Branding has a reputation for being expensive, and I get why. When you hear about agencies charging thousands for a logo and a 40-page style guide, it’s easy to decide branding is something you’ll deal with later, once the business feels “real.”
But you don’t need a big brand package to start looking put together. Where you start just depends on what you’ve got to work with. If your branding budget is zero right now, there’s a lot you can do on your own. (Same goes for websites, which I cover in DIY vs. hiring a designer.) And if you’ve got a little set aside and want a designer to handle the most important pieces, that’s a great middle ground too. Let’s walk through both.
If you have zero budget, start here
Most of good branding comes down to a handful of clear decisions, made once and used everywhere. Making those decisions doesn’t cost a thing.
1. Start with how you want people to feel
Before you touch colors or fonts, answer three questions for yourself:
- What problem do I solve for my customers?
- How do I want them to feel when they work with me?
- What do I hope they say about me to a friend?
Write the answers down somewhere you’ll see them. Every choice after this gets easier once you can hold it up against those answers.
2. Pick just a few colors and stop there
This is my favorite part of any logo project, so I’ll try not to get carried away. Two or three main colors is plenty. Just make sure at least one is much darker or much lighter than the others, so text is easy to read on top of it. That matters more than most people realize, and the W3C has a short explainer on why strong contrast helps everyone read your content.
Want to play around first? Canva and Coolors are both free and great for testing palettes before you commit.
3. Use free tools, the same way every time
You don’t need expensive software. Canva, Adobe Express and free stock photo libraries are all fine places to start. The catch is consistency. Pick one or two fonts, your colors and a general photo style, then use that same set on your website, your social media and anything you print.
Stock photos work great for backgrounds and textures. Anything standing in for you, your space or your work should be real, which I get into more in your website photos are doing more work than you think.
4. A text logo is a perfectly good start
If a custom logo isn’t in the budget yet, your business name in a clean font and your new colors can look sharp. Plenty of businesses launch that way. What usually doesn’t hold up is a free logo generator that spits out something any business could use, because that’s the one you’ll want to hide in a year. I get into why in why some businesses get away with AI content.
5. Make everything match
Once those choices are made, the job is keeping them consistent:
- Your website and social profiles use the same colors and fonts
- You use the same profile photo everywhere
- You sound like the same person in an email, a caption and your About page
That last one gets skipped a lot. If your website sounds stiff and your Instagram sounds like you, people pick up on the gap even if they can’t say why.
If you have a smaller budget, here’s how I can help
Maybe you’ve got a little money set aside, and you’d rather have a designer handle the pieces that are hardest to get right on your own. That’s exactly what my Mini Brand package is for. It covers the essentials to get you started:
- One main logo, drawn just for your business
- Typography that pairs with it
- A color palette that fits your personality and reads well on screen and in print
We start with a short questionnaire and a mood board so I can get a feel for your business before I design anything. When we’re done, you get your logo in every file type you’ll need, for your website, social media and print.
That’s the package Little Berdie Milling Co. started with. They ended up with a northern mockingbird logo, typewriter-style fonts and a warm terra cotta and rust palette that all feels like them.
The Mini Brand takes care of steps one through four for you. The questionnaire and mood board pin down how you want people to feel, and you walk away with your logo, fonts and colors already chosen. All that’s left is step five, using them the same way everywhere. And if your website doesn’t match your new look yet, I can help with that through web design too.
You can see what’s included on my branding page, browse more of my work in my portfolio, and if you’re not sure where a logo ends and a brand begins, I break that down in branding vs. logo.
Wherever you’re starting from
What matters most is something clear and consistent enough that people recognize you the second time they see you. Whether you build it yourself this month or bring in some help, you’re already ahead of the businesses that keep putting it off.
I work with small businesses all over Blount County, Knoxville and beyond, so if you’d like a hand getting started, let’s talk!
