What’s included in a brand identity (and what you’re paying for)

Ask three agencies for a brand identity and you’ll get three quotes that are hard to compare. One is a logo and a colour. One is a sixty-page guidelines document. One is somewhere in between, with phrases like “visual language” that nobody explains.

The difference usually comes down to two things: how much of the system you get, and whether anyone has thought about what happens after handover.

What you should get

The logo is one line on the list, not the whole list.

• The thinking first. A workshop that ties the look to your strategy, so the design is judged against something other than taste.
• A logo in every version you’ll need. Full colour, one colour, reversed out, and a small mark for tight spaces, in vector and everyday file formats.
• A colour palette. Primary and secondary colours, with values for print and screen.
• Typography. Fonts for headlines and body text, on the web and in documents.
• Tone of voice. How you sound in writing, with examples.
• Brand assets. Icons, illustrations, patterns and an imagery style that look like you. Here’s what brand assets are.
• Guidelines. Rules written so non-designers can follow them.
• Real-world examples. The identity shown on a homepage, a proposal or a social post, not just on a white slide.

What usually gets left out

The parts that decide whether the identity lasts.

• Assets. Most packages stop at the logo and colours, so your team fills the gaps with stock photos and free icon sets.
• Templates. Decks, documents and social formats, so work starts most of the way there instead of from nothing.
• Training. Half an hour showing your team how to use it. Without it, the system drifts within months.
• Somewhere to find it all. Files organised so people can find the right version. A lot of brand inconsistency is just people using an old file.

Why the handover decides whether it lasts

A beautiful identity with no system lasts about six months.

Then it drifts. People make their own versions, the new deck doesn’t match the website, and before long someone says the brand needs redoing. That’s not a design failure. It’s a handover failure, and it’s one of the most common ways brand budgets get wasted.

The real test of an identity isn’t how it looks at the presentation. It’s whether the person putting together a proposal at four o’clock on a Friday can make something that looks like you, on their own, without asking a designer.

What it costs

The price follows how much thinking and how much system you get.

Logo-only quotes are cheaper because they leave out the strategy, the assets and the handover. That’s fine if you already have those. If you don’t, you’ll pay for them later, usually more than once, as different people recreate them.

As a reference point, here’s what our packages include. Every one starts with a Look and Feel workshop, then narrative and strapline development, then a full concept shown with assets and a homepage snippet.

• Refresh, from £2,755 + VAT. Your logo and emblem tidied up, colours refined, all the file formats.
• Reframe, from £3,230 + VAT. Adds new fonts for web and headlines and a mini brand playbook.
• Reimagine, from £6,500 + VAT. A new logo and emblem from scratch, a full palette, new fonts and full brand guidelines.

You can add a brand asset pack of 10 custom icons and 10 graphic assets to any of them. See the brand identity packages for the detail.

Questions to ask before you sign

Use these to compare quotes like for like.

• What happens before you start designing? If an agency shows you designs before anyone has agreed the strategy, that’s a warning sign: you’ll be choosing on looks, not on what works.
• Who will actually do the work, and will we meet them before we sign? The people who pitch aren’t always the people who design.
• How many concepts and rounds of revisions are included?
• Will we see it on real pages, or only on presentation slides?
• Which brand assets are included, beyond the logo?
• Who on our team will be shown how to use it, and how?
• Which files do we get, and who owns them?
• What happens when we need a new template in six months?