The Starting Point of a Brand
Is a Question Most People Skip

When clients first come to us, it usually starts the same way: "I want a new logo," "the website needs a total redo," "the app interface is too ugly, it needs a redesign."

I used to think that was completely normal. Whatever they said they needed, I'd start figuring out how to do it. But after a few years, I slowly realized—this order might have been wrong from the very start.

Photo by Michael Dziedzic on Unsplash

⚓ Everyone asks "what should we make," but skips a more fundamental question

A while back I read an interview with designer David Johnston, and one line really stuck with me: good creatives ask "can we make this" and "does anyone want this," but almost no one asks—"should we actually be doing this at all?"

That question sounds a bit philosophical, but it's actually very practical.

Looking back at projects from the past few years, if someone had paused a little longer and asked "why are we doing this," the whole direction might have turned out quite differently. It's not that anything was entirely wrong—just that skipping that layer of thinking ends up costing a lot of time later in communication and realigning direction.

⛰️ The first step in design isn't visuals—it's a question

Over the years, we've gradually built a habit: in our first meeting with a client, we now guide them to describe:How do you want users to feel after encountering this brand? What do you want them to do?

rather than"what should it look like."

Design, at its core, is a kind of signal.Every color you put out, every typeface choice, the tone of a single line of copy—all of it slowly builds up an impression in the user's mind, which then shapes how they act. If you haven't clearly thought through "what do we want the other person to do" before the brand design even begins, what you end up making will easily be nothing more than good-looking, without any direction.

🌱 Small signals, shaping some version of the future

There's a concept from David Johnston's interview that I think is worth pausing on:signals shape behavior, behavior shapes belief, and belief ultimately determines what kind of world we end up living in.

That sounds like a big idea, but scaled down to the size of a brand, it's actually very concrete.

If your brand consistently sends out the signal "we're cheap and easy to negotiate with," users will gradually come to feel that your services are up for haggling. If you keep putting out the sense that "we take every detail seriously," even without saying it outright, users will start to believe you're worth the price. All of this is just the result of signals quietly accumulating over time—there's no magic to it, just time plus consistency.

🏜️ Starting from "the future we want," then breaking it down layer by layer

So before we formally start designing, we usually walk clients through a few questions first:

Three years from now, how do you want users to describe your brand?Not a slogan they'd recite—just the first few words that naturally come to mind.

At every touchpoint with the brand, what behavior do you want users to take?Actively recommending you to friends? Willing to come back and buy again? Or feeling like paying a bit more is worth it?

What does this brand actually believe in?Not a tagline written in a slide deck, but the thing you genuinely care about.

These three questions can help pin down the brand's core direction—so the visuals have something to stand on, instead of getting halfway through and saying "something feels off, butI can't quite put my finger on what."

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

✨ Not "how to do it," but "why do it"

I think brand design, in the end, really comes down to a kind of stance: what beliefs you want the brand to carry, what behavior you want it to shape, and what kind of mark you want it to leave on the world.

That might sound like a lofty goal. But with every project, we try to come back to these fundamental questions.

If you're currently planning a brand or product, you can start by asking yourself these few questions. There's no need to rush into deciding what it should look like—first get clear on what change you want it to bring. That answer will make every design decision that follows much easier.