How to Develop Your First Brand Identity on a Budget

I particularly like the contest approach for your first brand identity because chances are you don’t know exactly what you want yet. Brand Identity Contents A brand identity can be extensive, but we’ll just focus on a few things that you need to get off the ground. There are fonts that will go better with your logo than others. You’ll start a contest, which will attract many designers to submit designs. Step 3: Pick the color style you like. Step 4: Logo options are generated for you. Full On DIY Brand Identity If you don’t like the outcome of Brandmark, your next option is to go full-on DIY. I’m going to take that and use those for my brand’s fonts. This one is pretty cool, so I’ll use it as an example: In this case, I would probably use the dark blue (#081c4f) as the primary font color for the body of my website, and potentially for my logomark. You’ll have more time to work on your business or or to create your website.

The emphasis here is on first. This guide is meant to help you get your first dirty brand identity out the door.

It’s meant to be functional and good enough for now.

There are two options I recommend for developing your first brand identity:

Both options will get you to the finish line. The trade off is your time vs. your money. If you are short on money, then do it yourself. If you are short on time, then use 99designs.

If you were to get a high quality, professional brand identity, it’d cost you tens of thousands of dollars (or $211 million).

A more professional approach with an agency would look something like this. If you hire 99designs, you won’t get this level of quality, but you’ll still have a very functional starting point. 99designs has a brand identity package that starts at $599.

If you aren’t familiar with 99designs, it’s a platform that runs design contests. I particularly like the contest approach for your first brand identity because chances are you don’t know exactly what you want yet. Having a bunch of options to choose from will help.

Brand Identity Contents

A brand identity can be extensive, but we’ll just focus on a few things that you need to get off the ground. Everything else is a bonus.

Logo — There are 7 common types of logos: lettermarks, wordmarks, pictorial marks, abstract logo marks, mascots, combination marks, and emblems.
Colors — It’s best to stick with a primary and secondary color only. This makes it pretty easy to keep things simple.
Font / Typography — The fonts that you will use for your brand will go on your website, your emails, etc. There are fonts that will go better with your logo than others.

A more extensive brand identity might include things like: design systems, custom illustrations, photography guidelines, iconography, interactive elements, video or motion and even a full out web design. We don’t need more than the first 3 items: a logo, colors, and font/typography.

The Execution: 99designs vs. DIY

If you go with 99designs, when all is said and done you’ll automatically end up with everything you need.

You’ll start a contest, which will attract many designers to submit designs. They’ll typically start with the logo and go from there. You’ll have the opportunity to rate designs, submit feedback and tweak until you find the winner.

There are obviously a number of advantages of going the 99designs route, vs. DIY — however, if you don’t have the budget, then you don’t have the budget. In that case, here is how I would go about doing it myself, if I were in that same boat.