Branding & logo design
Small business branding and logo design, kept in proportion.
A logo will not save a business and it will not sink one. What it will do is decide whether everything else you make looks deliberate or looks improvised.
A real mark in every format you need, a colour and type system, and a one-page guide so it stays consistent. From $250, when included in your agreed scope.
An honest word about branding
Branding is the part of this industry with the widest gap between what it costs and what it is worth. Agencies will happily sell a small business a $15,000 identity project with a forty-page brandbook, and almost none of that is what the business needed.
What a small business needs is narrow and specific: a mark that works at 32 pixels, two or three colours that hold together, a typeface pairing, and a written rule for what goes where. That is it. It takes a competent designer about a week.
We put branding at $250 to $500 as an add-on because that is roughly what it is worth in the context of a foundation build, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest.
What identity actually has to survive
The very small sizes
Your logo will spend most of its life as a 32-pixel circle: a browser tab, a WhatsApp avatar, a profile picture. Marks that look great on a presentation slide and turn into a smudge at avatar size are the single most common failure, and it happens because they were designed at the wrong size.
One colour, and no colour
It has to work in solid black on a receipt, in white on a dark photograph, embroidered on a shirt, and etched on a window. If it only works in full colour on white, it will fail somewhere visible within a month.
Being used by people who are not designers
You will hand this to a printer, a sign maker, a supplier and whoever posts on your behalf. If the rules are not written down in a form a normal person can follow, the identity drifts within a quarter: three shades of the same blue and two versions of the logo, one of them stretched.
How we work
We start from your business rather than from a moodboard: what you sell, who buys it, what your competitors look like, and what you want someone to feel in the second before they read anything.
Then two or three directions, properly made, not thirty thumbnails to pick from. Each one shown where it will actually live: on a phone, on a sign, on a receipt, as an avatar. You choose a direction and we refine it, rather than you being asked to art-direct.
The goal is not a logo you love in the presentation. It is a logo that still works in three years, at every size, in the hands of people who have never thought about kerning.
What’s included
What you get.
Files you can hand to anyone, and rules a non-designer can follow.
- Two or three directions, properly madeShown in context (as an avatar, on a sign, on a receipt, on your own website) rather than centred on a white slide where everything looks fine.
- The final mark in every formatSVG for the web, PNG at several sizes for social and documents, PDF and EPS for printers and sign makers. Full colour, one colour, and reversed for dark backgrounds.
- A colour system, not just a colourThree to five colours with hex, RGB and CMYK values, plus which one is for text, which is for action, and which is only ever a highlight.
- A typeface pairing you can licenseA display face and a body face, chosen to fit the mark, that you can legally use on your site, in documents and in print. Free or affordable, never a face you cannot afford to keep.
- A one-page guideOne page, not forty. Clear space, minimum size, what not to do, and the four rules that keep it consistent. Written so a printer can follow it.
- Social avatars and covers, cut and readySized correctly for Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and WhatsApp, so nothing important gets cropped into a circle.
- Applied across the buildIf we are also building your site and profiles, the identity goes on everything before launch. That is the point of doing them together.
- Source files, yours to keepThe editable originals, not just exports. Any designer can pick it up later. Nothing is held hostage.
How it works
Six steps. Same six, every time.
The name isn’t decoration. It’s the process, in order.
- AAuditEverything you have online, and everything your competitors have.
- DDesignBuilt around how your customers actually decide, not around trends.
- SSystemizeProfiles, booking, reviews, WhatsApp: connected, not scattered.
- VVoiceYour words, in your language, sounding like you and not a template.
- IIterateYou review every week. We adjust before anything goes live.
- OOptimizeSearch, speed and tracking set up so the work keeps paying.
- Week 1Audit & strategy
- Week 2Brand & copy
- Weeks 3–4Build & connect
- Week 5Search, content & systems
- Week 6Review & launch
What it costs
$250 to $500, as an add-on.
Branding is an add-on rather than a package, because plenty of businesses already have a mark that works fine and need the rest more.
Local business · agreed after your free audit.
Coach or consultant · agreed after your free audit.
Logo and brand identity starts at $250, included in the agreed scope, with your exact figure agreed after the audit. If you already have a logo, bring it. We will use it, and if it genuinely cannot survive the sizes above we will tell you why rather than selling you a rebrand you did not ask for. A tidy-up of an existing mark is usually cheaper than starting over, and we would rather do that.
Keep reading
Where to go next.
Questions
Questions about identity work.
I already have a logo. Do I need this?
Probably not. If it works at avatar size, works in one colour, and you have the source file, you are fine, keep it.
The common gap is not the mark itself but everything around it: no colour system, no type rules, no usable files. That is a much smaller job and we will price it as one.
How many revisions do I get?
Two full rounds on the chosen direction, which is enough when the direction was chosen properly. Small adjustments after that are not something we count.
What we do not do is start over from nothing after the direction is agreed. If we get there, something went wrong in the brief and we will talk about it rather than bill for it.
Can you match my existing colours?
Yes, and often that is the right answer. If your sign, your van and your packaging are already a particular green, the identity should work with that rather than obsolete it.
We will tell you if a colour is causing a real problem, usually a contrast problem that is quietly making your text hard to read.
Do you trademark it?
No, that is a lawyer’s job and it varies by country. We are not qualified to advise on it and will not pretend otherwise.
We do a reasonable check that we are not accidentally designing something that already exists in your market, but that is not a legal clearance.
Bring what you have.
Start with your free Visibility Score. In a 30-minute session we review your online presence, then send a one-page Scorecard within 48 hours. You get practical priorities before deciding on any paid work.