How to choose a designer for your business.

So what is a brand then? Marty Neumeier, author of The Brand Gap, Zag, and many more books that cover branding, says that your brand is “A customer’s gut feeling about a product, service or company.” This definition is important because it highlights the lack of control we actually have over our brands. We can’t force customers to think of our business in a certain way, but we can influence them through the process and strategy of branding.

Everything in branding falls under two columns, differentiation and relevance. Which means everything from your brand colours to your business' name can and should be leveraged to make an impact on your target customer.

To achieve both differentiation and relevance, your designer needs to make many strategic decisions with an understanding of both your competition and your customers. The reason why people all over the world want the Nike Swoosh on their shoes, clothes and accessories isn’t that the logo is the world’s best-designed symbol– it’s because Nike built a strong brand over decades that resonates with their customers and the logo serves as a reminder and symbol of that brand.

A good brand specialist will stop you from directly dictating the final look of your brand because they know that the brand needs to be strategically designed and technically appropriate for appearing across a range of mediums. “So what, I get no input on what my brand looks like?” I hear you ask – no, you’ll have a lot to contribute to the branding process, but that contribution shouldn’t be on the visuals.

Your designer is going to be relying on you to tell them all about your business, your product or service, how you’re different from your competitors and what they don’t understand about your customers that you know to be true.

A good brand specialist will include you in the process of creating the visuals of your brand (because it’s a fun and exciting process to be involved in), but their process won’t include you making decisions you probably aren’t equipped to make, such as proportion, line thickness, colour, etc. Good designers study these things for their whole lives, so sit back and let them do what they do best.

If you’re talking to a freelancer or agency who publicly offers a wide range of services, such as web design, branding, copywriting, SEO, digital marketing, illustration, signage, printing etc. – be on your guard. While branding projects can include all of these things and more, jack-of-all-trades vendors are unlikely to have deep expertise in branding and will generally deliver surface-level results.

Freelancers and agencies who don’t discriminate on the kinds of clients they take on are equally dangerous. If you can’t find anything in common between their previous clients (branding for nail salons only, working with e-commerce businesses exclusively, etc.), they’ve likely not specialised enough. This can become a problem in multiple ways, such as not correctly identifying local and international competition, or not using the correct language or terminology to convert window shoppers into customers.

If possible, you should try and find someone who specifically serves businesses like yours. They should say “Yes, I only do branding, and yes, I only do branding for dog shelters like yours”.

A strong brand can be the face of your business for 20+ years and become a leverageable asset that opens doors for you, such as partnerships, hiring top talent and most importantly, getting referenced in rap songs.

A typical high-quality branding project can take months to complete and requires collaboration, research and testing. The price can and should reflect this, in the same way that buying a suspiciously cheap car is inherently risky, paying less than $1000 for your brand should make you sweat. A cheap logo project is evidence of inexperience or lack of confidence in the designer selling it – a cheap brand is an expense, not an investment.

Communication is crucial because if you don’t understand your new brand, you won’t be able to carry it forward when you part ways with your brand specialist. Your ideal branding expert will be fascinated by what you do and be excited to learn more about your business and industry.

Branding is closer to business strategy than it is to art, so good branding strategists will include the thinking as well as the visual outcomes of their projects. Your ideal branding expert or agency will share their expertise often, and things like blogs, podcasts, or youtube channels can be a good way to get a sense of their worldview and process before you work with them.