My brand identity design process

Whether you need brand identity design or only a logo, my process follows the same steps.

1. Proposal

Fill out the form on my contact page to get in touch. The next steps are:

A brief call to get acquainted and discuss project scope, timeline, and budget (pricing info here)
I’ll send a proposal and contract
If approved, a standard 50% deposit* is required to begin
Remaining payment is due after the work is completed, net 15-30 days

*On larger projects, payment plans with milestones may be appropriate.

2. Discovery

Worksheets

Worksheet “homework” will kick off your project. These serve as a jumping-off point for future conversation, and to help organize your thoughts. Your answers don’t need to be polished, don’t worry.

Discovery Worksheet: questions about your history, competitors, and goals
Brand Personality Worksheet: quick exercises in a fillable/clickable PDF
- Target audience — their goals, problems, and desired outcomes
- Brand archetype — a symbolic character that fits your organization
- Brand intangibles — besides your product or service, it’s what else you offer
- Brand qualities — a big list of adjectives to draw from
- Brand spectrum — where your brand should be positioned on several continua
- And more.

Depending on your business, we can also use additional tools such as creating audience personas or conducting simple stakeholder surveys.

Samples

You’ll gather and send samples of your existing branding, if you have any, so I can see where we’re starting from and where improvements can be made.

Research & Review

We’ll have video meetings (one or two, depending on your project) to talk over your worksheet answers in more depth, evaluate your existing materials, review competitors’ branding, and discuss moodboards of visual examples I’ve selected to get your feedback.

Many clients find the Discovery phase of the process extremely helpful. It can shape not just the design work done in our project together, but offers clarity on how and what to communicate as a company going forward.

3. Concepts

Based on Discovery insights, I’ll create several initial design concepts
I’ll present them in a screensharing meeting, and send PDFs you can review again afterwards

4. Refinement

After selecting the best concept, we’ll refine it further if needed. How a round of revisions works:

You’ll gather feedback internally from your team
You’ll provide all of the feedback at one time
I’ll confirm the requested edits and make the revisions
I’ll submit a new draft for review

Once the feedback is used to create a new draft of a design, that completes one round of revisions.

A project scope includes 3 rounds of revisions. More are always available, billed at an hourly rate. (It usually takes less than 3 rounds per project component.) For an example of refinements on a logo project, see the Uncorked case study.

5. Launch

After approval of designs, I’ll create and deliver all final artwork files to you (and any vendors).

If your project includes a brand style guide, all the elements of your brand identity design—logo, typography, color palette, photography style, icons, etc.— will be captured in this document. The result is a valuable reference to keep your visuals on-brand going forward.

If your project contains printed deliverables, I can contact printers for quotes and manage the printing process for you if needed.