The audit says which one you are.
Do I need this, or do I just need a website?
If you have a logo you are happy with and know what your colours are, you probably just need the website, and we will say so. Branding earns its place when you are starting from nothing, or when the answer to "what font do we use" is different depending on who you ask.
What does it cost?
A fixed price, quoted in writing after the first conversation, with the guidelines and the applied files already in it. No day rates and no invoice that arrives larger than the number you agreed.
I already have a logo my nephew made. Is that a problem?
Not necessarily, and we will not sneer at it. Sometimes the mark is genuinely fine and what is missing is everything around it: the colours, the type, the rules. Redrawing it properly and building the rest around it is cheaper than starting again, and it keeps the recognition you have already built.
Will I lose the customers who know the old look?
This is the right question to ask, and it is why we look at what you have before proposing to bin it. If you have fifteen years of recognition in a shape or a colour, that is an asset and we will carry it forward rather than throw it away for the sake of looking new.
How is this different from what a freelancer would do?
Often it is not, and a good freelancer is a perfectly sensible thing to hire. The difference here is that the same people go on to build the site, write the pages and run the search work, so the brand is designed by somebody who knows exactly where it has to survive, rather than handed over at the door.
2 · Website design and build
The first and biggest place the brand has to work. Fast, secure, hosted by us and built to convert.
How it works
3 · SEO
Get ranked, get found. A site nobody can find is a shop on a road with no traffic.
How it works
4 · Marketing
Making people aware you exist, and keeping the ones you have already served.
How it worksLet's work out what you should look like.
Whether you are naming the business this week or have been trading for twenty years, the first call is the same: what you do, who for, and what is getting in the way. Free, and no obligation at the end of it.
Get my free audit