Branding &
Visual Identity

A brand isn’t a logo. It’s the reason people recognise you before they’ve read a single word.

Most people come to me asking for a logo. What they usually need is a decision.

A decision about who you’re for, what makes you different from the three companies that do almost exactly the same thing, and how you want to feel to the person meeting you for the first time. The logo comes after that. It’s the visible tip of a much more useful iceberg.

That’s what branding is: the work of defining what your organisation stands for, and then translating it into something people can actually see, read and remember. Strategy without design stays in a slide deck nobody opens. Design without strategy is decoration — pretty, expensive, and quietly working against you.

I do both parts, in that order.

Starting with the foundations

Before anything gets drawn, we get clear on the basics. Nothing academic, nothing that needs a workshop facilitator and a wall of sticky notes. Just honest answers to the questions that decide everything else:

• What you actually do, said in a sentence your mother would understand.
• Who you’re talking to first, and who you’re happy to lose.
• What your competitors look and sound like — and where the space is.
• The personality you want to carry: warm or precise, bold or quiet, expert or accessible.
• Where you want to be in three years, because the identity has to still fit then.

This usually takes one good conversation and a bit of homework on my side. It becomes the reference we both point back to every time there’s a “hmm, I’m not sure about this” moment later on. And there’s always one.

The logo, and why it’s smaller than you think

Your logo has one job: to make you instantly recognisable, in a fraction of a second, in conditions you don’t control. On a phone screen. Embroidered on a polo shirt. Printed in black and white on a form. Squeezed into a 32-pixel favicon.

That’s why I don’t design logos in isolation, and why I test them in ugly conditions before showing them off in nice ones. A logo that only works on a moodboard is a liability.

Depending on your name, your sector and how well known you are, we’ll land on one of a few types — a wordmark built from your name, a monogram, a symbol, a symbol-plus-name combination, or something more abstract. Each has real trade-offs. A pure symbol looks confident but demands recognition you may not have yet. A long name asks for a different solution than a short one. This is a strategic choice dressed up as an aesthetic one, and I’ll explain the reasoning rather than presenting three options and asking which you like best.

The system around it

The logo is one piece. What makes a brand feel solid is everything that surrounds it, working together:

• Typography — the voice of your text. It carries more personality than most people realise, and it’s doing that work on every page you’ll ever publish.
• Colour — a primary palette, secondaries, accents, and rules for how they behave together. Including on the web, where contrast and accessibility aren’t optional.
• Layout and grids — so a brochure, a slide and a landing page look like they came from the same place.
• Iconography and graphic elements — the small recurring signals that make you recognisable even when the logo isn’t in frame.
• Photography and illustration direction — the universe your brand lives in, and what to brief a photographer or an image generator to stay inside it.
• Motion — for digital, where identity extends into how things move.

Taken separately, these are just files. Assembled properly, they’re a system: anyone can produce something new and it still looks like you.

Guidelines people actually use

Every identity I deliver comes with brand guidelines. Not a 90-page manifesto that lives in a folder nobody opens — a clear, practical document that answers the questions your team, your printer and your next freelancer will actually ask. What the spacing rules are. Which colour combinations are allowed. What never to do to the logo. Where the source files live.

The goal is simple: after I hand over, your brand should keep its shape without me in the room.

What you get

• Brand foundations: positioning, audiences, personality, key messages
• Logo system: primary, secondary and responsive variants, plus black, white and single-colour versions
• Typography and colour system, with web-ready specifications
• Supporting graphic elements: patterns, icons, textures, image direction
• Applications: whatever matters most to you first — website, social, print, packaging, signage, presentations
• Brand guidelines, delivered as a PDF and as editable source files
• All working files, organised and named so they make sense to someone who isn’t me