Branding gets sold to Irish small businesses as either too cheap (the £20 Fiverr logo) or too expensive (the €15,000 "rebrand"). The reality is usually neither. A small business needs a workable identity — a wordmark or logo, a small set of colours, two type choices, and the file kit to use them — and that's a project you can scope honestly in a week or two.
What's actually in a brand for a small Irish business
The minimum useful kit:
- A primary logo. Either a wordmark (the business name, set well) or a mark-and-name lockup. Designed in vector, exported in the formats you'll actually use — SVG for the website, PNG for social, PDF for print.
- A name and trading-name decision. Often skipped. The name on the door, the name on the invoice, the name on the domain — these should match. Where they don't, write down why.
- A small palette. Two or three colours. Not the dozen-colour brand-guide pretending to be Coca-Cola. The palette that survives a non-designer making a Word document.
- Two typefaces, max. One for headlines, one for body. Both with web-licence and print-licence covered.
- Stationery, only what you need. Letterhead, email signature, business card, invoice template. Anything else is fashion.
What we cover in this hub
- Logo design — what the brief should say, what the deliverable should include, and how to spot a logo that won't survive five years.
- Name development — naming a business or product. The trademark check, the domain check, the "say it down the phone" test.
- Stationery design — the small print of brand identity: business cards, letterheads, invoice templates. Quietly tells customers whether you take yourself seriously.
What's NOT worth paying for
- "Brand strategy decks" with no design output. Forty PowerPoint slides about your "values" and "tone of voice" don't give you a logo. If a strategy doc precedes design, it should be tight — five pages, not forty.
- Logo concepts you'll never see. Some agencies charge for "exploration phases" that produce nothing tangible. Ask to see the deliverables list before you sign.
- Brand "experience" workshops with no design follow-through. Workshop fees can balloon fast. They're cheap if they unlock a clear brief; expensive if they replace one.
How to brief a designer
One side of A4. Cover: who you are, who you sell to, three brands you admire (and why), three you don't (and why), the channels you'll actually use the brand on (website, van, signage, print), and the budget. That brief is more useful than a 40-page brand audit.