A small business needs six things from a brand: one sentence that says what you do, a name and a mark that work at small sizes, two colours and two typefaces, a few templates your staff actually use, one page of rules, and the habit of using all of it every time. The logo is one of the six, and not the hardest.
Here they are in the order I’d build them.
1. One sentence
Who it’s for, what you do, and why you. If a stranger can repeat it back after hearing it once, it works. If it needs a comma and a “we also”, it isn’t finished.
Mine is “By the month, I run brand and AI for business owners.” It took several rewrites to get it that short, and everything else on my site hangs off that line.
2. A name and a mark that work small
Most people meet your logo at the size of a thumbnail: a WeChat avatar, a Google Maps pin, a browser tab, an Instagram profile, the embroidery on a shirt. Design it for 32 pixels first and the billboard will take care of itself. Thin lines, small words inside the mark and taglines locked to the logo all disappear at that size.
3. Two colours and two typefaces
Fewer is easier to keep consistent, and consistency is what customers recognise. Pick one colour people will remember you by and one neutral for everything else; one typeface for headings and one for reading. If you work in Chinese and English, pick a Chinese typeface that sits well next to your English one.
My own brand uses one gold, black and white, Figtree for English and Noto Sans SC for Chinese. That’s all of it.
4. Templates your staff will use
A brand lives in the quote, the invoice, the social post, the email signature and the slide your sales manager makes at 11 p.m. If those templates are hard to use, people go back to Word, and the brand quietly disappears. Make them in the tools your staff already use, so the right way is also the easy way.
5. One page of rules
Not a sixty-page guidelines PDF that nobody opens. One page: the sentence, the colours and their codes, the typefaces, three things to always do, three things never to do, and where the files live. Pin it where people work.
6. Using it every time
Consistency builds trust faster than novelty. When customers see the same colours, the same voice and the same mark on your truck, your website and your quote, they decide you’re organised before they’ve met you.
Most brand problems are solved by taking things out: the third colour someone added, the old logo still on the door, the extra slogan. Before you add anything, see what you can remove.
If you’re starting from nothing
Build them in this order: the sentence, then the mark, then colours and type, then templates, then the page of rules. Finished one at a time, while the business keeps running, all six usually take three or four months.
You can see all six pieces of my own brand, with the files, in my brand book. If your business has two names, one Chinese and one English, read Chinese and English names that work together next.