Key answer: A professional visual identity is built in five steps. They are (1) brand audit and strategy, (2) mark concepts, (3) system development (typography, colour, composition rules), (4) a brand book documenting the rules, (5) implementation across materials. For brands with digital products the natural sixth step is a design system – translating the identity into website and app components.
Table of contents
The short answer
A visual identity is not a single logo project but a system: mark + typography + colour + rules that keep the brand consistent in every medium. The process has five stages – from strategy to implementation – and for digitally living brands it naturally ends in a design system.
Step 1: strategy and audit, before anyone opens a design tool
Good design starts with questions: who are the customers, and what should a person meeting the brand feel? What genuinely differentiates you from competitors? What are the touchpoints (website, packaging, trade fairs, documents)? We also audit existing materials – sometimes the brand's capital is a recognisable colour or mark that shouldn't be thrown away, only brought to order.
The stage's output: a short directional document – to whom, what and in what tone we communicate.
Step 2: the mark
From the strategy come 2–3 substantiated design directions: not fifty logos to "like". Each direction is shown in context: on a business card, the website, signage – because a mark is judged in its environment, not on a white board.
A good mark is: simple (works at 16 px and on a banner), distinctive (separable from its industry neighbours), timeless (fashions pass faster than rebrands) and technically resolved (horizontal/vertical/symbol variants, mono versions).
Step 3: the system of typography, colour and composition
Here it is decided whether the identity becomes a system or a logo with attachments. We select typography (usually 1–2 families, licensed for all media – print, web, apps), build the palette (primary and functional colours with CMYK/Pantone/RGB/HEX values) and set composition rules: grids, proportions, photography and illustration style, iconography tone.
This is where typographic experience shows – typography carries a brand's character more strongly than the logo, because it accompanies every word.
Step 4: the brand book
The brand book is the brand's manual: mark construction and clear space, minimum sizes, palettes, typography with hierarchy, examples of correct and incorrect use, material templates. A good brand book is usable: concise, concrete, with production files included – not a 200-page album nobody opens.
Step 5: implementation
An identity proves itself in the field: stationery, offer and presentation templates, email signatures, signage, packaging, trade-fair materials. We implement in stages by priority – and, with our DTP background, supervise production down to colour checks at the printing house.
Step 6 for digital brands: the design system
If the brand lives on a website, in a store or in an app, a brand book is not enough – you need working components: buttons, forms, cards built on design tokens and ready for developers. That is the design system – we wrote about it separately. It works best as a natural extension of the identity, made by the same team.
What it costs
Roughly: a core package (mark, typography, colour, basic materials) – €4,000–9,000; a full identity with brand book – €9,000–20,000; a design system – from ~€7,000 upwards, built in stages. Details depend on the number of touchpoints and the organisation's scale.
We have designed identities for 22 years: from the mark to the design system and print supervision. See the service or browse our work.