Branding a Startup on a Budget: What to Buy First
A sequence, not a wish list. What to buy in month one, what can wait until you have customers, and what most startups waste money on.
Buy in this order: a name you can own, a logo with real files, and a colour and type pair you can apply yourself. Everything else can wait until you have customers telling you what you actually need.
Month one — the things that block other things
A name you can clear. Before anything is designed, check the trademark register in your market and whether the domain and handles are available. Designing around a name you cannot own is the most expensive mistake on this list.
A logo with complete files. Vector source, colour variants, an icon version. Not because you need all of them yet, but because going back for them later costs more than getting them now.
One colour and one type pairing. Enough to make a deck, a site and a social profile look like the same company.
Month two to six — once you have customers
Guidelines, the moment a second person starts producing anything. The trigger is not company size, it is the second pair of hands.
Templates for whatever you actually produce weekly — usually social posts or a sales deck.
Trademark registration, once you are confident the name is staying.
Later, or never
Packaging before you have a product. A full motion identity before anyone has heard of you. A brand book with mission statements and mood boards. Custom illustration systems. All legitimate spends for a company at scale, and dead weight for one with fifty customers.
What startups most often waste money on
Rebranding at eighteen months because the founders got tired of the logo. The customers had barely learned it.
Buying the cheapest possible logo, then paying twice when the files turn out to be unusable for print. The second purchase is always more expensive than doing it once.
Naming exercises with agencies before product-market fit. The name matters far less than the founders believe at that stage.
If you want to work out the smallest thing that actually solves your problem, send the brief — we will tell you if the answer is one of our smaller packages.
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