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Bespoke engagement
Brand developed from strategy through to visual identity, tied to what the business is actually trying to achieve, and delivered as a guide the business can work from for years.
Custom pricing, based on scope.
The problem
Businesses launch, evolve and grow without ever settling what they stand for. Decisions get made one at a time: a logo here, a brochure there, a website built by whoever was available, wording written by three different people.
None of it is wrong individually. Collectively it produces a business that presents differently depending on where you encounter it, and a market that forms no clear impression at all.
Inconsistency is rarely noticed as inconsistency. It registers as a business that is smaller, newer or less certain than it really is.
Purpose
We establish what the business stands for commercially, then express it in positioning, in language and in how it looks, so that everything afterwards has something to be consistent with.
This is brand development in service of business objectives rather than as a creative exercise. The test throughout is whether it helps the business win the work it wants from the customers it wants.
When it helps
Usually at a point of change, when the existing presentation has stopped fitting.
What is included
Every engagement is bespoke and the emphasis varies, but the work generally moves through the following.
There are no templates. Every engagement starts from the business rather than from a house style waiting to be filled in.
Deliverables
Boundaries
Please note
Where the work touches something needing specialist input, such as legal protection of a name, we identify it clearly rather than proceeding around it.
The sequence
Collaborative by necessity: a brand developed without the owner in the room rarely survives.
What it does, who it serves, where it is going, and what it wants to be known for. Strategy before anything visual.
What is being developed, what you will have at the end, and what it costs. Agreed before work begins.
Establishing and agreeing what the business stands for, and the language it uses to say so. Everything visual follows from this.
Developing the identity against the agreed positioning, with references and comparisons so decisions are informed rather than a matter of taste.
Assembling the brand book and walking through it, so whoever applies it afterwards understands the reasoning and not only the rules.
The fee
The fee
Custom pricing, based on scope.
Engagements of this kind vary too much for a published figure to mean anything. We agree the scope with you first and confirm the fee in writing before any work begins. There are no packages, no tiers and no day rates.
Arrange an initial discussionAfterwards
The brand book is written so the business can proceed without us, including with suppliers we have never met.
Some owners would rather have a continuing view as the brand is applied: reviewing what a supplier produces, or advising as the business enters new territory. Ongoing brand advisory of that kind can be scoped separately.
Questions
Custom pricing based on scope. A positioning and narrative engagement for an established business is very different from developing a complete identity for a new venture. We agree what is needed and confirm the fee in writing before starting.
No. We are an independent business advisory firm, and brand work sits here because how a business presents itself is a commercial question. The difference shows in the starting point: we begin with what the business is trying to achieve, not with what it should look like.
Visual identity is part of the engagement. Where a piece of specialist execution would be better done by somebody else, we say so and coordinate it rather than stretching to cover it.
Often, yes. A logo is not a brand. Many engagements keep an existing mark and address the positioning, language and consistency around it, which is usually where the actual problem is.
It depends entirely on scope, and we confirm expected timing alongside the fee rather than leaving it open. Positioning work moves faster than a full identity development.
That is the point of the brand book. It is written for internal teams and external suppliers, and if it needs us present to be understood it has not been done properly.
A website is judged constantly and reviewed almost never. The four jobs it has to do, why a weak one fails quietly, and how to tell whether a rebuild is genuinely the answer.
Referral is an outcome of past work rather than a channel a business operates. The five costs of depending on it, why they stay invisible, and how to add a second route without changing character.
A short conversation about where the business is going, and where its current presentation is getting in the way, is the sensible starting point.