01
Strategy and discovery
Collaborative sessions to settle what the brand is for, who it speaks to and how it should sound, before anyone opens a design tool. The visual work moves faster once this is decided rather than assumed.
Services 01 Branding & Identity
Built to survive other people.
The logo is the easy part. What decides whether a brand still looks like itself in two years is the system underneath it: the palette with the contrast maths done, the type scale, the naming rules, the voice, and guidelines specific enough that someone who has never met us cannot get it wrong.
- You get
- The system, the specimen book, the source files
- Specified in
- Hex, RGB, CMYK and measured contrast ratios
- Tested by
- Everyone who touches it after we leave
Why we build systems, not logos.
Every identity we make ends up in the hands of people we will never meet. A printer, a platform theme, a supplier laying out a banner, a new hire building a deck in their first week. That is the real test, and it is where most identities quietly come apart: the wrong gold, white type on a colour it cannot survive, the brand name spelled the way autocorrect prefers.
So we design for the handover from the first day. Colour specified in hex, RGB and CMYK, with the contrast ratio recorded against every ground it is cleared to sit on. Type with a scale and roles, not a list of fonts. Naming and spelling written down as law. A specimen book your team and your suppliers can work from without asking us anything.
Colour
#FF904B
8.17:1 on char
Type
Aa
Outfit
We do not just design logos. We build brand worlds.
The diagnosis
You already know the symptoms.
None of these mean the logo is wrong. They mean nothing underneath it was ever written down.
- 01
Four versions of the logo are in circulation and nobody knows which is current.
- 02
Every supplier picks a slightly different shade of your colour.
- 03
The brand name gets misspelled on your own paid pages.
- 04
Each deck, poster and post looks like a different company made it.
- 05
You describe the brand differently depending on who is asking.
- 06
The guidelines are a PDF nobody has opened since the day they were delivered.
What we build
Six parts of a system that holds.
02
Logo and mark
Icon, wordmark or custom lettering, drawn to hold up at favicon size and on a building. Delivered in vector with the clear space and minimum sizes that keep it legible everywhere.
03
Colour, specified properly
Every colour in hex, RGB and CMYK, with the contrast ratio measured against each ground it is cleared for, and the pairings that fail written down as banned. Colour that has not been measured is a guess.
04
Typography and visual system
A type scale with weights and roles, plus the grids, iconography, texture and image treatment that make two pieces by two different people still look related.
05
Voice and naming rules
How the brand writes, the words it uses, the words it never uses, and the spellings that are law. Voice earned by reading what you already publish, not invented to fit a template.
06
Guidelines and rollout
A specimen book precise enough to hand to a printer or a new supplier, plus the launch assets the work needs: templates, social kits, decks, signage and packaging.
Artificial intelligence
Where AI actually earns its place.
Not in drawing your mark. Inside a brand system, AI is worth having in one place: making sure work produced by other people still sounds and looks like you.
A voice your team can borrow
The voice rules written as something an assistant can actually apply, so a draft from a new hire, a freelancer or a tool comes back in your language instead of a generic one.
Catching drift before it ships
Checking live surfaces against the system: the banned spelling, the colour pairing that fails contrast, the retired tagline that resurfaced on a page nobody has opened in a year.
Variations, not decisions
Generating options quickly so a system can be pressure-tested across formats before it is signed off. A person still chooses.
What we will not do: generate your identity. A mark that came out of a prompt belongs to nobody, resembles everything, and cannot be defended the day someone turns up with a version of it.
Proof
Made, and still holding.
Ongoing
Brand system, held and enforced
The Unscriptd Woman
We hold the brand system for a coaching brand publishing on Kajabi: a 63-page specimen book, a palette specified in hex, RGB and CMYK, and naming rules written as law. Enforcement is the work. Gold call-to-action buttons were carrying white labels at 2.21:1 against a 4.5:1 AA threshold on live paid pages; nine button labels across four themes were corrected to a compliant pairing at 4.86:1, and every contrast figure in the system was independently recomputed rather than trusted.
