Three ways in, in the order they usually happen.

Most clients start with the first, move to the second, and stay on the third. You can also start anywhere, provided the foundation already exists somewhere other than in your head.

There are three ways to work with The Brand Bureau: a brand foundation project, an identity and website build, and a monthly retainer. Foundations take roughly six to eight weeks. Builds follow a foundation. Retainers begin once there is something worth keeping consistent, and most run for years.

Brand foundation

The thinking, written down. Interviews with you and the people who buy from you, a competitor and market read, and an honest account of where perception and reality have separated. It ends in a document: position, messaging framework, brand architecture, and the decisions the business has now made.

Typically six to eight weeks. Delivered as a written strategy and a working session. This is the only piece of work the practice insists on doing first.

Identity and build

The position made visible. A visual identity system — mark, typography, colour, photography direction and the rules that hold them together — and the website that it lives on. Where there is an existing identity worth keeping, it is refined rather than replaced.

Typically eight to twelve weeks, depending on the size of the site and how many sub-brands sit under the parent.

Ongoing retainer

Custody. The monthly work that keeps the brand in market and consistent: campaigns, content, the social feed written and scheduled, the next page, the next property, the next appointment announcement. One hand on the whole portfolio, month after month.

Monthly, ongoing. Reviewed annually. Most retainers here are measured in years, not months.

What does it cost?

Fees depend on the size of the business and the number of brands under it, so there is no price list here that would be honest. What can be said before you email: this is senior work, priced accordingly. If you are comparing three quotes and choosing the lowest, we will both be happier if you choose one of the others.

You get a fixed fee for defined work and a fixed monthly fee for retainers. No hourly billing, no scope creep invoices, no surprises at the end of a month.

What do you need from me?

Access to you, honestly — a few hours of proper conversation, not a brief emailed at midnight. Access to a handful of your customers, if the work is a foundation. And a decision-maker in the room: brand work dies when it is signed off by committee.

Where a job needs a photographer, a videographer, a printer, an interior designer or a project manager, that is arranged and managed from this side. You brief once.

Do you take on single projects?

Yes, but only where the position is already clear. A logo without a position is decoration, and the work is better turned down than sold as something that will not hold.

Also worth saying

Timing is the real constraint, and you will hear about it in the first conversation. A practice built on holding a short list properly cannot start everything at once. Where there is no room in the diary, you will be told so rather than sold a slot that does not exist — and where it helps, pointed towards someone who can start sooner.