Market and competitive analysis
Category structure, competitor positions and the gap that is actually open.
Most branding projects start with a logo because that is the visible part. But a logo cannot fix an unclear position, and a beautiful identity applied to a business that has not decided who it serves just makes the confusion look more expensive.
We start with the commercial question: which buyer, against which alternative, on what basis. That answer drives naming, identity, messaging and the launch plan, so that when the design work arrives it is expressing a decision rather than substituting for one.
Positioning is a decision, and it is uncomfortable
Most branding projects begin with a logo because that is the visible part, and end with a beautiful identity applied to a business that has not decided who it serves. The design work then has to carry a strategic decision nobody made, which it cannot.
Positioning means choosing: which buyer, against which alternative, on what basis. Choosing implies excluding, and the exclusion is what founders resist. But a brand that is for everybody is distinctive to nobody, and that shows up later as expensive, undifferentiated media spend.
What the identity system has to cover
A logo is one asset. A system is the logo in its variants, a typographic scale, a colour palette with accessible contrast, imagery direction, iconography, layout rules and, critically, worked examples showing the system applied to the things you will actually produce.
Guidelines that stop at 'here is the logo, do not stretch it' get ignored within a quarter, because the first person who needs to make a brochure has no idea what a brochure should look like.
Launch is a sequence with a critical path
Product launches fail on logistics more often than on creative. Packaging artwork has a lead time. Print has a lead time. Retail listings have windows. Trade communication has to precede consumer communication. Digital assets are needed before the campaign, not with it.
We plan the launch backwards from the on-shelf or go-live date, with owners and dates against every dependency, so the campaign does not arrive three weeks before the product does.
Naming, where it is part of the brief
Naming is generation, screening and then legal and domain checking, in that order and iteratively. The pleasant part is the generation; the work is in the screening, because most good names are taken and several apparently available ones carry a trademark risk in your class.
We shortlist against the positioning rather than against taste, and we test pronunciation and spelling with people outside the room before anybody falls in love.