Logo, brand identity & design

Look like the company you actually are.

Most small businesses do good work and look smaller than they are. Brand design closes that gap. Logo, identity, guidelines, and the materials that make people take you seriously before you have said a word.

Book a free call → Refresh or rebuild?
How it works

Brand design, in four stages.

Two to three weeks for an identity on its own. Most of the first week is questions, because the drawing is the easy part.

01

Understand

What you sell, who buys it, and who you keep losing to. This decides everything that follows.

02

Directions

Two or three genuinely different routes, not twenty versions of one idea. You pick one.

03

Build the system

Logo in every format, color and type rules, and the applications you actually use day to day.

04

Hand it over

Guidelines document, vector files, fonts, and exports. Yours outright, usable by any printer.

Why it matters

People decide before they read anything.

Nobody thinks they judge a business by its logo. Everybody does it anyway, in the second before they decide whether to keep reading or call the next company on the list.

Sephora
where DL.MD launched, a brand and packaging system we built from scratch
Dubai
Cove Beach at Caesars Palace, one of several hospitality brands we have shaped
$2M
funding approved off the back of a pitch deck we designed
2–3 wks
for a full identity, guidelines included
The usual state of things

A logo is not a brand.

Almost everyone who calls us has a logo. What they do not have is a system, which is why everything they make looks slightly different from everything else they make. We wrote up what that costs a Vista business and how we fix it.

What we usually find
  • A logo that only exists as a low-resolution PNG somebody emailed over years ago
  • Three slightly different blues across the website, the van, and the business cards
  • A mark that turns into a smudge at the size of a shirt label
  • No idea which font the website uses, so every new flyer picks a different one
  • Signage made by whoever the sign shop had available, matching nothing
  • Nobody can find the original files, and the designer who made them is long gone
What you get instead
  • Vector artwork that scales from a favicon to a building wrap without degrading
  • One color system, specified for screen, print, vinyl, and embroidery
  • A mark tested small, in one color, and reversed before it is signed off
  • A guidelines document any printer or sign shop can follow without calling you
  • Templates for the things you make repeatedly, so they stay consistent
  • Every source file in your hands, permanently
The AI question

AI makes logos. It doesn't make brands.

AI logo tools got good fast, and for some businesses they are genuinely the right answer. Here is where the line sits, because pretending they are useless would be dishonest.

Where they work fine

  • A side project or a business testing whether it has customers yet
  • Generating directions to react to when you cannot describe what you want
  • Producing something presentable in an afternoon for almost nothing
  • Simple wordmarks where the type is doing all the work
  • Placeholder marks you fully intend to replace later

Where they leave you exposed

  • Output that often cannot be protected as a trademark, because it is not distinctive or original enough
  • Raster files that fall apart on signage, embroidery, and vehicle wraps
  • No color system, so everything made afterwards drifts
  • Marks that quietly resemble thousands of others generated from the same prompts
  • Nothing telling anyone else how to use it, which is where consistency dies

The logo is about ten percent of it. The other ninety is everything made afterwards looking like it belongs.

Why guidelines outlast the mark itself
Work it out

Refresh, or start over?

Six questions. Most people assume they need a rebuild and actually need a refresh, which costs a fraction as much. This will tell you which.

Our read on it
Rebuild
Answer the questions to see where you land.
Nothing here is a hard rule. It is the same set of questions we would ask you on a call.
Want this written up?
We will send your answers, what we would do first, and a realistic cost, whether or not you book a call.
No newsletter, no sequence you didn't ask for. One email with our read.

This is a shortcut for a conversation, not a verdict. If your mark still fits the business and only the application has drifted, rebuilding from scratch throws away recognition you already paid for, and we will say so.

Who it's for

Built for owner-operators.

Big-brand experience, small-business pricing. The standard we set on a Sephora launch is the standard a local shop gets, right-sized to a budget that makes sense.

We work with small independent businesses across North County San Diego, the Temecula Valley, and Colorado's Front Range.

  • New businesses starting from nothing
  • Anyone whose logo no longer matches what they sell
  • Businesses that outgrew a logo made on a budget
  • Shops, studios, and restaurants needing print and signage too
  • Anyone whose files went missing with an old designer
  • Businesses about to build a website and starting properly
Proof

The standard we bring down.

