Brand work gets sold to small businesses in two unhelpful forms. Either it is a 200 dollar logo from a marketplace, or it is a discovery process about your values that produces a document nobody opens.
For a company with a few employees and a van, brand is a much smaller and more practical thing: the set of decisions that stop you making the same decision again every time you need to print something.
The whole list
A name people can say and spell. If you have one, this is done. If you are choosing, say it out loud on a phone call and see whether the other person gets it first time.
A mark that works at 24 pixels. Most people will see your logo as a tiny circle on a phone. If it only works at billboard size, it does not work.
Two colors. One main, one accent. A third if you must. More than that and nobody can remember which is which.
One typeface, two weights. Three if the main one lacks a good bold.
A rule about photography. Real photos of your work, or stock, but not both on the same page. Mixing them is what makes a site look assembled rather than made.
Somewhere all of this is written down. One page is enough.
That is it. If you have those six things and use them consistently, you have a brand, and you are ahead of most of your competitors.
Why consistency beats quality here
A perfectly designed identity used inconsistently looks worse than an average one used the same way everywhere.
Customers do not evaluate your logo. They recognize it, or they do not. Recognition comes from repetition: the same mark on the van, the invoice, the site, the signature, the shirt. Change any of those and you restart the clock.
This is the actual argument for spending a little on identity work. Not that a designer produces a better mark, though usually they do. It is that a designer produces a mark that still works on a shirt, a truck door, a favicon, and a black background, so you never have to make a slightly different version and start the fragmentation.
What to spend on
Worth paying for:
- A mark that works in one color, at small sizes, on light and dark.
- The file formats you will actually need, including a vector file you own.
- A one page document showing the colors, the typeface, and the spacing around the logo.
- Someone to apply it consistently the first time across your site, your vehicle, and your paperwork.
Not worth paying for, for a business your size:
- A 40 page brand book.
- A brand narrative or archetype workshop.
- A custom typeface.
- Three concept directions with mood boards. You will pick one and pay for three.
- A rebrand, if the current one is merely dated rather than broken.
When a rebrand is actually justified
Rarely. Real reasons:
- The name no longer describes what you do. You are called “Bob’s Carpets” and you have not sold carpet since 2019.
- There is a legal or trademark problem.
- You merged, or split.
- The name has a genuine reputation problem attached.
Not reasons: it feels dated, a competitor got a new one, or someone on the team is bored of it. A dated identity that everyone in your county recognizes is an asset. Refresh the type and the color, keep the shape people know.
The files to actually own
This trips people up years later. Get all of these, and keep them somewhere the business controls:
- A vector file. This is the master, and it scales to anything.
- Regular image versions in a few sizes, on transparent backgrounds.
- A one color version, black, and a reversed version for dark backgrounds.
- A square version for social profiles and a small square for the browser tab.
- The name of the typeface and where the license came from.
If your logo only exists as a picture someone sent you in a chat message, you do not really own it in any useful way. Ask for the vector file. Ask now, while whoever made it still answers.
The page that holds it together
One page, kept where anyone who needs it can find it:
- The logo files, and a note about which to use where.
- The colors, written down as codes, not “our blue.”
- The typeface, and the fallback if it is not installed.
- Two rules about photography.
- One thing you never do. Every business has one. “Never put the logo on a photo.” “Never stretch it.”
Then use it. That is the part that is actually hard, and it is worth more than everything above it.
