Brand Identity

What a brand identity includes

A logo is one artefact inside a system. What you are paying for is the system: the primary mark and its variants, the type and colour rules underneath it, and the written guidance that lets someone who has never spoken to me apply it correctly.

Most projects run in that order. Positioning and naming direction first, because nothing should be developed before we agree what it has to claim. Then the primary mark. Then lockups and secondary marks for the places the primary will not fit. Then type, colour, and the layout rules that hold them together. Then the guidelines.

How much of that you need varies honestly. Vanguard Genetics needed all of it, because the category is regulated and the packaging rules are not negotiable. benface needed a mark and a tight set of rules and nothing else, because one person applies it and that person is the brand.

The standard I hold it to: a designer you hire three years from now should be able to pick the identity up cold and get it right without calling me.

What it costs, and what moves the number

Identity work here runs from roughly $2,000 to $25,000 and above, in Canadian dollars. That range is real rather than a hedge, and four things decide where a project lands inside it.

• How much has to be resolved before anything is developed. A company that already knows what it stands for moves through that stage quickly. One that does not usually finds it the most valuable part of the work.
• How many places the mark has to survive. The SoaR Gaming mark had to hold on a jersey, a stream overlay, a favicon, and an embroidered cap. Each of those is a separate design problem, not a resize.
• Whether it has to move. An identity built to animate is developed differently from one that gets animated afterwards.
• How much production sits at the end. Signage, packaging, and apparel each carry their own file requirements.

Tell me the band you are working in and I will tell you what fits inside it and what does not, before either of us spends time on a proposal.

How long it takes

A few days to a couple of weeks, depending on what is needed. A focused mark and its production files can be done inside a week. A full identity, with positioning, a type and colour system, and written guidelines, is usually a couple of weeks.

That is faster than most studios quote, and the reason is structural rather than a corner cut. There is no account layer, no internal review round, and no work waiting to be handed between people. The judgements that normally sit until a scheduled presentation get made and re-evaluated while the work is in progress, the same day rather than the next meeting.

Nothing is removed from the deliverables to make that happen. The variants, the production files, and the written rules all arrive the same way.

The usual variable is not the making, it is how quickly decisions come back. If you have a launch, a season, or a trade show already fixed, say so in the first message and I will tell you honestly whether it fits.

What you receive at handoff

Production-ready files in the formats your team and your suppliers actually open, organised and named so they can be found a year later by someone who was not in the room.

That means vector masters, reversed and single-colour variants, and rasters at the sizes you will genuinely use. It means colour specified for screen and for print rather than one converted to the other at the last minute. And it means the written rules: clear space, minimum sizes, what to do over photography, and the misuse examples that stop a well-meaning person stretching it.

Community Moto is the version of this I would point at. That identity is applied by people who are not designers, on apparel, on signage, and on a phone at an event. The rules exist so it stays right when I am not there.

Who this is not for

If you need a logo by Friday for a few hundred dollars, that is a real need and I am not the answer to it. The logo marketplaces do that job faster and cheaper than I can, and there is no sense pretending otherwise.

It is also the wrong time if the business itself is still moving. If what you sell or who you sell it to is likely to change in the next few months, identity work done now gets redone. I will say so in the first conversation rather than take the project.