Brand strategy before design: five questions to answer before you hire a designer

Edara Akpan · Aug 8, 2026 · 3 min read

Most logo projects go wrong before anyone opens design software. The designer is asked to make something “modern and clean” for a business that has not yet decided who it is for, what it stands for or who it competes with. The result looks fine and says nothing.

Brand strategy sounds like something only big companies need, but at small scale it is just five honest questions. Answer them before you commission any design and every later decision gets easier.

1. Who exactly is this for?

“Everyone” is not an answer. Describe one specific person: what they do, what they are trying to achieve, what they already buy and what makes them hesitate. A skincare start-up for “women” will look generic. A skincare start-up for first-time buyers who feel overwhelmed by ingredient lists can look calm, clear and reassuring, and that is a design brief.

2. What do they need to believe before they buy?

Every purchase has a trust barrier. For a new restaurant it might be “the food will be worth the price”. For a software tool it might be “this company will still exist next year”. Your brand has to remove that barrier, visually and verbally. Write down the one or two beliefs that matter most.

3. Who else are they considering?

Collect five competitors or alternatives. Put their logos, colours and packaging side by side. Notice what they all do: the same blue, the same rounded sans-serif, the same stock-photo smile. Then notice the gap.

Sometimes the smartest move is to follow a category convention so customers instantly understand what you sell. Sometimes it is to break it. Either way, choose on purpose.

4. How should the brand feel, and what must it never feel like?

Pick three words for how people should perceive you, for example “warm, expert, unpretentious”. Then pick three words you refuse to be, for example “cheap, corporate, trendy”.

The second list is surprisingly useful. It gives a designer something to push against, and it gives you a fast way to reject options that feel wrong when you cannot yet explain why.

5. Where will people meet the brand first?

Design for the places that matter most. A product brand sold in shops is judged on a shelf. A service business is judged on a website and a social profile. A food brand may be judged as a thumbnail on a phone screen. List your top three touchpoints and design for those first, not for a business card you may rarely hand out.

Turn the answers into a positioning sentence

A simple structure:

For [specific audience] who [need or problem], [brand name] is the [category] that [key difference], because [reason to believe].

A fictional example: “For first-time home bakers who sell online, this is the packaging brand that makes a small business look established from the very first order, because every pack is designed as part of one system.”

If you cannot complete the sentence, you have found the gap to work on before design begins.

What to do with your answers

Send them to your designer as part of the brief. Use your three “feel” words and three “never” words as a filter for every concept you are shown. And if a designer starts sketching logos without asking you any of these questions, ask why, because strategy is where most of the value in an identity project comes from.