Week 1
Audit what exists
Everything the brand has published in the last two years, laid out together. This is usually the moment the problem becomes undeniable.
Creative direction · Brand visual direction · Sydney
Brand visual direction
Most brands do not have a look problem. They have a consistency problem: eight people making reasonable decisions separately, and a result that reads as eight brands.
Grab the snowball. Give it a spin, and watch it grow as you scroll. Just like recognition.
1direction across every asset
5layers that make a look hold
Decided oncenot renegotiated per project
Sydneydirection, design and production
The short answer
What is brand visual direction?
Brand visual direction is deciding how a brand looks and, more importantly, how it keeps looking that way across work made by different people at different times. It is the layer above design: not what one asset looks like, but what every asset has in common.
It matters because consistency, not beauty, is what makes a brand recognisable. A moderately attractive brand applied identically everywhere is recognised. A beautiful one applied eight different ways is not recognised at all, and the money spent on the beauty is wasted.
We direct across photography, video, social and the site so the same decisions govern all of them, which is unusual: most brands buy direction per discipline and wonder why the disciplines do not match. Because our Snowball SEO platform automates the search heavy lifting other agencies bill by the hour, more of your budget goes into the making. It sits inside our wider creative direction service.
The difference
What actually makes a look hold together?
Five layers, and most brands have decided one of them. Colour is the layer everybody argues about and the least load-bearing of the five.
What direction decides
- What we photograph and film, and what we never do
- How images are treated, so a phone shot and a studio shot can sit together
- How much space things get, which reads as confidence or as clutter
- What the brand does not do, which is the half people skip
Why brands drift anyway
- Guidelines that specify colours and say nothing about subject matter
- Every new supplier interpreting the brand for the first time
- Decisions made per project by whoever is available
- No named owner, so nobody can say no to a well-meant deviation
If what you need is the identity itself rather than the direction of how it is used, that is our branding and identity service.
The cost
What drives the price of visual direction?
How much already exists and how many people have to agree. Direction for a brand with nothing is a blank page. Direction for a brand with fifteen years of assets is an archaeology job first.
A direction, from scratch
New brand
The decisions made and documented for a brand starting fresh, which is the quickest case because nothing has to be reconciled.
Reconcile and direct
Existing brand
We review what exists, decide what stays, and direct from there. The usual case, and slower, because half the work is agreement.
Direction on retainer
Ongoing
Standing direction across projects, so new work is directed as it happens rather than corrected afterwards.
We quote after a free consult and a look at what exists now. For the informational version, see our guide to creative direction and art direction.
What moves the number, in order
- How much existing work has to be audited and reconciled
- How many people hold a veto over the answer
- How many disciplines are in scope: photography, video, social, site, print
- Whether anything has to be produced to demonstrate the direction
- Whether the direction has to survive external suppliers
- Documentation depth, which is what makes it outlast the meeting
Direction is worth nothing undocumented
A brilliant direction that lives in one person's head is a dependency, not an asset. It works until they are on leave, and then the brand quietly drifts for a quarter.
So the deliverable is not the taste, it is the written decisions and the examples that let somebody who was not in the room make the same call. That is a duller thing to buy and it is the part with any durability.
It is also why we would rather do less direction and document it properly than more and leave it in a presentation nobody opens again.
The scope
What you receive
Decisions written down with examples, not a mood board and a conversation.
The direction itself
What the brand looks like across every layer, from subject matter down to colour, written as decisions rather than adjectives.
Reference sets
Examples of right and wrong for each decision, because a rule with no counter-example is interpreted differently by everybody who reads it.
How it applies per discipline
What the direction means specifically for photography, video, social and the site, since a rule that is not translated is not followed.
The do-not list
What this brand does not do, which prevents more drift than any positive rule and is almost always missing.
A briefing note for suppliers
One page a freelancer or agency can be given, so external work arrives close rather than needing correction.
