Brand strategy and logo design, before the website.
People size up a business before they ever speak to it: the sign out front, the truck in a neighbor’s driveway, the first screen of the website. When those don’t match, or don’t look as good as the work, the business seems smaller than it is. Brand work settles who you’re for, why you’re the obvious call and how that should look, before anything gets printed or built. Marnovo is based in Hampstead, NC, and does brand work for service businesses anywhere.
What’s included
Strategy and positioning
We work out who your best customers are, what you want to be known for and why someone should call you instead of the next listing. Then we put it in writing, in plain words, so your sign maker, your printer and your website all say the same thing.
Logo and visual identity
A logo, a small set of colors and a pair of typefaces, tested at the sizes people will see them: a truck door, a storefront sign, a phone screen, your profile picture on Google. It all goes on one identity sheet, with the rules for using it.
For a sense of range, our three concept projects, built for fictional businesses, each have a look of their own: sturdy and documentary for a roofer, soft and calm for a med spa, quiet and structured for a law firm.
Identity sheet
Why brand comes before the website
The website is built from brand decisions: the colors, the type, the first line a visitor reads. Make those decisions after launch and the site has to be redone to match, along with the signs and the trucks. If your logo and message already hold up, we’ll say so and go straight to the website.
A starting style is a different thing. It gives your website a look. Brand work gives the business one.
How it works
- A conversation. What you do, who hires you, who you lose jobs to and what customers say when they recommend you.
- Positioning in writing. We agree on it before any design starts.
- Logo and identity drafts, shown on the things you use, from the truck door to the phone screen.
- The finished identity, on one sheet, with the logo files your printer and sign maker will ask for. Your website and your Google profile get built from it.
Who it’s for
New businesses that want to look established from the first day. Established ones that look smaller than they are, or have outgrown the logo they started with. Businesses with several locations or crews that need to look like one company.
What it costs
Brand work is priced per business, since a new company needs a different amount of work than one with several locations and years of signs already up. We’ll give you a price on the demo call.
It isn’t part of the Style starter, our five-page site for $300 (a founding-client price, for our first ten clients). The starter places your logo as it is, or sets your name in the style’s headline font until you have one. That’s a wordmark, not a designed logo.
How it connects to your website and local search
Your website takes its colors and type from the identity, and its first line from the positioning. Your Google Business Profile carries the same logo and name, with photos that fit. We can write the copy and direct the photography too, so every word and picture looks like one business.
Questions about brand work
Should I start with a logo or a website?
Do I have to replace my logo?
What do I get at the end?
Can we work together if I’m not near Hampstead?
Start with a conversation.
Choose Brand under “What do you need?” on the form, and tell us what you have now. We’ll design a free mockup of your homepage and talk through the brand on the same call. You’ll be talking to Avery, the person who does the work.
Rather talk? Call Avery at 472-204-6566.