A name, a mark, and the discipline to stop
A founder with a product, a category full of noise, and eleven weeks to arrive with something that would still look right in five years.
[CLIENT NAME] came to us with a finished product and no way to say what it was. They had been through two rounds of freelance identity work, both of which had produced something competent and neither of which they could bring themselves to use.
The brief we wrote back was one line: build the smallest identity that could carry the next five years, and refuse everything else.
What we did
Eleven weeks, three people, one decision at a time.
We started with the name, which was the part everyone had been avoiding. [NUMBER] candidates went to a shortlist of four, and the four were tested the only way that matters — said out loud, over the phone, to people who had never heard of the company.
The mark followed the name rather than leading it. One weight, one construction, no secondary lockup, no icon-only variant. When the client asked for a monogram we said no and explained why: a monogram is a thing you earn after people know the name, not a thing you launch with.
What it cost them
[BUDGET BAND] over [DURATION]. Two rounds of revision, not five, because the brief was narrow enough to argue against.
Where it went
[OUTCOME — e.g. launched [MONTH YEAR]; [METRIC] in the first quarter; the guidelines have not been amended since.]
[PULL QUOTE FROM CLIENT.]
— [CLIENT CONTACT NAME], [TITLE]