There is a temptation for startups to solve their brand identity quickly and cheaply. A logo from a freelance platform, a color that felt right on a Friday night, a font that an acquaintance suggested.

It's understandable. There are a hundred things competing for attention and budget in a startup. The brand can wait.

It rarely can.

The identity you choose at the start shapes how the market sees you, how you present yourself to customers and investors, and how easy it is to grow without having to redo everything. Changing your identity later, when the company is well-known, is more expensive and complicated than doing it right from the start.

What brand identity actually is

Brand identity is not the logo. The logo is an element of the identity.

Brand identity is the sum of all visual and communicative decisions that shape how your company is perceived: logo, typography, color palette, imagery, tonality, how you present yourself in text, how your website feels to navigate, how your office looks when a customer visits it.

All of it communicates. And all of it communicates either with one voice, or with multiple voices pulling in different directions.

The latter is common. Not because companies don't care, but because identity decisions are often made at different times, by different people, without a common strategy.

What happens when identity is not well thought out

A weak or inconsistent identity creates concrete business problems.

It creates hesitation among potential customers. Professionalism is often perceived, unconsciously, as a measure of how serious a company is. A logo that looks amateurish, a color choice that conveys the wrong feeling, a website that does not connect with how the company communicates on LinkedIn, all of which creates a diffuse feeling that this is not really a company that can be fully trusted.

It creates friction in investor dialogues. Investors evaluate the founders' ability to build and communicate a brand. A weak identity signals either that you don't understand the importance of it, or that you haven't had the discipline to prioritize it. Neither is a good signal.

This creates internal confusion. Without clear guidelines for how the company communicates, different team members make their own decisions. This leads to the company looking and sounding different depending on who wrote a post, took a photo, or designed a presentation.

What a strong visual identity actually contains

A complete visual identity for a company contains a number of elements that are all connected to each other.

Logotype and logo variant. The logo is the foundation. It should work in all formats and scales: small in an email footer, large on a trade show booth, black and white on an envelope. It should communicate what the company is without explanation.

Typography. The choice of font is one of the most identity-creating decisions in a visual identity. Fonts convey personality, era and position. The primary font for headlines and the secondary font for body text should interact and function in all relevant contexts.

Color palette. One primary color, one or two secondary colors, and neutrals. That's usually enough. A complex palette is difficult to apply consistently, and inconsistency is the enemy of identity. Colors should be defined in precise values: Pantone for print, CMYK for offset, RGB and HEX for digital.

Imagery and photography. What type of images does the company communicate with? Strict product images or environmental photos? Portraits of people or abstract compositions? Light and airy or dark and dramatic? These are design decisions, not spontaneous choices.

Tone and communication guidelines. How do you write? Formal or conversational? You or you to the customer? What do you avoid in communication? There should be an answer, and it should be documented.

Graphic elements and patterns. Icons, illustrations, line work, textures. The elements that create recognition and that tie together communication across different channels.

Identity and the connection of the premises

For companies that have a physical location, an office, a store, a restaurant, the visual identity is incomplete if it is not integrated into the physical space.

That's the point we make over and over again: identity doesn't end with a PDF of brand guidelines. It should live on in every encounter with the customer, including, and perhaps most importantly, the physical encounter.

A company with a strong visual identity that then chooses furniture and materials without a connection to that identity loses a large part of what they have invested in branding. What should reinforce each other instead counteracts.

We design identity and physical environment as a system, not as two separate projects that need to be matched afterwards.

How long does it take to build an identity?

It depends on the scope of the project and the decision-making process of the client.

A basic visual identity with logo, typography, color palette and simple brand guide can be developed in three to six weeks if the process is efficient.

A more complete identity with imagery, communication guidelines, web design and physical environment takes three to six months.

What takes the longest isn’t the design work. It’s the decisions. Brand identity touches on core questions about what a company is and wants to be. It can take time to land on the answers, and that’s OK. But it’s important not to pause the project for too long in the middle of the process, because identity work works best as a continuous flow.

Doing it right versus doing it quickly

There’s a temptation to take the quick route: a logo from a template service, a Canva-created website, a moodboard from Pinterest. It works in the early stages, and it’s better than nothing.

But it works as a temporary solution, not as a foundation to build on.

The problem is that a company that has been given a weak initial identity often sticks with it for a long time. You get used to it. It doesn't seem worth changing now. And suddenly you've been living with an identity that communicates incorrectly for five years.

It is expensive to fix. It is a process that requires communicating the change to the market, updating existing customers and contacts, and changing all channels.

Better to do it right from the start.

What an identity and design project with us involves

We start with the strategy: what is this company, who is it aimed at, what should it communicate and how should it be perceived?

From there, we develop a visual identity with logotype, typography, color palette, imagery and guidelines. If the project includes a physical environment, an office, a premises, a showroom, we integrate the identity into that design from the start.

You get a cohesive identity, not a logo and interior design that try to coexist.

Are you starting a new company or are you thinking about redesigning your brand identity from scratch?

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