Design

Designing a brand system that survives ten years

Kev 1 min read

A logo is the smallest part of an identity. The value is in the rules that let anybody else apply it correctly without asking you.

Clients sometimes ask for “just a logo”. What they usually need is a way to make a hundred small decisions consistently: what colour a button is on a dark background, how a quote is set, what happens when the mark is used at 16 pixels.

Decisions made once

A useful identity is a set of decisions recorded in a form somebody can follow. Three type sizes, four colours, one spacing rhythm. Not a hundred-page manual — a one-page sheet that a printer, a web developer and a marketing assistant can all work from.

Design the constraints, not the artefacts

We ship the working files. Templates for proposals, social frames, signage specs, and the actual CSS variables the website uses, so the palette in Figma and the palette in the code cannot drift apart.

Test it on the ugly stuff

An identity is only proven on the awkward applications: a fax header, an invoice, a van, a 32-pixel avatar. If it holds up there, it will hold up in the pitch deck.

Working on something similar?

Tell us about the project and we will come back with a plan and a price.