Delivered
Identity and website
HKM Construction
A design-build practice given a line to stand on. "Built to Belong" set as the hero statement over the practice’s own photography, with a restrained palette that lets the architecture lead.
Delivered
Identity treatment
Nkishon Mission Foundation
A warm serif-led treatment matched to the gravity and the hope of the work, carried through an editorial, story-first site and its giving campaigns.
Delivered
Our own identity
InPlace Creates
One orange could not be accessible everywhere, so there are three. The brand orange is reserved for dark surfaces at 8.17:1, a deeper orange carries large display type on paper at 3.54:1, and a deeper one again carries body-size text at 4.68:1. This site scores 100 for accessibility.
How we work
Six steps, nothing assumed.
- 01
Read what already exists
Your current materials, your website, what you publish and how you actually talk. We record what is observably true before deciding what should change.
- 02
Settle the strategy
Who it is for, what it promises, how it sounds. Written down and agreed, because every later argument about a colour is really an argument about this.
- 03
Design the core
Mark, colour and type developed together and shown in context rather than on a white square. A logo only looks right beside the things it will live beside.
- 04
Do the maths
Contrast ratios computed against every approved ground, print values checked, minimum sizes tested. Pairings that fail become written rules instead of surprises found later on a live page.
- 05
Write the law
The specimen book: usage, spacing, spelling, voice, and the misuses that send a surface back. Precise enough for a supplier who has never spoken to us.
- 06
Roll out and hold the line
Launch assets and templates, then periodic checks on live surfaces if you want them. Systems drift the moment they leave the room.
Working together
Three ways in.
Brand sprint
Fixed fee
A focused engagement for a young brand or a name change: strategy session, mark, core palette and type, and a short usage guide. Enough system to launch cleanly without paying for what you will not use yet.
Full identity system
Fixed fee, phased payments
The complete build: discovery, mark, colour with the maths done, type, voice and the specimen book, plus the rollout assets your launch actually needs.
Brand custodian
Monthly retainer
We hold the system after launch: new assets as they are needed, checks on live surfaces, and a standing line for when a supplier asks whether something is allowed.
No cookie-cutter packages. Most brands need the middle one. The sprint exists so a launch is never delayed by a budget conversation.
This is for you if
- You are launching, renaming or merging and the identity has to be right the first time.
- The brand exists but every surface renders it slightly differently.
- Work is produced by people outside your team and they need rules they can follow.
- You are about to spend real money on print, signage or packaging.
This is not for you if
- You want a logo by Friday and nothing underneath it.
- You want a redesign because the brand feels stale, when the problem is that nobody enforces it.
- The person who decides is not in the room and will redesign it afterwards anyway.
We only build what removes real work.
Questions
Before you ask.
Can we just get a logo?
Yes, and we will tell you honestly whether that is enough. A mark with no system behind it is the one that ends up in four inconsistent variants inside a year. If a logo genuinely is all you need right now, the sprint is the honest way to buy it.
We already have a brand. Do we have to start again?
Usually not. More often the identity is fine and nothing underneath it was ever written down. We can document, correct and enforce what exists rather than replace it.
Who owns the files?
You do. You get the vector source, the fonts you are licensed for, and the specimen book. Nothing about the handover is designed to keep you dependent on us.
What do you need from us?
Time from whoever actually decides, and access to what you already publish. We build voice from your real material, so the more of it we can read, the less of it we have to invent.
How does it stay consistent after handover?
By making the rules specific enough to follow, and by checking live surfaces periodically if you want that. Most drift is not defiance. It is a supplier guessing because the guideline did not say.
Show us how it looks today.
Send the logo files, the last deck someone made, the poster a supplier laid out. We will tell you honestly whether this is an identity problem or a rules problem, because they are not fixed the same way.