Services / Brand systems
05Brand systems
Rules, not just a logo
A logo does not stop the next flyer looking like a different company. The rules around it do.
Most small businesses have a logo and nothing else. Somebody made it once, the file has been resized in Word a few times, and every piece of material since has been assembled by whoever happened to be free. The result is not ugly exactly — it just never accumulates. Ten years of marketing that never once looked like the same company twice.
A brand system fixes the second part. It answers the questions that come up every time something new is made, so nobody has to invent an answer under time pressure.
What a system actually contains
The logo, in vector. Vector art scales from a business card to a van without softening. If your only file is a PNG, everything large or printed will look slightly wrong, and the fix is to redraw it. Alongside the master you get the variants that real life needs: a horizontal lockup, a compact mark for tight spaces and app icons, and a reversed version for dark backgrounds.
A palette with measured contrast. Not a mood board — specific values, with the combinations that are allowed and the ones that are not, and the measured contrast ratio for each pairing written down. A palette that looks good on a designer's screen and fails contrast produces text that some of your customers genuinely cannot read.
Typography with a scale. Two families at most: one with character for headlines, one plain one that carries everything else. Sizes as a defined scale rather than whatever looked right, so a heading in a document and a heading on the site are the same heading.
Spacing and shape. A spacing scale, corner radii, shadow definitions. These are the details nobody notices individually and everybody notices in aggregate — they are most of what makes something look considered rather than assembled.
Delivered as tokens, not a PDF nobody opens
A traditional brand guide is a document that gets read once. We deliver the same decisions as design tokens — the actual values in a format a developer drops straight into a build — alongside the written rules.
That difference matters. When the palette lives in one file and every page reads from it, changing a colour is one edit rather than a search across a codebase. It also means a page added two years from now inherits the system automatically instead of relying on somebody remembering the hex code.
What you get
Vector logo and variants
Master artwork, compact mark, reversed version, plus exported sizes for real use.
Palette with recorded ratios
Every approved pairing measured for contrast, and the failing ones ruled out.
Type scale and pairing
Licensed or open-licence faces, with the sizes and weights defined.
Tokens and written rules
Values a developer can use directly, and guidance a non-designer can follow.
06Boundaries
What we don't do
- No logo-only packages. A mark without rules gets misused within a month. If the budget only covers a logo, it is better spent elsewhere.
- No unlicensed fonts. Type licensing is real and enforced. Everything we specify is either open-licence or licensed to you properly.
- No trend-chasing rebrands. If your current identity works, we will say so. Redrawing something recognisable resets whatever recognition it had.
- No sixty-page guidelines nobody reads. The document is as long as the rules require and no longer.
07Questions
Asked
about brand
No. A logo on its own does not stop the next flyer looking like a different company. The system is the palette, the type, the spacing and the written rules for using them — the logo is one part of it.
Vector source for the logo, which scales to any size without softening, plus exported rasters at the sizes you actually use. Vector matters for print and large format, where a raster logo falls apart.
Yes, and the measured contrast ratios are recorded in the documentation rather than assumed. A palette that looks good but fails contrast produces text some visitors cannot read.
Yes. The system is delivered as documentation and design tokens that any competent designer or developer can work from. It is not tied to us.