The point of showing this work is not the names. It is that the same process, questions, and level of finish come to a local rebrand at a fraction of the budget.

Brands built
  • DL.MD, a liquid daily vitamin. Brand, packaging, and a full guideline system, launched into Sephora. Clinical made desirable, and retail-ready artwork that cleared the shelf.
  • Cove Beach, Caesars Palace, Dubai. Hospitality identity built to work across a venue, not just on a page.
  • Miss Lily's, Dubai. Restaurant brand, menus, advertising, web, and social as one system.
  • Pitch and proposal decks including work for Alfa Romeo, and a scooter brand approved for $2M in funding.
What that means for you
  • A mark tested against the same checks: small, one color, reversed, embroidered, on a vehicle.
  • Packaging and print treated as part of the identity, because that is where brands usually fall apart.
  • A guidelines document written to be followed by a printer, not admired by a designer.
  • Every source file handed over, so the next person who touches it is not starting from a screenshot.
DL.MD case study Cove Beach Miss Lily's All work
Pricing

Two ways to work with us.

Unpackaged at an hourly rate for a single piece, or a fixed-scope identity. Every package states the revision rounds and what you walk away owning.

Hourly

$85
per hour, no minimum

Rebuilding an existing logo as vector, fixing a color system, or one piece of print or signage.

Book a call

Brand Identity

$2,600
fixed scope, 2 to 3 weeks

Logo and identity, color and type system, a full guidelines document, social profile set, and every source file. Two rounds of revisions.

Book a call

Brand + Website

$6,400
fixed scope, 5 to 7 weeks

The identity above, plus a five-page website with copywriting included. The cheapest per hour of anything we offer.

Book a call

Packaging, menus, signage, and vehicle graphics are quoted as add-ons, so you only pay for the pieces you need. Full pricing is on the pricing page.

Questions

The things people actually ask.

How much does a logo cost?
A full brand identity with guidelines is $2,600, and brand plus a website together is $6,400. If you only need a logo tidied or reworked rather than built from scratch, that is hourly at $85. We tell you which you need on the first call.
Do I own the logo and get the source files?
Yes, all of it. Vector artwork, editable files, fonts, color codes, and every export you need for print and screen. Nothing is held back and nothing sits on our servers. If we stopped working together tomorrow you would lose nothing.
How long does branding take?
Two to three weeks for a brand identity on its own, and five to seven weeks if a website is being built alongside it. Most of the first week is questions, because the useful part is understanding what you sell and to whom before anything gets drawn.
Can I just use an AI logo generator or Canva?
For a side project, honestly yes. What those tools cannot give you is a mark that still works at the size of a shirt label, in one color, on a van, and embroidered. They also produce artwork you often cannot legally protect as your own.
What are brand guidelines and do I actually need one?
It is a short document setting out your colors, fonts, logo rules, and voice so everything you make looks like it came from the same company. You need one the moment anybody other than you makes something, including printers, signwriters, and sign shops.
Do I need a full rebrand or just a refresh?
Usually a refresh. If the mark still fits the business and only the application has drifted, rebuilding from scratch wastes money. The diagnostic on this page will give you a straight answer in about a minute, and we will confirm it on a call.
Can you work with the brand I already have?
Often that is the better option. We can tidy an existing mark, rebuild it properly as vector artwork, fix the color system, and write the guidelines that were never made. That costs a fraction of starting over and keeps the recognition you have built.
How many logo concepts do I get?
Two or three genuinely different directions, not twenty variations of the same idea. Then two rounds of refinement on whichever you pick. Showing a dozen options usually means the thinking was skipped and the decision got handed back to you.
Do you do packaging, print, menus, and signage?
Yes. Packaging, menus, signage, vehicle graphics, and print collateral are all part of it, and they are where a brand usually falls apart. These are quoted as an add-on to the identity so you only pay for the pieces you actually need.
Will you trademark my logo for me?
No, that is a legal matter and we are not lawyers. What we will do is design something distinctive enough to be worth protecting, and give you the vector files a trademark attorney will ask for. We can point you toward doing the search properly.
Website design Local SEO Email marketing Full pricing

Written by Denessa Appleton, Second Set · Vista, CA and Milliken, CO
Last updated

Look like you mean it.

Send us the details and we'll tell you whether you need a rebuild or just a tidy-up, even when the answer is the cheaper one.

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