This is the identity process. The other services are shorter and quoted per project, but they follow the same principle: you see work early and you get real decisions rather than a reveal at the end.
1. Consultation
A conversation about the business, not the logo. What you sell, who buys it, what you are competing against, and what has already been tried. If you have existing materials we look at them here — including the ones you are not happy with, which are often more useful.
What we need from you: an hour, and candour about what has not worked.
2. Market research
We look at who else is in your category and what they look like. The point is not inspiration; it is avoiding the accidental. Categories converge on a look, and the fastest way to be forgettable is to arrive at that look independently and call it a coincidence.
What you get: a clear picture of what your competitors have taken, which is also a picture of what is still available.
3. Up to five concepts
Up to five distinct directions, not one idea in five colours. Distinct is the operative word — if two concepts could be argued into each other, one of them is padding.
What we need from you: a real reaction. “I don’t like it” is genuinely useful and does not need to be justified. Reacting is much easier than describing what you want in advance, which is why the process is built this way round.
4. Narrowing to one
Your reactions decide which direction continues. Sometimes it is one of the five; sometimes it is one of them carrying something from another. Then it gets developed properly — drawn out, tested small, tested large, and checked in the places it will actually be used.
5. Palette and typography
The colours and the faces, with the reasoning attached and the contrast measured rather than eyeballed. A palette that fails as text on its own background is a common and expensive thing to discover after printing.
6. The style guide
The document that lets someone else apply the identity correctly without asking you. Logo usage and clear space, the palette with its values, the type with its weights, and what not to do.
This is the deliverable that decides whether the identity survives contact with a printer, a developer and a year of ordinary use.
What happens if you don’t like any of it
You get to say so at stage 3, which is the point of showing a range. If none of them is right, that is information about the brief rather than a failure of the round, and we talk about what they collectively got wrong before we draw anything else.
Scope and price are confirmed in writing before a project starts — see FAQ for what is settled and what we’ll confirm for your specific project.