A named owner
Who decides when something is out of direction, because a rule with nobody to enforce it is a suggestion.
The return
What does consistency actually buy?
Recognition, which compounds, and speed, which is the benefit nobody expects and everybody notices within a month.
The speed is the surprise
Recognition is the reason direction is sold. Speed is why teams keep paying for it. A decided brand removes an argument from every single project, and those arguments were costing days each.
When the subject matter, the treatment and the spacing are already settled, a photographer, an editor and a designer can all work without a meeting. When they are not, every asset is renegotiated from first principles by whoever is nearest.
That is why the do-not list matters as much as the direction. Being able to say no quickly, with a reason, is most of what a direction is for.
The process
How visual direction gets set
Three to five weeks, with the disagreement surfaced early rather than at sign-off.
Week 1
Interviews
What the people who commission work believe the brand looks like, which is rarely the same answer twice and is the real finding.
Week 2
The decisions
Layer by layer, from subject matter down to colour, with the reasoning attached so they can be revisited rather than merely obeyed.
Week 3
Demonstrate
A small set of assets made to the direction, because an argument about a principle is settled fastest by looking at a result.
Week 4
Document
The decisions, the examples, the do-not list and the per-discipline translations, written so somebody who was not there can apply it.
Week 5
Hand over
A briefing note for suppliers, a named owner, and a review point so the direction is revisited on purpose rather than eroded.
The brief
What to ask before you commission visual direction
Direction is the easiest creative service to buy as a mood board and the hardest to make stick.
Will this be written down, with examples?
A direction that exists as taste in one person's head is a dependency. Ask for written decisions with right and wrong examples for each.
Does it cover subject matter, not just colour?
Colour and type are the easy half. What the brand photographs, and what it refuses to, is what actually makes two brands look different.
Who owns it afterwards?
Name one person who can say no. A direction with no enforcement is a document, and documents lose to deadlines every time.
How will external suppliers be briefed?
Ask for the one-page version a freelancer can be handed. Direction that only works when your own team makes the asset is not doing much.
We are happy to answer all four and to audit what exists before you commit. For the informational version, see creative direction versus art direction.
Start here
Ready to stop renegotiating the brand?
Send us the last twenty things you published and we will show you what they have in common. The free consult is a working session, not a sales call, and you leave with three things whether or not you book us.
- Your last twenty assets laid out together, which is usually the whole argument
- The three decisions that would fix most of the inconsistency
- A fixed price, with the documentation depth written down
Good questions
Brand visual direction FAQs
What is brand visual direction?
It is deciding how a brand looks and how it keeps looking that way across work made by different people at different times. It sits above design: not what one asset looks like, but what every asset has in common, from subject matter down to colour.
How is it different from brand identity?
Identity is the marks: logo, palette, typefaces. Direction is everything about how work gets made: what you photograph, how images are treated, how much space things get, and what the brand does not do. A brand can have a strong identity and no direction, and it usually shows.
How much does visual direction cost?
We quote after seeing what exists. What moves it is how much existing work has to be audited and reconciled, how many people hold a veto, how many disciplines are in scope, and how deeply it is documented.
Do we need this if we already have brand guidelines?
Often yes. Most guidelines specify colours, logo spacing and typefaces, and say nothing about subject matter or treatment. Those are the layers that make two brands with identical palettes look completely different.
How long does it take?
Three to five weeks for most brands. The variable is not the deciding, it is the agreeing, so we surface disagreement in the first week rather than discovering it at sign-off.
What if our team disagrees about the direction?
They almost always do, and finding that out is part of the value. We interview the people who commission work separately, because the different answers are the actual problem being solved.
Will this work with external suppliers?
It should, and that is the test. Part of the deliverable is a one-page brief a freelancer or agency can be handed so their work arrives close to right rather than needing correction.
How often should direction be revisited?
Every two to three years, or when the business changes materially. More often than that and it is not direction, it is fashion, and the brand never becomes recognisable.