Design
How to Brand a Startup Without Redoing It in a Year
Most early brands get rebuilt because they were designed as a logo instead of a system.
A logo is one asset. A brand is the set of decisions that lets everything after the logo stay consistent without you in the room.
Decide what you are before you decide how you look
Who is this for, what do they currently do instead, and what should they feel? Visual choices made before these answers are just taste, and taste changes.
Build a small system, not a big one
Two typefaces. One primary colour plus neutrals. A spacing scale. Rules for how the mark is used and how it is not. That is enough to hold a startup together for years.
Document the reasoning
The reason brands drift is that the person who made the choices leaves and nobody knows why anything is the way it is. Write it down. This is the part clients thank us for later.
Leave room to grow
Design the mark so it works at favicon size and on a building, in one colour, and against a photograph.
