It’s Not a Logo. It’s a Playbook.

Too many founders treat branding like a cosmetic task. A logo to check off the list before getting back to “real work.” But branding isn’t decoration. It’s infrastructure. When you rush it or cheapen it, you don’t save time or money. You just push the cost down the road.

It’s not “a logo.” It’s a playbook.

One of the biggest misconceptions I see, especially in early-stage companies, is the belief that branding starts and ends with a logo. Founders think, “It’s just a logo,” so they cut corners. They hire a student, use AI, or rush something out the door to save money. That decision almost always creates more work later.

Good branding should cost real money. Not because it’s flashy, but because it’s foundational. I subscribe deeply to the idea of measure twice, cut once. When you invest the time and care upfront to build strong brand guardrails, you set yourself up for longevity instead of constant rework.

Brand equity is fragile. Every early impression matters. If you launch with something weak and later redesign, you don’t just change visuals. You erase recognition you worked hard to build. You reset trust. You start over.

Branding also isn’t a logo floating on a white page. It’s how that logo lives alongside color, typography, imagery, motion, and tone. A logo alone means nothing if it hasn’t been tested within a full system. Context is everything. I’ve seen designers present decks with 10, 20, even 30 logo options. That approach feels cheap and unconsidered. When I ran my studio, we showed three options. Always. Those three took weeks to develop because they were deeply explored, stress-tested, and intentional.

Sometimes clients would ask to see more. They worried that three options meant we hadn’t thought of everything. In reality, the opposite was true. A great designer explores hundreds of directions privately, then edits ruthlessly to present only the strongest recommendations. That curation is the work. When you see too many options, decision-making breaks down. Everything blurs together. Nothing feels confident. You don’t get a better outcome, you get a weaker one.

I often declined projects where founders demanded endless options “just to see.” If someone wants every sketch, every iteration, every half-baked idea, they’re not hiring for perspective. They’re hiring a workhorse. And that almost always leads to a worse product.

The reason you hire a designer or agency is for their point of view. You want someone who will learn your business, understand your audience, and distill all of that into a small set of strong, opinionated recommendations.

You will never get a better result by asking for hundreds of options. You will always get a more diluted one. Trust designers. Trust their expertise. Trust their point of view.