Logos, and more specifically, brands have been around for centuries. How else could a cattle farmer tell the difference between his own cow and his neighbors’? While the process may look different today than it did a hundred years ago, a few things have remained the same.

A Corresponding Budget

Your brand budget is an investment in your business’s future, but not send you into bankruptcy before opening day. The truth of the matter is: you get what you pay for. Your dollar pays for that designer or agency’s time, talent, experience, overhead, and so on. Your dollar says, “This is how much I care about my brand and how much I want you the designer to care about it too.” Check out my post, How Much Should I Pay for a Logo, to get the skinny on the meaning behind the numbers.

Getting to Know You

Anyone else humming Julie Andrews in The King and I? Just me, alright then. The first step in any good brand project is a getting-to-know-you phase. To create a lasting and meaningful brand, the designer needs to know more than what you need - they need to know who you are, what drives you, and most importantly, why you do what you do. I call this ‘getting into character.’ I want to know you, your business, and your expectations so well that the design decisions I make in the ideation phase feel as weighted as if they were for my own brand.

Market Research

Your designer spent all this time getting to know you, now they will be getting to know your industry. They want to make sure your brand suits you, stands out from your competitors, but still resonates with your industry’s audience. You also don’t want to get six months into business and realize a competitor you didn’t know about has the exact same logo as you.

Client-Designer Cooperation

While your designer has worked hard to know you and your business like their own, no one knows it quite like you. Creating a lasting and meaningful brand is a mutual effort. Show up for the process in the same way you expect your designer to. 

Want to know more about my particular brand process? Head over [here] to read my post about how I create long-lasting, authentic brands for my clients.